Of course, a lot of things happened in 1846: Sir Robert Peel’s conservative government came to an end after passing legislation to repeal the corn laws and the potato famine started in Ireland.
“We apprehend there can be no doubt that the year 1846 will be memorable to the end of time for the remarkable extension or new application of human knowledge, which will come before future historians as rendering illustrious its narrow limits. Most evident is it that we are now living in the days predicted by the Hebrew propphet when ‘many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.’
1 Foremost among these may be placed the use of ether, inhaled for facilitating surgical operations. Like all other applicances of this kind, it meets with failures, and even with evil results in a few cases. But for one fatal result and five failures, we have five hundred instances of vast benefit; in many of which, beyond all doubt, lives have been saved which would otherwise been lost. Without describing it as infallible, or in all cases safe of to be relied on, there can be no doubt that this discovery has conferred benefits on mankind.
2 The substitution of a new explosive material, the gun-cotton, is another remarkable event. The extent of its utility is not yet ascertained. Whether it will be largely adopted in warfare, is still a point on which no decided opinion has been formed; but of its great utility in all blasting and mining operations, not the slightest doubt can exist. It is both cheaper and more powerful than gunpowder; and the absence of smoke gives it a decisive advantage. There can remain no question that in all works of this description the new agent will rapidly supersede the old one.
3 The third discovery of 1846 is perhaps even of greater importance than either of the former. We allude to the lately patented process for smelting copper by means of electricity. The effect of this change will be quite prodigious. It produces in less than two days what the old process required three weeks to effect. And the saving of fuel is so vast that in Swansea alone the smelters estimate their annual saving in coals at no less than five hundred thousand pounds! Hence it is clear that the price of copper must be so enormously reduced as to bring it into use for a variety of purposes from which its cost at present excludes it. The facility and cheapness of the process too will enable the ore to be largely smelted on the spot. The Cornish mine-proprietors are anxiously expecting the moment when they can bring the ore which lay in the mine yesterday, into a state to be sent to market to-morrow, – and this at the very mouth of the mine. – In Australia also, the operation of this discovery will be of the utmost importance. Ten thousand tons of copper ore were sent from Australia to England last year, to be smelted at Swansea; and the result was only 1600 tons of copper. But Australia in future will smelt her own copper, by a 36 hours’ process; saving all this useless freight of the 8400 tons of refuse, and saving also the cost of the old and expensive process In a very few years Australia will send to market more copper than is now produced by all the rest of the world. But if our future penny pieces are to bear any proportion to the reduced cost and value of the metal, they must be made the size of dinner plates.” – Cambridge Advertiser.
The Stamford Mercury, 23rd April, 1847.