Article ID: CBB000773866

“A Most Exquisite Fellow”: William White and an Atlantic World Perspective on the Seventeenth-Century Chymical Furnace (2007)

unapi

The seventeenth-century technologist and colonist William White (ca. 1600-73) has been cited as an alchemical tutor to Gabriel Plattes and George Starkey, and hailed as an early modern "wizard of industrial efficiency." This study --- the first that focuses on White individually --- pays particular attention to White's extraordinary reputation for furnace design and manufacture. By examining the sources of knowledge and social connections that enabled White to acquire and disseminate his knowledge of metallurgy, the authors develop a genealogy of fornacic design that extends from the continent to the Atlantic world and back again, connecting White to better known figures such as Cornelis Drebbel and Robert Boyle. By foregrounding, through White, the technology of early modern alchemy, the authors also hope to emphasise the importance of practical craft in the development of the chemical arts.

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Authors & Contributors
Caccioppoli, Carmen
Rispoli, Gennaro
Yerlioğlu, Akif Ercihan
Kafadar, Cemal
Umberto Veronesi
Zotov, Sergei
Concepts
Alchemy
Chemistry
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Medical chemistry
Natural philosophy
Experiments and experimentation
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
16th century
19th century
Ancient
20th century
Places
Spain
Atlantic world
Oxford (England)
Atlantic Ocean
England
Peru
Institutions
Oxford University
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
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