C. F. Courtney

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Frederick Courtney ( – c. 25 September 1941) was an English metallurgist, manager of the Sulphide Corporation, a mining and chemical manufacturing company in Australia.

History[]

Courtney was trained as a civil engineer in England, and was employed with the [1] (perhaps William Fairbairn & Sons)

He had also worked as engineer for the Manchester Corporation

He worked on the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Company's works in Tharsis, Spain, for 14 years.[2]

He was brought out from England to replace as manager of Ashcroft's process at the , only recently taken over by the . He arrived in Adelaide aboard Orizba in April 1897, and at Broken Hill in company with the Melbourne chairman J. S. Reid on 23 April.[3] Adams had been at the Central Mine for 51⁄2 years under three different owners, and was returning to the US. The new facility at , near Newcastle, had just been brought into operation under Ashcroft's direction.[2]

Ashcroft's process for reducing zinc ore by electrolysis was abandoned as uneconomical, and around the same time an unrelated process, magnetic separation, was introduced to improve ore yield.[4] The company became a major producer of sulphuric acid and superphosphate.

Courtney became general manager for Australia of the Sulphide Corporation Ltd. in 1903, resident in Melbourne,[5] with a home "Granlahan" on Toorak Road, South Yarra; James Hebbard was his successor. In September 1922 Courtney left Melbourne to take up the position of the corporation's managing director in England. He resigned in 1940 due to ill-health and died the following year.[6]

Inventor[]

  • Improved magnetic separator (with Robert Butterworth, also of Broken Hill) 1899[7]

Author[]

  • Masonry Dams from Inception to Completion: Including Numerous Formulae, Forms of Specification and Tender, Pocket Diagram of Forces, Etc.; For the Use of Civil and Mining Engineers
  • The Extraction of Silver, Copper and Tin (Contributor) This book is available as a facsimile of the 1896 original, published by Kerby Jackson.

Family[]

Courtney married Marion Dorothy Tattersfield (15 July 1852 – 1 September 1932); their son Guy Courtney married Elsie May Poole on 24 June 1913.

References[]

  1. ^ "Souvenir of Broken Hill". The Critic (Adelaide). South Australia. 3 June 1899. p. 8. Retrieved 2 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. ^ a b "Central Mine Management". The Barrier Miner. Vol. 10, no. 2809. New South Wales, Australia. 23 April 1897. p. 4. Retrieved 2 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ "New South Wales Fields". The Daily Telegraph (Sydney). No. 5568. New South Wales, Australia. 24 April 1897. p. 12. Retrieved 3 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ^ "The Barrier Mines". The Barrier Miner. Vol. XVIII, no. 5286. New South Wales, Australia. 10 June 1905. p. 5. Retrieved 3 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ "The Sulphide Corporation". The Barrier Miner. Vol. XV, no. 4451. New South Wales, Australia. 23 September 1902. p. 2. Retrieved 3 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ^ "Personal". The Herald (Melbourne). No. 20, 086. Victoria, Australia. 29 September 1941. p. 5. Retrieved 5 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ^ "Patents and Inventions". Australian Town and Country Journal. Vol. LIX, no. 1543. New South Wales, Australia. 2 September 1899. p. 63. Retrieved 2 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
Retrieved from ""