An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology part 12. This one of a kind encyclopedia presents the entire field of technology from rudimentary agricultural tools to communication satellites in this first of its kind reference source. Following an introduction that discusses basic tools, devices, and mechanisms, the chapters are grouped into five parts that provide detailed information on materials, power and engineering, transportation, communication and calculation, and technology and society, revealing how different technologies have together evolved to produce enormous changes in the course of history | PART ONE MATERIALS assumed at this time most of the other responsibilities of the Cornish Metal Company including the purchase of ore from the Cornish mines. Arrangements for smelting this ore were made with various companies which included the Harfords and Bristol Brass and Copper Company and also the Freeman Copper Company. To take advantage of the low price of coal and improved port facilities in South Wales Harfords at that time moved their smelting facilities to Swansea and discontinued smelting in Bristol. Although the Birmingham industry flourished the Bristol company continued to decline. By 1820 smelting at the Swansea site had ceased and by 1836 when the Baptist Mills site was sold the company was no longer a manufacturing concern. Its remaining properties had been leased in 1833 to a company partner Charles Ludlow Walker. In these premises brass continued to be made and fabricated by traditional methods until the Saltford rolling mill stopped work in 1925 and brass making at the Avon Mill premises ceased entirely in 1927. Zinc in Belgium Attempts to obtain zinc directly from calamine were being made in the Liège district at the same time as William Champion was experimenting at Bristol. Margraff a somewhat legendary figure who was experimenting in 1746 appears to have passed on his results to the Liège professor Villette. He in turn confided the information to the Abbé Dony who introduced the first commercially successful zinc reduction process see Figure c above . JeanJaques Dony was born in 1759 and having been brought up in a brassmaking locality he was greatly interested in the metallurgy of zinc. The origins of the extraction process he evolved however are still very obscure. It is recorded in the Biographie Liégeoise 1836 that before 21 March 1805 Dony had succeeded in extracting metallic zinc from calamine and had managed to melt and cast it in quantity . In March 1806 he obtained from Napoleon an Imperial concession to exploit a deposit of .
