CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN SEPARATING OR DISSOLVING OXIDES FROM METALS AND METALLIC SUBSTANCES
Year: 1845

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, PIERRE
ARMAND LECOMTE DE FONTAINEMOREAU, of No. 1, Skinner's Place, Sise Lane,
in the City of London, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her present most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Royal Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at
Westminster, the Twenty-second day of May, in the eighth year of Her reign,
did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me, the said
Pierre Armand Lecomte de Fontainemoreau, my executors, administrators,
and assigns, Her especial license, full power, sole privilege and authority, that'
I, the said Pierre Armand Lecomte de Fontainemoreau, my executors, admi-
nistrators, or assigns, or such others as I, the said Pierre Armand Lecomte de
Fontainemoreau, my executors, administrators, or assigns, should at any time
agree with, and no others, from time to time and at all times during the term
of years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in
all Her Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, and in the Islands of
Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and Man, the Invention of. "CERTAIN
IMPROVEMENTS IN SEPARATING OR DISSOLVING OXIDES FROM METALS AND METALLIC
SUBSTANCES," communicated from abroad; in which said Letters Patent is con-
tained a proviso that I, the said Pierre Armand Lecomte de Fontainemoreau,
shall cause a particular description of the nature of the said Invention, and
in what manner the same is to be performed, to be inrolled in Her said
Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six calendar months next and imme-

page_text: diately after the date of the said in part recited Letters Patent, as in and by
the same, reference being thereunto had, will more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Pierre Armand Lecomte de Fontainemoreau, do hereby declare that the
nature of the Invention communicated to mic, and the manner in which the
same is to be performed, are particularly described and ascertained in and by
the following statement thereof, that is to say:
15158
The improvements in dissolving or separating oxides from metals and
metallic substances consist in introducing, into the acids used as agents for
the scouring of metals and metallic substances, an organic body in solution,
by the presence of which the metal is preserved from the corroding action of
the agent employed. All soluble organic bodies do not possess the above pro-
perty, but there are a great many which do; and the operating cause in that
case not being known to chemists, it is yet impossible to assign a general law
for this phenomenon, or to define with exactness the characteristics of such
substances that contain the above-stated preserving principle: Nevertheless I
will enumerate clearly those which I particularly employ:-
Firstly, the proximate or principle resulting from vegetables, which are
soluble in water, such as sugar, manna, gum, &c., &c.
Secondly, the extracted colouring, bitter, astringent, or neutral principle,
such as the extracts of wood or plants, the juice of plants, tanning, &c.
Thirdly, the products of dry distillation of organic substances, such as the
produce of the distillation of wood, coal, &c.
Fourthly, the products, such as the saponification of fatty bodies or resins
obtained by means of an alkali, such as soap, glycerine.
Fifthly, the products of the treatment of organic bodies, soluble or not
soluble, with concentrated acid, or with an oxygening or disoxygening sub-
stance, such as cellutore, fecula, starch, oil, resins, tallow, when heated by
means of concentrated acid, or by chlore, &c., &c.
pur-
There are some substances which I employ preferable to others, because
their results are better, and, at the same time, less expensive in procuring,
such as tar, oil, the cakes of oliginous sceds, previously heated at a warm
temperature by means of concentrated acid and glycerine, hitherto, without
any use, which produces in this application a very good effect. For the
pose of scouring the metal I follow the ordinary method, and all the several
processes to which the metal is frequently subjected to, with the exception
that, to every hundred gallons of acidulated liquid employed for the operation,
I add from one to fifty gallons of the organic substances here-before men-
tioned. By such an addition I obtain a complete solution of the oxide, pre-

page_text: venting in the meantime a more or less portion of the metal from being
dissolved, avoiding therefore a perceptible loss to the manufacturer, and many
accidents deteriorating the quality of the metal.
And having now described the nature of the said Invention communicated
to me, and the manner in which the same is to be performed, I wish it to be
understood that what I claim as my Invention is, the limiting the action of the
acids to the separation and solution of the oxides, by adding to them, in the
manner herein-before stated, an organic body.
In witness whereof, I, the said Pierre Armand Lecomte de Fontaine-
moreau, have hereunto set my hand and seal, this Twenty-first day of
November, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and
Inrolled the same Twenty-first day of November, in the year above
written.