Talk:Henry Cort

Untitled
Note that there are a few web references to "pudding" furnace rather than "puddling" furnace. These seem to refer to the developments by Cort, rather than the earlier puddling process. I don't have any reference works to check this out, I'm afraid.

Also, on the web there are some references to "shindling" rather than "shingling", but these seem to be mistakes. Noisy | Talk 12:36, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Link removed
I've removed (and corrected) the link to Book Rags that I initially added, because you need to pay a fee to access the information. I've moved it here in case anyone already has a subscription and is interested. Noisy | Talk 22:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment
There are aspects of this article that are not quite accurate at present. I hope to find time to correct them, from Mott's work (now cited), which remains the best biographical source, despite some more recnet work by others. Peterkingiron 22:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- KenWalker | Talk 00:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

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Henry Cort vs the American Revolution
"The importance of Cort's improvements to the process of iron making were recognised as early as 1786 by Lord Sheffield who regarded them (undeservedly) along with James Watt's work on the steam engine as more important than the loss of America.[9]"

Undeservedly in whose opinion? The source's? Does this sentence mean it shouldn't ranked with the steam engine, or that neither/both together weren't as significant as the loss of the thirteen colonies? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.159.253.71 (talk) 16:33, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

New research suggests Cort appropriated the wrought iron process from Jamaican developers
New research relevant to this article, I believe. It relates to the Cort process being appropriated from its Jamaican developers. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 07:31, 5 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The new addition to the article is based on research by Jenny Bulstrode only just published, and therefore possibly open to dispute. The claim that Cort's process was derived from one used in Jamaica seems to be based mainly on the fact that they both used grooved rollers to produce 'bar iron'.  The claim may be correct, but the separate Wiki article on 'Puddling (metallurgy)', states that 'This application of grooved rollers to the rolling mill, to roll narrow bars, was also Cort's adoption of existing rolling mills on the Continent', citing a respected source (an article by H. R. Schubert in a standard history of technology). This conflict of sources needs to be addressed. Bulstrode's article does not mention the one by Schubert. 2A00:23C8:7907:4B01:6DAB:B13F:C39E:EC26 (talk) 12:48, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Being open to dispute doesn't mean it should be wholesale removed. The Guardian and New Scientist are perfectly reasonable sources. OhNo itsJamie Talk 19:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * added to my original comment (first in this section): It is well worth reading the newsletter by Dr Anton Howes, linked in another comment below.  Howes stresses that a lot of the points in Bulstrode's article are speculative and not based on any hard evidence.  For example, the idea that Cort actually imported rolling machinery from Jamaica is pure speculation.  Not impossible, but not very likely either. The evidence suggests that the Jamaican ironworks (which was illegal) was demolished, so that extracting and transporting heavy machinery, loading it onto ships for transport to Britain (Portsmouth?), then unloading it and transporting to Cort's plant in Wales would be a huge operation.2A00:23C8:7907:4B01:30DD:3CC8:334C:DDDF (talk) 19:18, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

"based on research by Jenny Bulstrode only just published, and therefore possibly open to dispute" The recent paper is derived from records newly found, it's not made up. I edited the relevant section, but it was deleted. This is how I left the section "Rolling mill and puddling furnace" (with added subsection):

{{Blockquote|text= It had been thought that Cort developed a revolutionary process for producing wrought iron from scrap iron, known as the "Cort process". Analysis of records in 2023 discovered that the process had been fully developed by 76 black Jamaican metallurgists [n.b Bulstrode's article doesn't include any 'records' proving this- would be better to assert that this is a claim that has been made rather than indisputable truth], mostly slaves, at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica, and was used there. The white owner of the ironworks and slaves knew nothing of iron manufacturing, relying on the skill of his workers. The usual way to remove impurities in low-quality iron was to hammer them out, which was laborious. Jamaican sugar mills used grooved rollers; they were introduced into the ironworks to mechanise impurity removal. This revolutionised the production of cast iron. Cort learnt about the process from a cousin, a ship's master who regularly visited Jamaica. Months later the British government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the destruction of the ironworks on the pretext that it could be used by rebels against colonial rule to make weapons from scrap metal. Cort acquired the machinery, shipped it to Portsmouth, and patented the innovation in 1784.
 * Cort process

