The British Chemical Industry comes of age

 In the aftermath of WW2, the British Chemical Industry would have been unrecognisable to a time traveller from the 21st century. Plastics were Bakelite, Perspex was for the windscreens of Spitfires and polythene for the insulation of cables for radar. The chemicals required were derived from the fermentation of molasses from sugar beet, most of which was produced by the Distillers Company which had suffered from a decrease in the consumption of whisky after WW1. The textile industry was still dependent on a constant supply of chlorine for bleaching. Fertilisers were being manufactured, but effective pesticides and weedkillers were still very much in the laboratory.

The industry comprised ICI, which had brought together in 1926 the major British manufacturers of explosives, alkali and dyestuffs. There were then Albright & Wilson with a near monopoly of phosphorus, Fisons, and a string of other smaller producers. Laporte was producing Hydrogen Peroxide, then identified as a rocket fuel

Absent were the oil majors. 

In the USA the story was different, for there were plentiful local reserves of oil which Union Carbide explored to find uses for the lighter distillation of crude oil, naphta. They built crackers adjacent to refineries to exploit these gases. Interestingly it was ICI which first made Perspex and polythene using chemicals derived from molasses. The USA could lay claim to nylon, although, again, it was the British in the small Manchester firm of British Calico Printers that produced the first terylene. ICI took this on, given their much larger capacity. 

The British exploitation of chemicals from oil came first during WW2 with the Derby company, British Celanese which built their own cracker to replace the acetate they produced for the manufacturer of rayon. They were followed in the late forties by BP in partnership with Distillers at Grangemouth, Shell at Stanlow and ICI at their vast Wilton complex. 

I write about the early days of the chemical industry in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World which you can buy by following this link . Later years will be covered in the sequel volume.

Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World largely by addressing obstacles to progress

Manchester mills were transporting tons of cotton goods to the port of Liverpool by canal, built by the Duke of Bridgewater, but which took some thirty-six hours and which was expensive. What was needed was a steam railway. 

George Stephenson planned the rail route to Liverpool, which included sixty-four bridges and viaducts along thirty-five miles of track. It was, though, more likely that his son, Robert, designed and built his “Rocket”, ‘by the happy combination of the multitubular boiler and the steamblast, Mr Robert Stephenson succeeded in producing an engine far superior to any previously built in point of speed and efficiency.’ Heavy rails were laid at considerable cost and, with heavier locomotives, ‘the superiority of the railway system to every other mode of conveyance was placed beyond question’. By 1850, the line was carrying two million tons of cotton a year. It also carried passengers to ships leaving Liverpool for the new world with emigrants seeking a new life, in place of their previous cargo of slaves. It was the first twin track line in the world that carried paying passengers and so may rightly lay claim to be the birthplace of modern passenger railways.

Fifty years later damage was being caused to Manchester’s cotton trade by the cost of rail transport and Liverpool dock fees. The answer was to dig a new thirty-five mile long canal from Manchester to the sea. The traditional method of digging, by the employment of many thousand navvies, was simply not viable and so an alternative had to be found and it was, in the shape of Ruston & Proctor of Lincoln. Joseph Ruston had, in 1885, delivered a paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Lincoln on his steam navvy, described as being something between a traction engine and a crane. He had impressed, for the Manchester Canal Company engaged seventy-one of these massive machines. He impressed even more when the many machines, buried by flood water in 1890, were soon in full working and returned to work successfully to complete the canal.

You can find more of the story of How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World in my book of the same name available from publishers, Pen & Sword

Textile machinery

 Looking at textiles, where it all began, Bury man, John Kay invented the flying shuttle to be followed by James Hargreaves and the spinning jenny, Richard Arkwright and his water frame and Samuel Crompton’s mule. Famously Arkwright built the first factory. The sewing machine followed from American and, not long after, companies like Hyam & Co of Manchester sold garments from a chain of stores. Hyams were also writ large as advertisers in the catalogue of the Great Exhibition.

Textiles were the product; in time more power was needed - steam!

You can buy How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World from Pen & Sword