A NEW MODE AND ART OF SHINGLING, WELDING, AND MANUFACTURING IRON AND STEEL INTO BARRS, PLATES, RODS, AND OTHERWISE, OF PURER QUALITY, IN LARGE QUANTITIES, BY A MORE EFFECTUAL APPLICATION OF FIRES AND MACHINERY, AND WITH GREATER YIELD, THAN ANY METHOD BEFORE ATTAINED OR PUT IN PRACTICE
Year: 1784

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, HENRY
CORT, of Funtly Iron Mills, in the Parish of Titchfield, in the County of
Southampton, the Grantee in the Letters Patcut berein-after mentioned, do
send greeting,
WHEREAS our Sovereign Lord King George the Third, by His Royal
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at West-
minster, the Thirteenth day of February, in the twenty-fourth year of His
said Majesty's reign, upon my Petition (whereby I had humbly represented
to His said Majesty that I had, after great study, labour, and expence, and
in the prosecution of various discoveries, and by contriving and trying divers
experiments, invented and brought to perfection "A NEW MODE AND ART OF
SHINGLING, WELDING, AND MANUFACTURING IRON AND STEEL INTO BARRS, PLATES,
RODS, AND OTHERWISE, OF PURER QUALITY, IN LARGE QUANTITIES, BY A MORE
EFFECTUAL APPLICATION OF FIRES AND MACHINERY, AND WITH GREATER YIELD, THAN
ANY METHOD BEFORE ATTAINED OR PUT IN PRACTICE)," and His said Majesty, being
willing to give such encouragement as in the said Letters Patent is mentioned,
was graciously pleased to condescend to my request, and did therefore make
known that His said Majesty, of his especial grace, certain knowledge, and
meer motion, did give and grant unto me, the said Henry Cort, my executors,
administrators, and assigns, His said Majesty's especial licence, full power, sole

page_text: priviledge and authority, to use, exercise, and vend my said Invention, and
touching and concerning the same, as in the said Letters Patent is in that
behalf particularly mentioned and expressed, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy
the said licence, powers, priviledges, and advantages therein granted unto me,
the said Henry Cort, my executors, administrators, and assigns, for and
during and unto the full end and term of fourteen years from the date of the
saiti Letters Patent next and immediately ensuing, and fully to be compleat
and ended according to the Statute, in such, case made and provided, to
make, use, exercise, and vend my said Invention within that part of the
Kingdom of Great Britain called England, the Dominion of Wales, and
Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and also in all the Colonies and Plantations
abroad, conformable to His said Majesty's gracious pleasure and command,
and to the several provisoes, declarations, restrictions, grants, and conditions
in the said Letters Patent expressed and contained, as in and by the said
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, dated as aforesaid,
relation being thereunto had, may more fully appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said Henry Cort, in compliance with tho said
Letters Patent, and in performance of a condition or proviso therein contained
for that purpose, have described and ascertained, and by these Letters Patent
do describe and ascertain, the nature of my said Invention, and the manner of
performing the same as followeth, that is to say :-
For the preparing, manufacturing, and working of iron from the ore, as
well as from sow and pig metal, and also from every other sort of cast iron
(together with or without scull and cinder iron and wrought-iron straps), I
make use of a reverberatory or cur furnace or furnaces of dimensions suited
to the quantity of work required to be done, the bottoms of which are laid
hollow or dished out, so as to contain the metal when in a fluid state. My
furnace for the first part of the process being got up to a proper degree of heat
by raw pit coals, or other fuel, the fluid metal is conveyed into the air furnace
by means of ladles or otherwise. When this air furnace is charged with sow
and pig metal, or any other sort of cast iron, the door or doors of the furnace
should be closed till the metal is sufficiently fused, and when the workman
discovers (through a hole which he opens occasionally) that. the heat of the
furnace bad made a sufficient impression upon the metal, he opens a small
aperture or apertures, which I find is convenient to have provided in the
bottom of the doors (but which is or are closely shut, as well as the doors, at the
first charge of the furnace with cold cast metal); and then the whole is worked
and moved about through those apertures by means of iron bars and other
instruments fitly shaped, and that operation is continued in such manner as

