Industrial consultant

By the mid-1760s, powerful moves were afoot for Black to return to Edinburgh. Cullen was moved to a different chair of medicine to allow his former pupil to become professor of chemistry in 1766. At this point in his career, a change came over Black’s approach to chemistry. Instead of continuing to pursue fundamental concepts, Black turned his attention almost entirely to teaching and to advising landowners and entrepreneurs how chemical-based industries in Scotland (and sometimes farther afield) could be developed. There is no doubt that some felt that he was not treating his responsibility as an academic chemist seriously enough. Black certainly seems to have had an aversion to publishing his research; for example, he wrote nothing on his theories of heat for publication. His work became well known because of the large number of students (sometimes in excess of 300) who registered for his annual course of lectures and diffused his concepts throughout Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. Some of his work was published by others.

Scotland was rapidly industrializing, from a low base, in the 18th century. Some credit for this is due to the Board of Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland. Following the Act of Union of 1707, which united the English and Scottish parliaments, an annual sum of money was set aside to encourage industrial development. Initially, no mechanism was established for distribution of funds, but in 1727 a board of trustees was set up, and in the first year £6,000 was made available for the herring, linen, and wool industries. Later, Black and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh were closely involved in judging proposals made to the board. In particular, they judged proposals for the development of schemes to improve the bleaching of linen.

Linen was a major and expanding commodity in Scotland and Ireland. A crisis had arisen because the agent used in bleaching, potash made from wood ashes, had risen in price by 50 percent between 1750 and 1770 in response to a timber shortage. The usual alternative, sour milk, took weeks longer to take effect. Black’s university colleague Francis Home suggested that, instead of sour milk, dilute sulfuric acid be used. Black’s contribution was to increase the bleaching power of potash by adding lime to it. This resulted in Black’s only substantial publication concerning an industrial process, “An Explanation of the Effect of Lime upon Alkaline Salts,” which was published in Home’s Experiments on Bleaching (1771). Another approach to the bleaching problem was to look for a cheaper way of making potash. Cullen turned his mind to this and was rewarded by the board for his proposal to burn conifers in the remoter parts of the Scottish Highlands, and he speculated on whether ferns or seaweed would be an economically favourable source of the alkali. Black became interested and analyzed burned kelp (a form of seaweed) obtained from different sources on the Scottish coast. He demonstrated that the alkali yield could vary significantly from place to place.

Black’s skill at judging the viability of new proposals for industrial processes became renowned. After he had masterfully judged the financial benefits for establishing a tar works, Sir John Dalrymple, solicitor to the Board of Excise, described Black as “the best judge, perhaps in Europe, of the merit of such inventions.” Black was certainly in demand for his opinions, being consulted by a considerable number of industrialists on an extraordinarily broad range of topics. In the surviving correspondence these include sugar refining, alkali production, bleaching, ceramics glazing, dyeing, brewing, metal corrosion, salt extraction, glass making, mineral composition, water analysis, vinegar manufacture, and furnace construction. In addition, his views were sought on various agricultural matters.