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Ironmaster
An ironmaster is the manager, and usually owner, of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain. The ironmaster was usually a large-scale entrepreneur and thus an important member of a community. He would have a large country house or mansion as his residence. The organization of operations surrounding the smelting, refining, and casting of iron was labour-intensive, and so there would be numerous workers reliant on the furnace works. There were ironmasters (possibly not called such) from the 17th century onward, but they became more prominent with the great expansion in the British iron industry during the Industrial Revolution. 17th-century ironmasters (examples) An early ironmaster was John Winter (Royalist), John Winter (about 1600–1676) who owned substantial holdings in the Forest of Dean. During the English Civil War he cast cannons for Charles I of England, ...
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Abraham Darby I
Abraham Darby, in his later life called Abraham Darby the Elder, now sometimes known for convenience as Abraham Darby I (14 April 1677 – 5 May 1717, the first and best known of Abraham Darby (other), several men of that name), was a British ironmaster and foundryman. Born into an Kingdom of England, English Quaker family that played an important role in the Industrial Revolution, Darby developed a method of producing pig iron in a blast furnace fuelled by Coke (fuel), coke rather than charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution. Early life Abraham Darby was the son of John Darby, a yeoman farmer and locksmith by trade, and his wife Ann Baylies. He was born at Wren's Nest in Woodsetton, Dudley, Woodsetton, Staffordshire, now part of Dudley, West Midlands (county), West Midlands. He was descended from nobility; his great-grandmother Jane was an illegitimate child of Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudle ...
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Coalbrookdale
Coalbrookdale is a town in the Ironbridge Gorge and the Telford and Wrekin borough of Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. It lies within the civil parish called The Gorge, Shropshire, the Gorge. This is where iron ore was first smelted by Abraham Darby I, Abraham Darby using easily mined "coking coal". The coal was drawn from drift mines in the sides of the valley. As it contained far fewer impurities than normal coal, the iron it produced was of a superior quality. Along with many other industrial developments that were going on in other parts of the country, this discovery was a major factor in the growing industrialisation of Britain, which was to become known as the Industrial Revolution. Today, Coalbrookdale is home to the Ironbridge Institute, a partnership between the University of Birmingham and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust offering postgraduate and professional development courses in Industrial her ...
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John Winter (Royalist)
Sir John Winter also spelt Wintour and Wyntour (about 1600–1676) was an English ironmaster and landowner at Lydney in Gloucestershire, who was an ardent supporter of Charles I during the English Civil War. Biography John Winter was one of the grandsons of Sir William Wynter, Vice-Admiral of England, who was granted the manor of Lydney in the Forest of Dean. His parents were Sir Edward Wynter and Anne, daughter of the Earl of Worcester. The Forest of Dean contained rich deposits of iron ore and, with charcoal made from its timber, had been the location of ironworks back to Roman times. Edward Winter had invested in iron making and John continued this family business. There was widespread local opposition to Winter's interference with established commoners' rights in the Forest of Dean. In 1624 it was claimed that Winter "and other Papists" were storing gunpowder and ammunition at his uncle's fortress, Raglan Castle and were plotting rebellion against King James. He obtained ...
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John Wilkinson (industrialist)
John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson (1728 – 14 July 1808) was an English industrialist who pioneered the manufacture of cast iron and the use of cast-iron goods during the Industrial Revolution. He was the inventor of a precision boring machine that could bore cast iron cylinders, such as cannon barrels and piston cylinders used in the steam engines of James Watt. His boring machine has been called the first machine tool. He also developed a blowing device for blast furnaces that allowed higher temperatures, increasing their efficiency, and helped sponsor the first iron bridge in Coalbrookdale. He is notable for his method of cannon boring, his techniques at casting iron and his work with the government of France to establish a cannon foundry. Biography Early life John Wilkinson was born in Little Clifton, Bridgefoot, Cumberland (now part of Cumbria), the eldest son of Isaac Wilkinson and Mary Johnson. Isaac was then the potfounder at the blast furnace there, one of the first ...
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Samuel Van Leer
Captain Samuel Van Leer (January 7, 1747 – October 15, 1825) was a military officer from Pennsylvania who served as a captain in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and as a lieutenant in the Chester County Light Horse Volunteers from 1781 to 1785. After his retirement from the military, he owned the Reading Furnace ironworks. He was a member of the influential Van Leer family. His father Bernardhus Van Leer was an early settler of the Province of Pennsylvania. He married the sister of American Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne. His son Isaac Van Leer was a U.S. Congressman. Early life Van Leer was born in 1747 in Marple Township, Province of Pennsylvania, British America British America collectively refers to various British colonization of the Americas, colonies of Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and its predecessors states in the Americas prior to the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1 ... to Mary (Branson) and ...