{{Blockquote|text= It had been thought that Cort developed a revolutionary process for producing wrought iron from scrap iron, known as the "Cort process". Analysis of records in 2023 discovered that the process had been fully developed by 76 black Jamaican metallurgists, mostly slaves, at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica, and was used there. The white owner of the ironworks and slaves knew nothing of iron manufacturing, relying on the skill of his workers. The usual way to remove impurities in low-quality iron was to hammer them out, which was laborious. Jamaican sugar mills used grooved rollers; they were introduced into the ironworks to mechanise impurity removal. This revolutionised the production of cast iron. Cort learnt about the process from a cousin, a ship's master who regularly visited Jamaica. Months later the British government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the destruction of the ironworks on the pretext that it could be used by rebels against colonial rule to make weapons from scrap metal. Cort acquired the machinery, shipped it to Portsmouth, and patented the innovation in 1784.
 * Cort process

Cort's puddling furnace used grooved rollers to mechanise the formerly laborious process. It had been thought that his work built on the existing ideas of the Cranege brothers and their reverberatory furnace (where heat is applied from above, rather than through the use of forced air from below) and (particularly) Peter Onions' puddling process where iron is stirred to separate out impurities and extract the higher quality wrought iron. The furnace effectively lowered the carbon content of the cast iron charge through oxidation while the "puddler" extracted a mass of iron from the furnace using an iron "rabbling bar". The extracted ball of metal was then processed into a "shingle" by a shingling hammer, after which it was rolled in the rolling mill. The original process introduced by Cort was ineffectual, as he used iron from charcoal furnaces rather than the coke-smelted pig iron in general production. Significant alterations were made by Richard Crawshay and other Merthyr Tydfil ironmasters to improve the process.}} {{Reflist-talk|title=}}

Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 20:36, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

--- The problem I have with Jenny Bulstrode's article is that she doesn't actually prove what the Guardian claims- she relies on conjecture and filling the blanks in a timeline to support the insinuation that Cort stole the process from Jamaica, rather than any cast-iron proof (pun not intended).

--- Firstly She doesn't prove the process was even invented in Jamaica- this is the relevant passage from her paper, which doesn't include a source for the claim- note that she has just decided that because "sugar and iron shared much overlapping conceptual space" and because West and Central African societies tied iron blades into currency bundles, this innovation must have been invented in Jamaica:

"Iron and sugar mills have been understood as serving different technical functions. The crushing action of the sugar mill’s grooved rollers separated the cane into two parts: the juice and the husk. By contrast the smooth rollers of the traditional European metal mill flattened and made uniform the iron sheet passed through them.121 But in the Atlantic world of the African diaspora these European classificatory conventions were challenged, and sugar and iron shared much overlapping conceptual space.122 Just as Gold Coast metallurgists separated bars of European iron into polluting shackles and sacred blades, Black Jamaicans bound to sugar plantations fed bundles of cane into grooved rollers that separated the juice of enslaver values from the husks Black insurgents lit when they burned enslaver infrastructure to the ground.123 When West and Central African societies tied iron blades in currency bundles to forge alliances between divergent groups, they marked the impending struggle. So too in Jamaica: tying sugar cane in bundles forged a common experience between differing African heritages and marked an injustice to be repaid with just war. The Black metallurgists who ran John Reeder’s foundry saw its old European technology in the light of their present experiences and living histories. They were not bound by European classificatory conventions and their practices and purposes were their own. They tied scrap iron in bundles like sugar cane, heated the bundles in the reverberatory furnace, and then fed them through grooved rollers like those found in a sugar mill. In doing so, they transformed scrap metal into valuable bar iron."

