Abraham Darby (c.1678 – March 8, 1717) was the first of that name of three generations of an English Quaker family that was key to the development of the Industrial Revolution. The son of John and Ann Darby, he was born at Wrens Nest, Woodsetton near Sedgley, Staffordshire; just across the county boundary from Dudley. Events August 10 - Treaty of Nijmegen ends the Dutch War. ... March 8 poster from Portugal 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. ... Wikimedia Commons has media related to: England Travel guide to England from Wikitravel English language English law English (people) List of monarchs of England – Kings of England family tree List of English people Angeln (region in northern Germany, presumably the origin of the Angles for whom England is named) UK... The Religious Society of Friends (commonly known as Quakers or Friends) was 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 labour to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. ... Woodsetton was a village in the Ancient Manor of Sedgley, in which Dudley Castle was located. ... Map sources for Sedgley at grid reference SO9194 Sedgley is a town in the West Midlands of England. ... Staffordshire (abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. ... Map sources for Dudley at grid reference SO9390 Dudley is a town in the West Midlands of England. ...

Darby learnt his first metalworking trade in the Netherlands, and applied it 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 ironmaster with an ironworks at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Bristol is a unitary authority with city and ceremonial county status in South West England. ... 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 (a copper alloy), a solid solution. ... // 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. ... An ironmaster is the manager – and usually owner – of a forge or furnace for the processing of iron. ... 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 traditional, ceremonial and administrative county in the West Midlands region of England. ...

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. ... Hand bellows The bellows is a device for delivering pressured air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location. ...

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 sulfur-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 first coke-consuming blast furnace in 1709. Before that time, blast furnaces were fueled by charcoal. 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... Chemical reduction, or smelting, is a form of extractive metallurgy. ... General Name, Symbol, Number sulfur, S, 16 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16, 3, p Appearance lemon yellow Atomic mass 32. ... Blast furnace diagram 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. ... Charcoal is the blackish residue consisting of impure carbon obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents of animal and vegetable substances. ...

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 sulfur 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. In general, the midlands of a territory are its central regions. ... Cumbria is a county in the North West region of England. ... General Name, Symbol, Number sulfur, S, 16 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16, 3, p Appearance lemon yellow Atomic mass 32. ...

See also

• Abraham Darby II
• Abraham Darby III

jgoejflgjsljf Abraham Darby II (1711-1763) was the second of that name of three generations of an English Quaker family that was key to the development of the Industrial Revolution. ... Abraham Darby III (1750-1791) was an English ironmaster and Quaker. ...

External links

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