page_text: may be requisite during the remainder of the--process. After the-metal..has
been some time in a disolved state, an ebullition, effervescence; or such like
intestine motion takes place, during the continuance of which a blueish.flame,
or vapour is emitted; and during the remainder of the process the operation
is continued (as occasion may require) of -raking, separating, stiring, and
spreading the whole about in the furnace till it looses its fusibility, and is
flourished or brought into nature; to produce-which effect, the operations.sub-
sequent to the fused state are the same,. whether the fusion be made in the air,
furnace, or the metal be conveyed into it in a fused state, as first mentioned. As
soon as the iron is sufficiently in nature, it is to be collected together in lumps,.
called loops, of sizes suited to the intended uses, and so drawn out of the door.
or doors of the furnace, when all the small pieces that may happen to remain,
are also cleared away. It has been found by me to be a good method of using.
such small pieces last mentioned, and also scull or tinder iron, first broken into
smal pieces; and also all sorts of parings of iron plate, or other thin iron,.
and nut or bushel iron, commonly called. wrought straps, to throw them into.
the furnace in various proportions. during. the operation of bringing the fused
metal into nature, and before it.is.collected into loops, and as the whole charge
of the furnace is raked and stirred about, these straps become lapped up. in
the loops after the fused metal is flourished and got into.. nature. And the
whole of the above part of my method and process.of preparing, manufacturing,.
and working of iron is. substituted, instead of the use of that finery,, and is,
my Invention, and was never before used or put in practice by any other
person or persons. The iron so prepared and made may be afterwards stamped
into plates, and piled or broke and worked in an air furnace, either by means
of pots, or by piling such peices in any of the methods ever used in the manu-
factory of iron from coke fineries without pots; but the method and process
invented and brought to perfection by mie, is to continue the loops in the
same furnace, or to put them into another air furnace or furnaces, and to heat
them to a white or welding heat, and then to shingle them under a forge-,
hammer, or by other machinery, into half blooms, slabe, or other forms, and
these may be heated in the chaffery according to. the old practice; but my.
new Invention is to put them again into the same or another air furnace or
other furnaces, from whom I take the half blooms, and draw them under the
forge-hammer, or otherwise,, as last aforesaid, into anthonies,.barrs, half flatts,
small squared tilted rods for wire, or such uses as may be required; and the
slabe having been shingled in the foregoing part of the process to the sizes of
the grooves in my rollers, through which they are intended to be passed, are
worked by me through the grooved rollers, in the manner which I use bar or

page_text: wrought iron fagotted and heated to a welding heat for that purpose. Which
manner of working any sort of iron in a white or welding heat through
grooved rollers, is entirely my own Invention. Iron and also steel so pre-
pared, made, wrought, and manufactured, by such effectual application of
fire and machinery, will be discharged of the impurities and foreign matter
which adhers to them when manufactured in the methods commonly prac-
ticed. The steel is of an excellent quality, and the iron will be found to be
good tough iron in barrs and uses, whether large or small, and in all sorts of
merchant iron, whether it be made from mettal of a red short or cold short
nature; and blistered steel, whether made from iron prepared according to the
above process, or from any other iron when faggoted together, heated to a white
or welding heat, rolled in that heat through grooved rollers, according to the
method invented by me, and slit through the common cutters, is equal to steel
manufactured by forge and tilt hammers. The whole of which discovery and
attainment are produced by a more effectual application of fire and machinery,
as described by me, than was before known of or used by others, and are entirely
new and contrary to all received opinions amongst persons conversant in the
manufactory of iron; and the whole of my method may be compleated without
the necessity of using finery, charcoal, cokes, chaffery, or hollow fire, and
without requireing any blast by bellows or cillinders, or otherwise, or the use of
fluxes in any part of the process. The whole opperation to be performed with
one or more furnaces, according to the quantities or dispatch required.
In witness whereof, I, the said Henry Cort, have hereunto set my hand
and seal, Twelfth day of June, in the year of onr Lord One thousand
soon hundred and eighty-four