--- Secondly, she doesn't prove that Cort stole this process either. The relevant passage from her paper is here:

"Before he entered the iron trade, many of Cort’s high-powered clients held posts in the Caribbean, such as William Burnaby, commander-in-chief of the West India squadron and Jamaica station 1763–6.182 An agent and attorney with Cort’s contacts in Jamaica was valuable to an officer with a West Indies posting. These connections would help ensure they received a good rate and their portion of the money from any prizes – the equipment, vehicles, vessels and cargo captured during armed conflict.183 John Cort himself shipped prize cargoes of goods captured off Jamaica to England.184 In 1783, Henry Cort would claim that the innovation for which he took credit was the product of ‘great study, labour, and expence [sic], in trying a variety of experiments and making many discoveries’.185 Yet no account has been found of what the alleged study, labour or experiments might have involved.186 When questioned, years on, as to the costs involved he ‘seems not to have known’.187 But Cort’s financial records for 1782 document that, after his cousin’s visit in November 1781, Henry borrowed a total of £27,000 from Jellicoe.188 This was an outlay comparable to the great Jamaican works which John Reeder valued at £30,000 in total and £22,000 without the first cost and occasional work.189 John Reeder’s foundry was dis-mantled and loaded onto ships between 3 March and 3 May 1782, and it was not until 14 December 1782, with the £27,000 laid out, that Cort was able to declare to ‘brother projector’ and steam engineer James Watt of Boulton & Watt that he had ‘found out some grand secret in the making of Iron’."

--- Offered as evidence is the claim that Henry Cort borrowed money at around the same time the foundry was demolished. Also offered as evidence is that "no account of what the alleged study, labour or experiments might have involved" has been found- but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Cort's innovation was a fairly simple improvement to the process- it could have equally been independently discovered by him- and it should be noted it wasn't widely adopted or commercially successful until further refinements to the process had been made. I'm fine with Bulstrode's claims being included in this article but they shouldn't be treated as undisputed or the gospel truth since she doesn't provide any definitive proof that the puddling process was invented in Jamaica first or that Cort took it from there- rather her article relies on making (mostly metaphorical and literary) connections between West-African metal working and the lived experience of being a slave or Maroon in Jamaica, and then making some logical leaps.

--- Bulstrode's article is here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07341512.2023.2220991

Agree with previous comment. Bulstrode's interesting work definitely merits inclusion as published research on the subject, but should be framed as a claim or hypothesis rather than a conclusive fact given its essentially conjectural nature. A recent contribution in the newsletter of Dr Anton Howes makes some important comments: https://twitter.com/antonhowes/status/1677310716276006915

RogerSheaffe (talk) 15:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems that there is some dispute (raised amon other in the above-mentionned substack) on wether iron and sugar mill grooved rollers were truly similar, especially given the differing orientation of grooves and horizontal vs. vertical setting of rollers. Maybe this could be made clearer in the current description of the paper that is talking about "similarily grooved rollers"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.104.28.30 (talk) 14:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) The validity of Bulstrode's view is highly questionable. Other citations relating to this are merely derivative.  It is noteworthy that her work does not cite any academic works the history of ferrous metallurgy (other than Mott's biography of Cort).  I strongly suspect that she has not researched what recycling of iron took place in Britain in period before John Reeder set up an ironworks in Jamaica. Much of this is covered in articles in Historical Metallurgy, which were almost certainly available to Bulstrode in the library of UCL, when she submitted her article.  For foundries with air furnaces see my '18th-century ironfounding: coke iron, air furnaces and cupolas', https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/view/99. For rolling mills, my 'Iron in 1790: production statistics 1787-96 and the arrival of puddling', https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/view/132. The English origins of puddling are discussed in the context of Merthyr Tydfil in T. Young and R. Hart, 'The refining process, part 1: a review of its origins and development', https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/issue/view/7


