		Henry Cort Inventor - Creator of puddled iron - Father of iron trade
		This page is part of a website based on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. The creator and owner of the site was Eric Alexander who passed away. The site is now hosted by Geneagraphie.com Please contact us with any comments or queries.

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Following article fits to my opinion in the contamporary efforts to miscredit anyone who may have profited from slavery and is, also to my opinion, a complete falsification of history.
Maybe the idea of removing carbon impurits also was developed in africa but te first efforts were made abt 1700 in England, thus a long time before slaves came to Jamaica. See here

Henry Cort was the inventor of a industrial method to produce iron with high quality and his innovations and patents were truly his earnings.
Jenny Bulstrode (see in the article below) should be extremely ashamed of herself to call Henry Cort a thieve,just as the 4 girls below, who demonstrate their lack of critical evaluation of Bulstrodes publication.

Extremely bad academic work and extremely bad journalism!!!

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The Cort process was created by Black ironworkers in Jamaica : Short Wave
The ability to create wrought iron cheaply has been called one of the most significant innovations in the British Industrial Revolution. It's known today as the Cort process, named after British banker Henry Cort, who patented the technique.
But Dr. Jenny Bulstrode, a historian at University College London (UCL), found that Cort stole the innovation from 76 Black enslaved ironworkers in Jamaica.

Henry Cort stole his iron innovation from Black metallurgists in Jamaica

August 7, 202312:10 AM ET

Henry Cort stole his iron innovation from Black metallurgists in Jamaica

Listen · 10:58 10:58

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Painting, Coalbrookdale by Night by Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, 1801. The work shows the so-called "Cort" process in use. Specifically, it depicts night work at the Bedlam furnaces in Madeley Dale (i.e. Coalbrookdale) along the river Severn, Shropshire. Courtesy of The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Courtesy of The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

The British Industrial Revolution is marked by economic and societal shifts toward manufacturing - away from largely agrarian life. Many technological advances powered this change.

One of the most significant innovations was called the Cort process, named after patent holder Henry Cort. The process takes low quality iron ore and transforms it from brittle, crumbly pieces into much stronger wrought iron bars. The transformation is cheap, allows for mass production and made Britain the leading iron exporter at the time.

But after analyzing historical documents, Jenny Bulstrode, a historian at University College London (UCL), found that the process was not actually created by Cort.

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"It's theft, in fact," says Bulstrode.

Uncovering a theft

Bulstrode's findings were published in the journal History and Technology in June. In the paper, she notes 18th century documents suggesting that Henry Cort, an English banker, stole the technique from 76 Black enslaved metallurgists in Jamaica.

Cort learned about the metallurgists from his cousin, a merchant who often shipped goods between Jamaica and England. The workers were enslaved metalworkers in a foundry outside of Morant Bay, Jamaica. Bulstrode discovered historical documents listing some of the enslaved workers' names, including Devonshire, Mingo, Mingo's son, Friday, Captain Jack, Matt, George, Jemmy, Jackson, Will, Bob, Guy, Kofi (Cuffee) and Kwasi (Quashie).

"These are people who are very sophisticated in their science of metalworking. And they do something different with it than what the Europeans have been doing because the Europeans are kind of constrained by their own conventions," Bulstrode says.

Rewriting a Jamaican legacy

The realization that the Cort process originated from enslaved African Jamaicans rather than a British merchant provokes contrasting reactions among academic historians and many in the general public.

"You have historians who are very vocal who have said, 'You know, this isn't new. We as historians are fully aware that enslaved Africans have been innovating, have been developing and have produced an amazing ... industrial complex,'" says Sheray Warmington, an honorary research associate at UCL.

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Warmington specializes in development and reparations in post-colonial states. But she says that growing up in Jamaica, she and many others had never heard this history.

For Warmington and Bulstrode alike, this truth is a reminder that Black people are frequently underacknowledged for their accomplishments. They also hope it will spark conversations about how history and innovations in science and technology are taught in school.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

What science story do you want to hear next on Short Wave? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Carly Rubin and Berly McCoy, edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Brit Hanson. Robert Rodriguez was the audio engineer.

Correction Aug. 7, 2023

A previous version of this story misstated Sheray Warmington's affiliated institution as the University of the West Indies. She is an honorary research associate at University College London (UCL). The audio version of this story misstated that the Morant Bay Rebellion was a slave rebellion. In fact, the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion was a nuanced uprising that emerged out of growing calls for greater socioeconomic and political conditions for the Black populace.

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Smelting of iron

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Life of Henry Cort

The pages on this site are copied from the original site of Eric Alexander (henrycort.net) with his allowance.
Eric passed away abt 2012
If you use/copy information from this site, please include a link to the page where you found the information.