Charles Frederick Courtney (23 November 1856 – 27 September 1941) was an English metallurgist, manager of the Sulphide Corporation, a mining and chemical manufacturing company in Australia.

History

C. F. Courtney was born in

Islington Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...

on 23 November 1856. He was trained as a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

in England, and was employed with the Fairbairn Engineering Co. (perhaps William Fairbairn & Sons). He had also worked as engineer for the Manchester Corporation. He worked on the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Company's works in Tharsis, Spain, for 14 years. He was brought out from England to replace Randolph Adams as manager of Ashcroft's process at the Central Mine, Broken Hill, only recently taken over by the Sulphide Corporation. He arrived in Adelaide aboard ''Orizba'' in April 1897, and at Broken Hill in company with the Melbourne chairman J. S. Reid on 23 April. Adams had been at the Central Mine for 5 years under three different owners, and was returning to the US. The new facility at Cockle Creek, near Newcastle, had just been brought into operation under Ashcroft's direction. Ashcroft's process for reducing zinc ore by electrolysis was abandoned as uneconomical, and around the same time an unrelated process, magnetic separation, was introduced to improve ore yield. The company became a major producer of

sulphuric acid Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid ( Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, with the molecular formu ...

and superphosphate. Courtney became general manager for Australia of the Sulphide Corporation Ltd. in 1903, resident in Melbourne, with a home "Granlahan" on Toorak Road, South Yarra;

James Hebbard James Hebbard (July 1862 – 28 November 1941) was a miner who became manager of the Great Central Mine, Broken Hill. History Hebbard was born in Bendigo, Victoria, in July, 1862, the fourth son of Mary "Martha" Hebbard, née Kitto, (15 September ...

was his successor. In September 1922 Courtney left Melbourne to take up the position of the corporation's managing director in England. He resigned in 1940 due to ill health, and died in London on 27 September 1941.

Inventor

*Improved magnetic separator (with Robert Butterworth, also of Broken Hill) 1899

Author

*''Masonry Dams from Inception to Completion: Including Numerous Formulae, Forms of Specification and Tender, Pocket Diagram of Forces, Etc.; For the Use of Civil and Mining Engineers'' *''The Extraction of Silver, Copper and Tin'' (Contributor) This book is available as a facsimile of the 1896 original, published by Kerby Jackson.

Family

Courtney married Marion Dorothy Tattersfield (15 July 1852 – 1 September 1932); their son Guy Courtney married Elsie May Poole on 24 June 1913.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Courtney, Charles 1856 births 1941 deaths English mining engineers Australian metallurgists Australian mine managers Australian mining engineers History of Broken Hill