WILLIAM GOSSAGE 21 



few this furnace has been looked upon with 

 some favour. At all events, there is no doubt 

 that both Gossage and Keates had about the 

 same time fastened on the one feature in the 

 old method of copper smelting that might be 

 very greatly improved upon, by blowing air 

 into the charge, instead of merely exposing 

 the surface of the molten metal. What is 

 known as "rabbling" is a clumsy and tedious 

 device. 



When Spain and Portugal began to supply 

 the alkali maker with a pyrites much richer 

 in sulphur and copper than what they had 

 been accustomed to get from Wicklow, a new 

 problem was presented to the metallurgist. 

 He had to discover the best method of 

 abstracting the copper, the silver, and the 

 gold from the burnt ore, and utilising the 

 oxide of iron. 



William Gossage was one of the first in 

 the field with a patent of March the 7th, 

 1859. He proposed to extract the copper 

 by means of a persalt of iron (by preference 

 persulphate), but it was reserved for William 

 Henderson, of Glasgow, to invent, in the 

 same year, the simpler and more economical 

 process of roasting the burnt pyrites with salt, 

 and washing out the copper with water, and 