 * Reeder brought in 60 English artisans to run his works. He was able to dispense with them after a while, almost certainly because they had taught their skills to Reeder's workers (slaves), not because of the slaves inherited skills.  Both the rolling mill and the air furnace were established technology in England long before Reeder set up his works. Accordingly, Bulstrode's claim that these workers were applying some skill derived of maroon or African origin is beyond belief.  This goes against the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the right one.  Indigenous African ironmaking involved the bloomery process.  The reverberatory furnace or air furnace is completely different technology, probably invented in England in the 17th century.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:28, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * In Wikipedia terms, Guardian and New Scientist are RS, but they are merely reporting the Bulstrode's article in History and Technology, which is also WP:RS. However none of this  establishes that Bulstrode's theories are in fact correct.  As I indicated above, there are grave doubts as to their correctness, but WP is not the right venue for dealing with that. Peterkingiron (talk) 20:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Another article, FWTW:
 * https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/16/oxford-scholars-debunk-industrial-revolution-hero-theft-claim
 * Oxford dons hit out at claim British inventor stole his idea from slaves
 * Jenny Bulstrode's contention that Henry Cort did not pioneer iron-making process to be investigated after rival academics complain
 * 16 September 2023 tickle me 17:26, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Patents confiscated?
The current article, curiously in the "personal life" section, said that other ironworks used a modified process and so avoided paying royalties on the patented Cort process. However, the Guardian says "he patented the innovation. Five years later, Cort was discovered to have embezzled vast sums from navy wages and the patents were confiscated and made public, allowing widespread adoption in British ironworks." (my emphasis)

This seems to be a conflict. I am not knowledgeable enough to feel like I should edit the article, but can someone who knows the 18th/19th century patent situation better please clear this up? Thanks a lot! Cheers!--95.89.78.72 (talk) 15:36, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Cort did not embezzle anything. His problem was that he was dependent on loans from Adam Jellicoe, who had made him a loan from public money in his hands.  The money in question belonged to the Navy Board, upon whom the patents effectively devolved; "confiscated" is not quite the right word.  It decided not to enforce the patents or allow Cort to do so, so that the effect was that they became publicly available.  Quite how fast the patents were adopted remains unclear.  Peterkingiron (talk) 20:26, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Update on the claims Cort took his process from a Jamaican mill
This pre-print claims to have gone to the primary sources used by Bulstrod and found that they do not actually substantiate any of the claims regarding Cort and Jamaica. I think given the controversy, any reference to Bulstrode should be removed from the article until the dust settles. Sfsworms (talk) 12:19, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The "controversy" is between those who don't care about the facts, as long as a fable satisfies their beliefs and those who expect scholars to only publish scholarly papers (when they are claiming to be describing reality) and not put their name to rubbish. All references to Jamaica in this biography should be removed until such a time as she (Bulstrode) or other subject-experts find a factual basis for her fantasy.98.17.44.45 (talk) 04:46, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I have separated the controversy claims into its own sub-section. In my opinion, it reads better this way. Presents the accepted account and only then the controversy. My view regarding removing the references to Jamaica and Bulstrode's work is that I am in favour. Her work seems to have been thoroughly demolished. Even if her theory proves to be corrected there is no reason to mention it aside from the fact that it was controversial and has therefore generated pieces in reliable sources. Jtrrs0 (talk) 13:15, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I've removed it since I can't find any solid evidence that Jelf actually exists.©Geni (talk) 02:57, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * This controversy has hit mainstream press within the last two days, so I'm thinking the section could be restored with better sourcing.
 * Jelf is explicitly cited in the former link alongside a credentialed historian, but according to a Substack* Jolf is currently completing a master's thesis. As a result, I don't think the pre-print clears the bar set by WP:SPS as Jolf is not a recognized expert in the subject matter.
 * NOTE: The Substack is blacklisted because it has .xyz in the URL, so I can't link it directly: www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-does-history-have. It might be reliable as the author claims / is a historian in this subject area, but regardless as far as I can see there's no other info on Jolf out there. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * well nothing new has popped up in the last 48 hours so I guess we are going to have to work with what we have. I'm guessing about two sentences worth of claim has been made and flatly rejected for reasons.©Geni (talk) 14:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Another round has happened:


 * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07341512.2023.2275357
 * www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-how-to-be-a-public#%C2%A7apparently-not

Not much changed. Suggest continuing to wait and see.©Geni (talk) 03:49, 21 January 2024 (UTC)