William Losh (1770 in Carlisle – 4 August 1861, in Ellison Place, Newcastle) was a chemist and

industrialist A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through perso ...

who is credited with introducing the

Leblanc process The Leblanc process (pronounced leh-blaank) was an early industrial process for making ''soda ash'' (sodium carbonate) used throughout the 19th century, named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc. It involved two stages: making sodium sulfate from ...

for the manufacture of

alkali In chemistry, an alkali (; from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal. An alkali can also be defined as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a ...

to the United Kingdom.

Life and work

Losh worked in a family business,

Losh, Wilson and Bell Losh, Wilson and Bell, later Bells, Goodman, then Bells, Lightfoot and finally Bell Brothers, was a leading Northeast England manufacturing company, founded in 1809 by the partners William Losh, Thomas Wilson, and Thomas Bell. The firm was fo ...

, manufacturing chemicals in

Walker-on-Tyne Walker is a residential suburb and electoral ward in the south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. History The place-name 'Walker' is first attested in 1242, where it appears as ''Waucre''. This means 'wall-carr', that is to say, 'the marsh ...

, near Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The firm manufactured akali and saltsake by processes patented by Archibald Cochrane. Losh went to Paris in 1802 where he learnt about the Leblanc process and then started to use it in his own factory. Losh also became involved in the early development of the railways, when he collaborated with George Stephenson in the development of improved cast-iron rails that did not break as easily as existing rails. At the time, Losh had an ironworks in Walker, where the new rails could be manufactured. Subsequently, when Stephenson was building the

Stockton and Darlington Railway The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Darl ...

, he decided to use wrought-iron rails obtained from the Bedlington Ironworks. This caused a permanent rift with William Losh, who had believed that he had an agreement with Stephenson to use his own rails.Davies, 1975. Losh retired from the alkali business in 1831. In addition to being an alkali manufacturer he worked as a colliery agent and as consul for Prussia, the Scandinavian countries and, later, for Turkey.

References

Bibliography

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Losh, William 1770 births 1861 deaths British chemists English businesspeople