Introduction
Seventeenth-century England’s industrial productivity had stalled. Her forests could no longer supply charcoal for smelting; iron was mostly imported from Russia and Sweden; fine metal kitchenware was a luxury of the rich. Government funded various barren initiatives, but Worcestershire entrepreneur Abraham Darby (1678-1717) made the breakthrough.
ABRAHAM Darby learnt his trade grinding malt in Birmingham, managing the brass mills and coke-fired malting ovens. In 1699, he founded a malt-mill of his own in Bristol, and branched out into brass cookware.
Together with his apprentice John Thomas, Darby developed a method for casting utensils in sand rather than clay, improving on techniques learnt during a visit to Holland in 1704. After moving his operations to Coalbrookdale in Shropshire in 1708, he used his experience in the malt-mills to begin smelting iron with coke rather than the increasingly scarce charcoal,* and soon Abraham Darby was England’s premier manufacturer of affordable, high-quality metal kitchenware.
Abraham died in 1717, aged just thirty-eight, but his light, slim, mass-produced cast-iron pots and pans had already improved the lives of the poor beyond measure, and without his painstaking research into the best coals for coke-fired iron, the bridges, railways and ships of the later industrial revolution would quite simply never have been built.
Darby should not be confused with his son Abraham Darby II (1711-1763), or his grandson Abraham Darby III (1750-1791), builder of the world’s first cast-iron bridge, at Coalbrookdale between 1776-1779.
Darby’s great-grandmother was sister to Dud Dudley, who claimed to have developed a method for smelting iron with coke in 1665, though it was never proven. Dudley’s notebooks came down to Abraham, and at the least may have captured his imagination. See our post Dud Dudley.
Précis
Abraham Darby was an entrepreneur at the turn of the eighteenth century, who developed new methods for smelting metals without charcoal, and for casting high-grade metal utensils in large quantities. His innovations not only raised the standard of living for Britain’s poor, but established techniques without which the industrial revolution itself would have been impossible. (55 / 60 words)
Abraham Darby was an entrepreneur at the turn of the eighteenth century, who developed new methods for smelting metals without charcoal, and for casting high-grade metal utensils in large quantities. His innovations not only raised the standard of living for Britain’s poor, but established techniques without which the industrial revolution itself would have been impossible.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, besides, just, must, or, until, whereas.
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Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Operation. Out. Painstaking.
2 Have. Revolution. Use.
3 Light. Measure. Pot.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Add Vowels Find in Think and Speak
Make words by adding vowels to each group of consonants below. You may add as many vowels as you like before, between or after the consonants, but you may not add any consonants or change the order of those you have been given. See if you can beat our target of common words.
fnds (5+1)
fends. fiends. finds. founds. funds.
fondues.