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The Iron Bridge
The Iron Bridge is a cast iron arch bridge that crosses the River Severn in Shropshire, England. Opened in 1781, it was the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron. Its success inspired the widespread use of cast iron as a structural material, and today the bridge is celebrated as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution. The geography of the deep Ironbridge Gorge, formed by glacial action during the last ice age, meant that there are industrially useful deposits of coal, iron ore, limestone and fire clay present near the surface where they are readily mined, but also that it was difficult to build a bridge across the river at this location. To cope with the instability of the banks and the need to maintain a navigable channel in the river, a single span iron bridge was proposed by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard. After initial uncertainty about the use of iron, construction took place over two years, with Abraham Darby III responsible for the ironwork. The bridge cro ...
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Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succeeding the Second Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840. This transition included going from craft production, hand production methods to machines; new Chemical industry, chemical manufacturing and Puddling (metallurgy), iron production processes; the increasing use of Hydropower, water power and Steam engine, steam power; the development of machine tools; and rise of the mechanisation, mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles b ...
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Cast Iron
Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content of more than 2% and silicon content around 1–3%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloying elements determine the form in which its carbon appears: Cast iron#White cast iron, white cast iron has its carbon combined into an iron carbide named cementite, which is very hard, but brittle, as it allows cracks to pass straight through; Grey iron, grey cast iron has graphite flakes which deflect a passing crack and initiate countless new cracks as the material breaks, and Ductile iron, ductile cast iron has spherical graphite "nodules" which stop the crack from further progressing. Carbon (C), ranging from 1.8 to 4 wt%, and silicon (Si), 1–3 wt%, are the main alloying elements of cast iron. Iron alloys with lower carbon content are known as steel. Cast iron tends to be brittle, except for malleable iron, malleable cast irons. With its relatively low melting point, g ...
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Ironbridge002
Ironbridge is a riverside village in the borough of Telford and Wrekin, Shropshire, England. Located on the bank of the River Severn, at the heart of the Ironbridge Gorge, it lies in the civil parishes in England, civil parish of Ironbridge Gorge#The Gorge parish, The Gorge. Ironbridge developed beside, and takes its name from, the Iron Bridge, a cast iron bridge that was built in 1779. History The area around Ironbridge is described by those promoting it as a tourist destination as the "birthplace of the Industrial Revolution". This description is based on the idea that Abraham Darby I, Abraham Darby perfected the technique of smelting iron with Coke (fuel), coke, in Coalbrookdale, allowing much cheaper Iron making, production of iron. However, the industrial revolution did not begin in any one place. Darby's iron smelting was but one small part of this generalised revolution and was soon superseded by the great iron-smelting areas. However, the bridge – being the fir ...
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Forest Of Dean
The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the Counties of England, county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangle, triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to the north, the River Severn to the south, and the Gloucester, City of Gloucester to the east. The area is characterised by more than of mixed woodland, one of the surviving ancient woodlands in England. A large area was reserved for royal hunting before 1066, and remained as the second largest Crown forests, crown forest in England, after the New Forest. Although the name is used loosely to refer to the part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, the Forest of Dean proper has covered a much smaller area since the Middle Ages. In 1327, it was defined to cover only the royal demesne and parts of parishes within the hundred of St Briavels, and after 1668 comprised the royal demesne only. The Forest proper ...
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Blast Furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure. In a blast furnace, fuel ( coke), ores, and flux (limestone) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of (sometimes oxygen enriched) air is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes called tuyeres, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material falls downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and flue gases exiting from the top. The downward flow of the ore along with the flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide-rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process. In contrast, air furnaces (such as reverberatory furnaces) are naturally aspirated, usu ...
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Anthony Wayne
Anthony Wayne (January 1, 1745 – December 15, 1796) was an American soldier, officer, statesman, and a Founding Father of the United States. He adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his military exploits and fiery personality quickly earned him a promotion to brigadier general and the nickname "Mad Anthony". He later served as the Senior Officer of the Army on the Ohio Country frontier and led the Legion of the United States. Wayne was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and worked as a tanner and surveyor after attending the College of Philadelphia. He was elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly and helped raise a Pennsylvania militia unit in 1775. During the Revolutionary War, he served in the Invasion of Quebec, the Philadelphia campaign, and the Yorktown campaign. Although his reputation suffered after his defeat in the Battle of Paoli, he won wide praise for his leadership in the 1779 Battle of Stony Point and was ...
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