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Updated: May 21, 2025
In 1784, when the government of the day proposed to levy a tax on pit-coal, Richard Reynolds strongly urged upon Mr. Pitt, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as on Lord Gower, afterwards Marquis of Stafford, the impolicy of such a tax.
The light was further improved in consequence of pit-coal being used instead of timber; and the interior of the roof was converted into a kind of inverted conical reflector, the point of which projected downwards, and its base extended nearly to the full size of the roof.
Though the quantity produced by the new process was comparatively small not more than three tons a week from each furnace Dudley anticipated that greater experience would enable him to increase the quantity; and at all events he had succeeded in proving the practicability of smelting iron with fuel made from pit-coal, which so many before him had tried in vain.
Blewstone, a High German, as "the last effort" made in that county to smelt iron-ore with pit-coal.
Darby used raw coal, as was done in the Forest of Dean at the same time, in the process of calcining the ore; but it would appear from his own Memoranda that coke only was used in the process of smelting. We infer from other circumstances that pit-coal was not employed for the latter purpose until a considerably later period.
It was then believed that sea or pit-coal was poisonous when burnt in dwellings, and that it was especially injurious to the human complexion. All sorts of diseases were attributed to its use, and at one time it was even penal to burn it.
We are informed that it was while Richard Reynolds had charge of the Coalbrookdale works that a further important improvement was effected in the manufacture of iron by pit-coal. Up to this time the conversion of crude or cast iron into malleable or bar iron had been effected entirely by means of charcoal.
In 1787, we find Richard Crawshay manufacturing with difficulty ten tons of bar-iron weekly, and it was of a very inferior character, the means not having yet been devised at Cyfartha for malleableizing the pit-coal cast-iron with economy or good effect.
There seems to be some doubt as to the precise time when pit-coal was first regularly employed at Coalbrookdale in smelting the ore. Mr. Scrivenor says, "pit-coal was first used by Mr. Abraham Darby, in his furnace at Coalbrookdale, in 1713;" but we can find no confirmation of this statement in the records of the Company. It is probable that Mr.
It is curious that Rovenson, in his Treatise of Metallica of 1613, describes a reverberatory furnace in which iron was to be smelted by pit-coal, though it does not appear that he succeeded in perfecting his invention. Dr.
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