Industrial chemistry and saltpetre manufacture · 1777–1838

Bernard Courtois

Courtois inherited a saltpetre works and spent his career in the practical chemistry of nitrate production, which in Napoleonic France meant processing large quantities of seaweed ash for the potassium salts it contained. That industrial context is what put him in contact with concentrated marine residues; the discovery attributed to him is a manufacturing accident noticed by someone who knew what ought to have happened. He gained little financially from it and died in poverty.