"Jack Painter" wrote You might enjoy this site, Reg:

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles10...trade-22.shtml

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Jack, I enjoyed the whole site. Thanks for your introduction.

So the production of sulphuric acid began in the USA around the time of the
French Revolution and the guillotine. The very first enterprising production
engineer, John Harrison, who must have been aware of the most serious,
Earth-shaking, consequences of events in Paris, clearly had other more
useful, less destructive yet beneficial, things to think about.

I just love linking unrelated facts together.

But Harrison is not the name of the person on my mind who transformed the
USA chemical industry to one based on sulphuric acid, timber planks and coal
tar. I am under the impression he was of a later generation. Out of the
canal and barge-horse age and into the age of Watt's condensing steam
engine.

But what's in a name anyway?

I sometimes think that the relatively few engineers between 1790 and 1890
performed greater engineering feats than the many who followed them into the
present age of electronic and genetic engineering. They devoted the whole of
their lives to their work.

As for us poor souls, the best we can manage is haggling about imaginary SWR
and conjugate matches which were all sorted out 120 years back. But it's all
good fun.

Cheers, Reg.