I find it nicely paradoxical that the most fragrant rose in my garden and a rose that blooms and blooms (large ones at that) is an English Rose named after a man (three perhaps) who made the industrial revolution of the 19^th century possible with the discovery of the relation of coke with iron ore.

Abraham Darby

British ironmaster

Written By:

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica

Abraham Darby, (born 1678?, near Dudley, Worcestershire, Eng.—died March 8, 1717, Madeley Court, Worcestershire), British ironmaster who first successfully smelted iron ore with coke.

Darby, who had used coke in smelting copper in Bristol, in 1708 founded the Bristol Iron Company. He acquired premises at Coalbrookdale, on the Severn, close to supplies of low-sulfur coal. In 1709 he produced marketable iron in a coke-fired furnace. He presently demonstrated the superiority of coke in cost and efficiency by building much larger furnaces than were possible with charcoal as a fuel, the latter being too weak to support a heavy charge of iron.

The quality of Darby’s iron made it possible for him to manufacture thin castings that could compete successfully with brass in such applications as the manufacture of pots and other hollow ware.

The advent of the Thomas Newcomen steam engine in 1712 created an important new market for iron; by 1758, when Darby had been succeeded by his eldest son, Abraham Darby (1711–63), more than 100 Newcomen cylinders had been cast at Coalbrookdale. In 1779 Darby’s grandson, Abraham Darby III (1750–91), completed one of the world’s first cast-iron bridges (at present-day Ironbridge, near Coalbrookdale), and in 1802 the Coalbrookdale Works built the first railway locomotive with a high-pressure boiler, for Richard Trevithick, an English engineer and inventor.

Some years ago I visited Shropshire and I had the pleasure of walking on the Iron Bridge.