Ralph Wedgwood - Potter and Inventor

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) is famous for placing the manufacture of stoneware in England on a scientific basis, and founding the famous potteries of North Staffordshire beginning in the early 1760s. As an inventor, he applied engineering skills to the design of the needed machinery and high-temperature beehive-shaped kilns. To measure the high temperature in the kilns, he invented a pyrometer for which he was made a fellow of the Royal Society.

Josiah’s three children included two sons. The younger son, named Thomas (1771-1805) became a pioneer in photography. The older son, named Josiah (1769-1843) after his father, had several children. His youngest child, Emma married Charles Darwin.

Another relative of the senior Josiah Wedgwood, was a cousin1 also called Thomas (1734-1788), son of Aaron Wedgwood. Thomas served so industriously as foreman in the pottery manufactory that Josiah eventually made him a partner to direct the production of “Queen’s Ware” there. This enabled Josiah to spend more time studying the chemistry of the clays and minerals that could lead to finding new characteristics useful in his products.

This Thomas Wedgwood was also recognized as a man of scientific achievements outside of the realm of the pottery business. He has been called the first inventor of the electric telegraph, and this claim was promoted by his eldest son, Ralph Wedgwood (1766-1837).

Thus Ralph came from a family of people notable for scientific innovation in various fields. He grew up at Etruria, site of Josiah’s new pottery works. He not only learned the pottery trade there, but also acquired a knowledge of chemistry from the senior Josiah Wedgwood.

After Ralph commenced his own pottery business, Wedgwood & Co., (c.1785-96) at the Hill Works, Burslem, he took out a patent dated 3 Apr 1797 for his “newly invented composition for making Glass upon new principles.” The components listed were: Alkaline salt, pieces or parts of china, or earthenware pitchers, pieces of baked clay, old plater moulds, or calcareous earths, borax, silicious earths, borax, silicious earths, and terra ponderosa.2

Although he was able to produce some fine examples of his own work, the company failed from losses during the stagnation of trade following the American war. In a letter to his father, Josiah Wedgwood Jr. on 22 Apr 1793, wrote that “Ralph Wedgwood is tottering he has parted with many of his men.” 3

Ralph then moved to Yorkshire for a short-lived partnership with Messrs. Tomlinson & Seton of Ferry Bridge. When he experimented with different firing methods, the large proportion of breakage disturbed his partners, and they separated. From there, he turned instead to issuing prospectuses for teaching chemistry when he moved to Bransford, near Worcester. During this time, Ralph continued working on mechanical inventions.

He constructed a carriage which he described as “a long coach to get out behind, and on grass-hopper springs, now used by all the mails.” It was said to have had such unusual appearance that it could be mistaken as a travelling show. Nevertheless, this was his mode of transport in 1803 when he left there and travelled to live in Piccadilly, London.

He brought to London several of the inventions he perfected while at Bransford. One was a copying device that he called his “Penna-polygraph.” It incorporated several pens attached to one handle, but he was unable to patent it, since he found a similar invention had already been made by someone else.

However, he was able to take out a patent on 7 Oct 1806 for his “Manifold Writer” as “an apparatus for producing duplicates of writing.” As described in the Repertory of Arts, it required using a sheet of paper, over both sides of which printer's ink is spread, which is then allowed to dry for six weeks, between leaves of blotting paper. A base writing surface is made from a smooth pewter or copper plate. A sheet of letter paper is laid on the plate, and covered with the blackened paper. On top of those is placed a leaf of thin paper, previously oiled, that it may be the more transparent. Writing is performed using stylus made of agate, ground and polished to a smooth round point. The letter paper on the bottom receives an impression from the blackened paper, to be used as the original, with an image that is ready to read. The upper oiled paper receives an impression which bears a mirror image, but may be read in the right direction, by looking through the thin paper. This provides the duplicate or copy.4

This is regarded as the first patent for the use of what became known as carbon paper.

Another patent was issued in 1808 to Ralph Wedgwood for “an apparatus for producing several original writings or drawings at one and the same time.” This was a copy machine in which two sheets of paper were arranged by folding or rolling such that the part of the sheet on which an original line is to be written is brought close to the part of the second sheet on which a corresponding duplicate line is to be written. The writing is then performed simultaneously using two pens fitted in to the socket of one handle, held like a pen in the usual way.5

1 This information about Thomas Wedgwood is as provided by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt, in The Wedgwoods: Being a Life of Josiah Wedgwood (1865), 178. The author identifies Thomas as “I believe, cousin to Josiah being son of Aaron Wedgwood and his wife Hannah Malkin. He was born, it would appear, in 1734.”
2 “These articles Mr. Wedgwood uses in the following manner; the alkaline salts and borax, either in a state of powder or of solution; but he prefers to use these articles in solution. ‘When,’ says Mr. Wedgwood, ‘I use the alkaline salts in solution, I cause to be made a solution of alkaline salt in water; and into this solution I cast pieces or parts of china, or earthenware pitchers, pieces of baked clay, the same being first heated red hot; to these I add old plaster moulds, or calcareous earth, first slacking them in a solution of borax in water; when I use borax in solution, I also add silicious earths and terra ponderosa; all of these articles I cause to be ground together, and then dried over a slow fire. When I apply the alkaline salts and borax in a state of powder, I use them in the same manner as they are now used in making of glass. When these several articles are ground together and dried over a slow fire, I put the whole in a melting pot, and cause it to be fused with an intense heat; and when in perfect fusion, I pour it from the melting pot into cold water. The qualities of the several articles will depend on the quantity of glass intended to be made; and the proportion of each article must successively depend, in some degree, on the quality of the respective articles, and also on the hardness or softness of the glasses required. But by attending to all or any of the following proportions of the several articles so to be used, my composition will be made." To make the solution of alkaline salts in water, take of alkaline salts from 10 to 5O pounds, and all the intermediate proportions; and of water from 12 to 70 quarts, and all the intermediate proportions; pieces of China or earthenware pitchers, from 50 to 150 pounds, and all the intermediate proportions; of baked clay from 80 to lOO pounds, &c. To make the solution of borax in water, take of borax from 3 to 10 pounds, of water from 10 to 50 quarts, of calcareous earths from 40 to 100 pounds, of silicious earths from 50 to 100 pounds, and of terra ponderosa, from 5 to 20 pouuds, and all the intermediate proporttions. When the alkaline silts and borax arc applied in powder, use the articles in the same proportion as when they are used in solution. By attending to these proportions, it will be made to greater profit and advantage, than is the present mode of making glass, and with great saving, and health to the labourers employed.” The Universal Magazine (1805), 4, 353-354.
3 Josiah Wedgwood, Correspondence of Josiah Wedgwood, 1781-1794 (1906), 214.
4 Repertory of Arts (1807), 27, as cited in 'Copying-machines', Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1824), Vol. 3, 328.
4 ibid. citing Repertory of Arts (1809), 31.

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)