Hugh Burgess

Hugh Burgess (born c. 1825, Reading, Berkshire, Eng.—died Feb. 23, 1892, Atlantic City, N.J., U.S.) was a British-born American inventor who, with Charles Watt, developed the soda process used to turn wood pulp into paper.

Little is known of his early life. In 1851 he and Watt developed a process in which pulpwood was cut into small chips, boiled in a solution of caustic alkali at high temperature and pressure in a closed container, and then washed with water and, if desired, bleached. From the resulting pulp, the inventors produced white paper at a mill in Boxmoor, Hertfordshire, and proved the practical usefulness of the paper by having part of an edition of the weekly London Journal printed on it.

When their invention aroused little interest in England, Burgess and Watt emigrated to the United States, established a mill on the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia, and received a U.S. patent on the soda process in 1854. Subsequent experiments with straw, cornstalks, bamboo, and cane demonstrated that wood was still the best basic ingredient for papermaking. After a struggle to gain acceptance for his process, Burgess, with Morris L.Keen, founded the American Wood Paper Company at Royersford, Pa., in 1863, serving as manager until his death. Although this firm eventually went bankrupt, it established the soda process in the paper industry.