AN IMPROVED PREPARATION OF PHOSPHORIC ACID
Year: 1856

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Alfred Vincent Newton, of the Office for Patents,
66, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex, Mechanical Draughts-
man, for the Invention of "AN IMPROVED PREPARATION OF PHOSPHORIC
ACID." A communication from Eben Norton IIorsford, of the State of
Massachusetts, in the United States of America.
Sealed the 28th November 1856, and dated the 16th September 1856.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Alfred Vincent Newton
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
16th September 1856.
I, ALFRED VINCENT NEWTON, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery Lane,
in the County of Middlesex, Mechanical Draughtsman, do hereby declare the
nature of the said Invention for "AN IMPROVED PREPARATION OF PHOSPHORIC
ACID," to be as follows:-
This improved preparation of phosphoric acid is made from carefully washed
and burned bones, which, after being finely ground, are sifted with continual
stirring into freshly diluted oil of vitriol. The mass is stirred from time to
time for three days, when ordinarily the action will be complete, and there
will have resulted phosphoric acid, superphosphates, and sulphate of lime,
with a small proportion of salts of magnesia and soda. The pasty mass may
be mixed with flour or starch, or any farinaceous substance, while moist, and
permitted slowly to dry in the sun, or with the aid of artificial heat carried

page_text: up to the limit beyond which farinaceous matters are affected by acid, or it
may be mixed with freshly burned gypsum, and then dried in the sun or by
artificial heat, or it may be mixed with stearine or other fatty bodies and
dried, or the mass may be leached, and the concentrated extract mixed with
burned gypsum, or stearine, and dried, all of which I have found to give
desirable results. When dried, the preparation should be packed in close
boxes or barrels, to prevent the absorption of hygroscopic moisture.
The proportions of the agents employed may be varied somewhat without
essentially affecting the result. Corn, starch, and other farinaceous substances,
as rice, flour, or farina, may be substituted for wheaten flour and potatoe
starch. Bone black may be used instead of burned bones. The object is to
attain available phosphoric acid in such form that it may be intimately mixed
with dry alkaline carbonates, or other sensitive chemical compounds, without
decomposing them, or entering into combination with them, except upon the
addition of moisture or the application of artificial, heat; this requires that
the acid or acid phosphates be mixed with a neutral diluting agent, as flour or
starch, to increase the extent of surface, that the action may be prompt when
moisture or heat is applied, and at the same time to more or less invest the
particles of acid to prevent them from action on contact while dry.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed
by the said Alfred Vincent Newton in the Great Seal Patent Office on
the 16th March 1857.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, ALFRED
VINCENT NEWTON, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery Lane, in the County
of Middlesex, Mechanical Draughtsman, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the Sixteenth day of September, in the year of our
Lord, One thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, in the twentieth year of Her
reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me, the
said Alfred Vincent Newton, Her special license that I, the said Alfred
Vincent Newton, my executors, administrators, and assigns, or such others as
I, the said Alfred Vincent Newton, my executors, administrators, and assigns,
should at any time agree with, and no others, from time to time and at all
times thereafter during the term therein expressed, should and lawfully might
make, use, exercise, and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention of "AN

