Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/401

 scientific paper, dated 4 Jan. 1837, he described a modification of a voltaic battery invented by Faraday (Philosophical Magazine, 1837, x. 242). In the same year Young went, with Graham as his assistant, to University College, London, and helped him with the experimental work in his important researches (information from Dr. H. E. Schunck, F.R.S.) In 1839 he was appointed manager to Messrs. Muspratt [see under ] at Newton le Willows, and in 1844 to Messrs. Tennant at Manchester, for whom he devised a method of making sodium stannate direct from tin-stone. In 1845 he served on a committee of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society for the investigation of the potato disease, and suggested the immersion of the tubers in dilute sulphuric acid as a means of stopping the disease; he was not elected a member of the society till 19 Oct. 1847. During his stay in Manchester he started a local chemical society which afterwards became a section of the Literary and Philosophical Society, but eventually died out. Finding the ‘Manchester Guardian’ not sufficiently liberal, he also set on foot the movement for the establishment of the ‘Manchester Examiner,’ which was first published in 1846 (, Centenary of Science, p. 348). On 3 Dec. 1847 Playfair wrote to Young from London a letter (quoted in Memorials of Lyon Playfair, pp. 102), telling him of a petroleum spring in the Riddings colliery at Alfreton, Derbyshire, belonging to Playfair's brother-in-law, James Oakes, and suggesting that he might turn the petroleum to account. The spring yielded at that time three hundred gallons daily. Young suggested to Messrs. Tennant that they might treat the petroleum, but they thought it ‘too small a matter,’ and in 1848 Young, in partnership with Edward Meldrum, agreed to buy up the yield of the spring, from which they manufactured illuminating oils and lubricating oils until in 1851 it was exhausted. Finding that the spring was failing, Young had meanwhile experimented (for a long time without result) on the production of paraffin from the dry distillation of coal, and on 17 Oct. 1850 took out a patent for this purpose, of which the specification was completed on 16 April 1851.

In the beginning of 1850 Mr. Hugh Bartholomew, of the Glasgow City and Suburban gas works, showed Young a sample of ‘Torbane Hill mineral’ or ‘Boghead coal,’ which was found to give a better yield of paraffin than any other coal. In the summer of 1850 Young & Meldrum and Edward William Binney [q. v.] entered into partnership under the title of E. W. Binney & Co. at Bathgate, and E. Meldrum & Co. at Glasgow; they erected works at Bathgate, which were completed in the following year. In 1852 Young left Manchester and lived henceforward in Scotland. The firm first manufactured naphtha and lubricating oils; paraffin for burning and solid paraffin were not sold till 1856, and the demand for the solid substance only became considerable in 1859. Meanwhile Young's success gave rise to an immense amount of litigation. In 1853 Mr. and Mrs. William Gillespie, the owners of the Torbane Hill estate, sued James Russel & Son, the lessees of the right to extract coal therefrom, from whom Young and his partners had contracted to buy the Torbane Hill mineral, on the ground that this mineral was not coal—a contention which would, if sustained, have destroyed the value of Young's patent. After much conflicting scientific evidence from the most distinguished chemists and geologists, the jury decided that Torbane Hill mineral was a kind of coal. William Gillespie tried in 1861 and 1862 to obtain a repeal of Young's patent, but in vain. Young and his partners also had to defend themselves against infringements of the patent. In 1854 they won a case in the queen's bench against Stephen White and others; in 1860–1 they obtained 7,500l. damages and costs from the Clydesdale Chemical Company; in 1861, 5,000l. from John Miller & Co. and William Miller & Co. But the most serious case was that begun in September 1862 against Ebenezer Fernie, William Carter, and Joseph Robinson, tried from 29 Feb. to 7 May 1864 before Vice-chancellor Sir John Stuart, who awarded Young's firm 10,000l. costs and 11,422l. damages. Fernie and his partners appealed to the House of Lords, but lost the appeal. In each of these cases an attempt was made to show that Young had been forestalled. De Gensanne, before 1777, Archibald Cochrane, ninth earl of Dundonald [q. v.], in 1781, and others had invented processes for the distillation of coal; in 1830 Karl von Reichenbach first prepared solid paraffin from beech tar, and later showed that it existed in small quantity in coal-tar; in 1829 Auguste Laurent proposed to obtain illuminating oils from the Autun schists, and in 1833 showed that paraffin could be got from the English bituminous schists; Selligue in 1839 exhibited in Paris lubricating and illuminating paraffin oils and solid paraffin candles obtained by the distillation of schists; Richard Butler in 1833, Count de Hompesch in 1841, and Du Buisson in 1847 took out patents for obtaining paraffin