C. F. Courtney

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 Fairbairn Engineering Co.[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 Randolph Adams as manager of Ashcroft's process at the Central Mine, Broken Hill, only recently taken over by the Sulphide Corporation. 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 5​1⁄2 years under three different owners, and was returning to the US. The new facility at Cockle Creek, 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. "Central Mine Management". The Barrier Miner. 10 (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) (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. XVIII (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. XV (4451). New South Wales, Australia. 23 September 1902. p. 2. Retrieved 3 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. "Personal". The Herald (Melbourne) (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. LIX (1543). New South Wales, Australia. 2 September 1899. p. 63. Retrieved 2 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
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