page_text: IMPROVED PREPARATION OF PHOSPHORIC ACID," being a communication from Eben
Norton Horsford, of the State of Massachusetts, in the United States of
America, upon the condition (amongst others) that I, the said Alfred Vincent
Newton, by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, should par-
ticularly describe and ascertain the nature of the said Invention, and in what
manner the same was to be performed, and cause the same to be filed in the
Great Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next and immediately
after the date of the said Letters Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said Alfred Vincent Newton, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same is to
be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement (that is to say):
:-
The mode of preparing phosphoric acid according to the Invention com-
municated to me from abroad is thus described by the Inventor:-Carefully
washed and burned bones, after being finely ground, are sifted, with continual
stirring, into freshly diluted oil of vitriol, in the following proportions:-Five
hundred pounds of bone ash, four hundred pounds of oil of vitriol, and one
thousand pounds of water. The mass is stirred from time to time for three
days, when ordinarily the action will be complete, and there will have resulted
phosphoric acid, superphosphates, and sulphate of lime, with a small pro-
portion of salts of magnesia and soda. The pasty mass may be mixed with
flour or starch, or any farinaceous substance, while moist, and permitted slowly
to dry in the sun or with the aid of artificial heat, carried up to the limit
beyond which farinaceous matters are affected by acid, or it may be mixed
with freshly burned gypsum, and then dried in the sun or by artificial heat,
or it may be mixed with stearine or other fatty bodies and dried, or the mass
may be leached, and the concentrated extract mixed with burned gypsum or
stearine and dried, all of which will be found to give desirable results; but
the method which, on the whole, is to be preferred is the following:-The
pasty mass is leached, and the extract concentrated to twenty-five degrees
Beaumé in an evaporating pan of cast-iron lined with porcelain, or other
proper vessel. Ten gallons of this liquor are heated up to boiling, and four
pounds of perfectly white bone ashes added, and the boiling continued till the
whole is reduced to a little less than half its original bulk, when the residue,
containing in solution the added bone ashes, becomes pasty. The hot residue
is then transferred to a convenient vessel to cool over night. In the morning
following, add to this concentrated pasty mass seventy-six pounds of wheaten
flour, which is to be mixed to an uniform paste. Then add sixteen pounds
of potatoe starch, and most carefully mix again, when it should turn out

page_text: friable or in a state of division, such that it may be passed through a sieve
with quarter inch meshes. If not sufficiently dry, it may be spread out a
short time in the sun or in a room heated to one hundred and twenty degrees
Fahrenheit. The sifted mass should then be brought to a drying chamber,
and spread out in trays until it becomes brittle, at a temperature of from one
hundred and fifteen degrees to one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit,
when the heat may be raised to from one hundred and thirty degrees to one
hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and continued till the mass is thoroughly
dried. When dried, the preparation should be packed in close boxes or
barrels, to prevent the absorption of moisture from the atmosphere.
The proportions of the agents employed may be varied somewhat without
essentially affecting the result. Corn, starch, and other farinaceous sub-
stauces, as rice, flour, or farina, may be substituted for wheaten flour and
potatoe starch. Bone black may be used instead of burned bones. The
object is to attain available phosphoric acid in such form that it may be
intimately mixed with dry alkaline carbonates or other sensitive chemical
compounds, without decomposing them or entering into combination with
them, except upon the addition of moisture or the application of artificial
heat; this requires that the acid or acid phosphates be mixed with a neutral
diluting agent, as flour or starch, to increase the extent of surface, that the
action may be prompt when moisture or heat is applied, and at the same time
to more or less invest the particles of acid to prevent them from action on
contact when dry. Prepared as above described, the article is white or
greyish white, coarse grained, may be readily pulverized, and, with the addi-
tion of water, may be stirred to a pasty mass. It is exceedingly sour to the
taste, but does not act, when mixed with dry alkaline carbonates, without the
addition of water or the application of heat. As a dry brittle powder the
article has the advantages of a pulverulent acid, may be handled, weighed,
stirred, &c. as tartaric acid or cream-tartar; and as a substitute for these
and a variety of similar pulverulent acids and acid salts, has many uses in
manufactures. It may, among other uses, be mixed with dry alkaline car-
bonates (carbonate of potassa or carbonate of soda), and remain in this state
without evolution of carbonic acid until moistened or heated, thus making
it a substitute for cream-tartar and tartaric acid in the preparation of yeast
powder or baking powders.
Having now set forth the nature of the Invention of an improved pre-
paration of phosphoric acid, as communicated to me from abroad, I wish it to
be understood that I do not claim the decomposition of bones with sulphuric
acid, and subsequent leaching and concentration; but what I claim, and

page_text: desire to secure under the above in part recited Letters Patent, is, the acidified
mixture of the concentrated extract with flour and starch, or their equivalents,
prepared in substantial accordance with the foregoing Specification (and which
the Inventor terms "pulverulent phosphoric acid ") for neutralizing alkaline
bases, and producing carbonic acid at will from a mixture of this pulverulent
acid with alkaline cabonates upon the addition of moisture or the application
of heat, or both.
In witness whereof, I, the said Alfred Vincent Newton, have hereunto
set my hand and seal, the Fourteenth day of March, in the year of
our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven.
Witness,
J. W. MOFFAtt,
66, Chancery Lane.
A. V. NEWTON. (L.S.)