Roebuck, John

Richter, Jermias Benjamin, 31, 32 Rockefeller, John D., 305 Roebuck, John, 290 Roentgen, Wilhelm Conrad, 38, 46 Rouelle, Giullame Francois, 25 Rowland, F. Sherwood, 265, 266 Rutherford, Daniel, 22 Rutherford, Ernest, 37, 39... 

Lead chamber pmce.ss for H2SO4 intrrxluced by John Roebuck (Birmingham, UK) this immediately superseded the cumbersome small-scale glass bell-jar process (p. 708). 

At the age of thirty-three. Watt wrote, Of all things in life, there is nothing more foolish than inventing. Just widowed with six children, he had put away his love of science, engineering and fine technical instrumentation to feed his family by contracting to suixiey for the Caledonian canal. Bankruptcy of his financial partner in steam development, John Roebuck, had derailed his efforts to improve the steam engine. 

Sulfuric acid had been readily available since 1746 when John Roebuck of Birmingham, England, began making it in lead-lined, wooden boxes several stories high. 

In 1746 Dr. John Roebuck (1718-1794), of Birmingham, and Samuel Garbett substituted lead chambers, each about six feet square, for the glass globes introduced six years previously by Joshua Ward (22), an improvement which cut down the cost of producing the acid to one-fourth of its former amount (12, 13). Three years later, after the substitution of sulfuric acid for sour milk in the old process of bleaching had created a demand for the acid, Roebuck and Garbett erected a sulfuric acid plant at Prestonpans, on the east coast of Scotland (14). Since a salt industry also flourished there, Prestonpans was named for the salt pans. 

University Press, London, 1921-2, pp. 93-5. Article on John Roebuck by Francis Espinasse. 

The Lead Chamber process for the manufacture of sulphuric acid was developed in the 1740s by John Roebuck, then based in Birmingham. Production of this key commodity rose steadily. By the 1820s, British annual production had reached 10,000 tons of 100% acid. By 1900, Britain was producing one quarter of the world s output with an annual production approaching one million tons. 

The first commercially successful method for making sulfuric acid was developed in 1746 by English physician, chemist, and inventor John Roebuck (1718-1794). Roebuck s method is called the lead chamber because the acid is made in large containers lined with lead. The lead chamber process involves three primary steps the combustion of sulfur to produce sulfur dioxide the conversion of sulfur... 

Roebuck, J. A., Kroemer, K. H. E., and Thomson, W. G. (1915), Engineering Anthropometry Methods, John Wiley Sons, New York. 

In 1746 in Birmingham, John Roebuck began producing sulfuric acid this way in lead-lined chambers, which were stronger, less expensive, and could be made larger than the glass containers which had been used previously. This lead chamber process allowed the effective industrialization of sulfuric acid production, and with several refinements remained the standard method of production for almost 2 centuries. 

John Roebuck s sulfuric acid was only about 35-40% sulfuric acid. Later refinements in the lead-chamber process by the French chemist Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac and the British chemist John Glover improved this to 78%. However, the manufacture of some dyes and other chemical processes require a more concentrated... 

English chemist John Roebuck of Birmingham designs a... 

John Roebuck develops iron smelting with coal rather... 

John Roebuck (U.K.) designs a large-scale process for manufacturing sulfuric acid. [1746]... 

The process was carried out in expensive lead chambersbutproducedonlydiluteacid. The process was invented by English physician and industrialist John Roebuck (1718-94) in 1746 and was later replaced by the more economic contact process in 1876. 

The invention of the lead chamber process for the manufacture of sulphuric acid by John Roebuck in 1746 is regarded as one of the most significant developments of the Industrial Revolution. Over the next century... 

Large-scale production of sulfuric acid began in about 1740 when Joshua Ward burned sulfur and niter in glass bell jars with a capacity as high as 66 gal. This procedure was improved in 1746 by Dr John Roebuck and Samuel Gardner at... 

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