Abstract
OF the leading contributors to the advancement of British industries in the latter half of the eighteenth century, Henry Cort is the one of whom we know least. It is generally stated that he was born near Lancaster in 1740, and to mark his bicentenary, at a meeting of the Newcomen Society on November 13, Dr. H. W. Dickinson read a paper giving much new information about the inventor and his activities. Though nothing is known of Cort's education and early life, by 1765 he had established himself in London as a Navy agent, having an address in Crutched Friars in the east of the City, in which also was a Navy pay office. The district was one familiar to Pepys and has many associations with the Navy of bygone days. A Navy agent was a banker and attorney who acted for H.M. ships as to pay, allowances, prize money, salvage and such like; and it was Cort's connexion with the Navy which ultimately led to his becoming an iron master.
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Bicentenary of Henry Cort. Nature 146, 722–723 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146722a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146722a0