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Abraham Darby is the name of three generations of an English Quaker family that was key to the development of the Industrial Revolution. Image File history File links Derived from public domain images featured at: http://commons. ... Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit (French: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area  - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 1st UK 49,138,831 377/km² Ethnicity... The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, or Friends, is a religious community founded in England in the 17th century. ... The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural change in the late 18th and early 19th century resulting from the replacement of an economy based on manual labor to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. ...

The first Abraham Darby (c. 1678 – March 8, 1717) was a Quaker who started his trade at Bristol where he developed the use of moulds for casting iron and brass goods at the Baptist Mills Brass Works. Leaving Bristol in 1709, he became an iron-master with an iron-works at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Events August 10 - Treaty of Nijmegen ends the Dutch War. ... March 8 is the 67th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (68th in Leap years). ... // Events January 4 — The Netherlands, Britain & France sign Triple Alliance February 26-March 6 What is now the northeastern United States was paralyzed by a series of blizzards that buried the region. ... Bristol is an English city and county and one of the two administrative centres of South West England (the other being Plymouth). ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 8, 4, d Appearance lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge Atomic mass 55. ... Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. ... // Events January 12 - Two-month freezing period begins in France - The coast of the Atlantic and Seine River freeze, crops fail and at least 24. ... Map sources for Coalbrookdale at grid reference SJ668047 Coalbrookdale, a settlement in Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, was one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution. ... Shropshire (abbreviated Salop or Shrops) is a county in the West Midlands region of England, bordering Cheshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and the Welsh counties of Powys and Clwyd. ...

At the time the normal way of producing iron was the "bloomery method", in which small batches of iron ore were placed in pans, covered with charcoal, and then blown with a bellows. Charcoal was one of the few fuels that could reach the required temperatures to smelt iron, around 1500°C, and as the iron industry grew and chopped down entire forests to produce it, it became increasingly expensive. The iron industry as a whole was continually moving to new locations in an effort to maintain access to charcoal production. Charcoal is the blackish residue consisting of impure carbon obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents of animal and vegetable substances. ...

After arriving in Coalbrookdale, Darby attempted to develop coke-powered smelting. This had been tried in the past with little success, but Darby's supply of coal was fairly sulphur-free, and to everyone's surprise, worked. Better yet, he found that the coke would burn in piles, whereas charcoal would only burn in thin sheets. By piling the coke and ore into a large container, he could process considerably more ore in the same time. Further developments of this process led to his introduction of the blast furnace in 1709. Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents (including water, coal-gas and coal-tar) are driven off by baking in an airless oven at temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius so that the fixed carbon and... General Name, Symbol, Number sulfur, S, 16 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16, 3, p Appearance lemon yellow Atomic mass 32. ... A blast furnace is a type of furnace for smelting whereby the combustion material and ore are supplied with air from the bottom of the chamber such that the chemical reaction does not take place only at the surface. ...

The use of the blast furnace dramatically lowered the price of ironmaking, not only because coal was fairly common around the midlands, but also because it allowed for much larger furnaces. Other ironmasters soon followed Darby's lead, but found that the process was not so easy to adapt. It was later learned that Darby's coal supply, from Cumbria, just happened to have a lower than normal sulphur content, which was key to producing quality iron. Ironmasters slowly adapted the blast furnace process with the introduction of various types of flux that cleaned out the impurities in the coal, and by the mid-1700s iron production had shot up. Cumbria is a administrative county located in the northwest area of England. ... General Name, Symbol, Number sulfur, S, 16 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16, 3, p Appearance lemon yellow Atomic mass 32. ...

Abraham Darby II (1711-1763) followed in his father's footsteps at the foundry at Coalbrookdale. There, he refined techniques for producing wrought iron from pig iron and produced the iron for Thomas Newcomen's steam engines, replacing the more expensive brass cylinders. // Events February 24 - The London premiere of Rinaldo by George Friderich Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage. ... 1763 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Wrought iron is a very pure form of commercial iron, having a very small carbon content. ... Pig iron is raw iron, the immediate product of smelting iron ore with coke and limestone in a blast furnace. ... Thomas Newcomen (baptized February 24, 1664 – August 5, 1729), blacksmith and inventor was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England. ... A steam engine is a heat engine that makes use of the thermal energy that exists in steam, converting it to mechanical work. ...

Abraham Darby III (1750-1791) carried on the tradition of improving the art of iron-smelting. His most famous achievement was the building of the world's first cast-iron bridge, over the Severn at Ironbridge Gorge near Ironbridge, Shropshire. Events March 2 - Small earthquake in London April 4 - Small earthquake in Warrington, England August 23 - Small earthquake in Spalding, England September 30 - Small earthquake in Northampton, England November 16 – Westminster Bridge officially opened Jonas Hanway is the first Englishman to use an umbrella James Gray reveals her sex to... 1791 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... The Severn is the name of a river in the United Kingdom. ... The Ironbridge Gorge is a deep gorge formed by the river Severn in Shropshire, in England. ... The Iron Bridge Map sources for Ironbridge at grid reference SJ672033 Ironbridge is a settlement beside the River Severn in Shropshire, England that grew up beside the 100 foot (30 meter) cast-iron bridge that was built across the river there in 1789. ...

External links

• The Darby family of inventors
• The Darby family
• The Darby dynasty
• The Coalbrookdale Company, with which the family was associated