The Early History of Gold Plating

A TANGLED TALE OF DISPUTED PRIORITIES

L. B. HuntJohnson Matthey & Co Limited, London

"The gilding of metals is, of all the processes whose object is toobtain an adhering deposit, the one which has exercised in the greatestdegree the sagacity of inventors "

PROFESSOR AUGUSTE DE LA RIVE, GENEVA, 1840

Many of the scientfic discoveries and technicaldevelopments that were so characteristic of thenineteenth century rapidly became the subject ofcontroversy and of heated arguments about priorities.Of all these, none was probably more sorely beset bypolemics and acrimonious debate—or for a longerperiod of time—than the birth of a commerciallysatisfactory process for the electrodeposition of gold(and of silver with which it was naturally associated)on to base metals. It must also come close to worldrecord standards for the number and the diversity ofthe scientists and dilettante whose contributionseventually led to success; not only were therenumerous professors and medical men involved,but a curious collection that included an unsuccessfulFrench opera composer, a leading English astronomer,a St Petersburg dentist, the son-in-law of the Tsar ofRussia, one of the famous Siemens family and thefounder of the University of Birmingham. But it wasan exceptionally far-sighted and persistent indus-trialist—George Richards Elkington—who finallytransformed laboratory experiments into a commercialprocess.

To put the early history of gold plating into per-spective, and to follow the trail that eventually led tosuccess, one has first of all to consider the develop-ment of electrodeposition as a whole, and in fact ofthe battery itself; the basic origin of all this was ofcourse the discovery by Alessandro Volta of hisfamous pile.

In order to counter the explanation put forward byLuigi Galvani that animal tissue itself possessed aspecial electrical property, Volta had begun experi-menting on the effects of two dissimilar metallicelements in contact, and by 1796 he had constructed acolumn of electric generating elements consisting ofsilver and zinc plates in contact, each pair separatedby a moist pad. For another four years he continuedto make improvements in the pile, and finally, in theMarch of 1800, he wrote a long letter to the then

President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks.Because the letter would have to pass throughFrance, then engaged in the Napoleonic wars withEngland, Volta sent only the first part of the letter,the second part following three months later, so thatit was not read to the Royal Society until the endof June of that year. None the less, the receipt ofthe earlier part of the letter was enough to causeconsiderable excitement among the scientists of theperiod, since it now made available for the first timea low voltage continuous current as opposed to thehigh voltage discharges, lasting only a fraction of asecond, from the static electrical machines.

Experiments with Volta's PileSir Joseph Banks had quickly conveyed to some of

his friends in the Royal Society the contents of thefirst part of Volta's letter, and among these wereWilliam Nicholson (a man who combined the profes-sions of scientist, mathematician, patent expert andwater engineer with the editing and publishing ofNicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy), SirAnthony Carlisle, the chief surgeon of WestminsterHospital, and William Cruickshank.

They immediately set about constructing Volta'spiles for themselves, and, as is well known, Nicholsonand Carlisle first observed, in May 1800, the de-composition of water by the electric current. But ofparticular interest in the present context is the latterpart of Nicholson's paper, published in the followingJuly. After describing the evolution and collectionof hydrogen and oxygen evolved at the ends of brasswires immersed in water, using a pile consisting of36 half-crowns and the same number of pieces of zincand pasteboard soaked in salt water, Nicholson goeson:

"As the ample field of physiological research to whichMr Carlisle's attention is directed, and the multiplicityof my own avocations, rendered it less convenient for usto pursue our inquiries together, I constructed anapparatus for my own use.... On account of the length

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`r -' °•

The First Recorded Experiment in Gold Plating

In 1803 Professor Luigi Brugnatelli, a close friend and

colleague of Volta's at the University of Pavia, wrote

to his correspondent Professor Van Mons of Brussels

describing how he had "recently gilt in a perfect

manner two large silver medals, by bringing them into

communication, by means of a steel wire, with the

negative pole of a Voltaic pile, and keeping them,

one after the other, immersed in ammoniuret of gold

newly made and well saturated".

Brugnatelli later gave details of his electrolyte: "To

one part of the saturated solution of gold in nitro-

muriatic acid, add six parts of solution of ammonia,

by which the solution is decomposed and oxide of

gold is precipitated, and a portion is set free, forming

ammoniuret of gold".

Ji 1'141X7` d'i

S1iä jra alLjfriemenf

ltas^e^ s^o w.^e^i!

of this communication, I shall at present forbear to enterinto any considerations of theory, but shall conclude witha concise mention of the effects of a pile of one hundredhalf-crowns, and a chemical incident, which appears tobe the most remarkable of those which I have yetobserved."

Copper wires were used for the circuit in thisexperiment, with very dilute hydrochloric acid.When the wires were moved to within a third of aninch of each other

"the minus wire gave out some hydrogen during anhour, while the plus wire was corroded, and exhibited no

oxide; but a deposition of copper was formed round theminus, or lower wire, which began at its lower end ... andthat deposition at the end of four hours formed a ramifiedmetallic vegetation, nine or ten times the bulk of thewire it surrounded."

The paper immediately following Nicholson'scontribution in his own journal came from WilliamCruickshank—not William Cumberland Cruickshank,who was an anatomist and surgeon and who is oftencredited with this paper in the literature, but MrWilliam Cruickshank who was Chemist to theOrdnance and lecturer in chemistry at the RoyalMilitary Academy at Woolwich. He too had collectedhydrogen and oxygen by the electrolysis of water, buthe also went on to observe the rudimentary pheno-menon of electrodeposition.

"The tube was filled with a solution of acetate of lead,to which an excess of acid was added to counteract theeffects of the alkali. When the communication was madein the usual way, no gas could be perceived, but after aminute or two, some fine metallic crystals were perceivedat the extremity of the wire. These soon increased, andassumed the form of a feather. The lead thus precipitated

George Richards Elkington

1800-1865

On March 25th, 1840, George Richards Elkington and hiscousin Henry Elkington filed a patent for gold and silverplating. The final specification of September 25th in-corporated the use of cyanide baths proposed by JohnWright, the Birmingham surgeon, and from this develop.rnent stemmed the whole commercial success of the process,although the work of many others had led up to it andmany more were to make their contribution. Elkington'smajor role lay in his gathering of all the threads togetherand in taking the first practical steps to put them into

industrial use.From a portrait by Samuel West in the City Museum and Art Gallery,

Birmingham)

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was perfectly in its metallic state, and very brilliant.... Asolution of the sulphate of copper was next employed,and with the same result, the copper being precipitatedin its metallic form.... The most beautiful precipitate,however, was that of silver from its solution in thenitrous acid. In this case, the metal shot into fineneedle-like crystals articulated or joined to each other."

Closely similar experiments were made in thefollowing year, 1801, in Germany and in France. Thecourt apothecary at Hanover, J. L. W. Gruner,obtained growths of silver from silver nitrate, whileK. W. Boeckmann, a lecturer in physics at Karlsruhe,deposited copper, silver and tin. Charles BernardDesormes of the Ecole Polytechnique (later to becomeboth a chemical manufacturer and a leading politicianin the French troubles of 1848) also deposited silvercrystals from solutions of silver nitrate. All theseearly researches, following so quickly upon Volta'sannouncement, led only of course to the formation offeathery or dendritic deposits, and the idea ofdepositing a uniform layer of metal had yet to beconceived.

However, in the same year William Hyde Wollaston,who was seeking to establish the identity of "commonelectricity", obtained from the static machines, withvoltaic electricity, did observe, in the Transactionsof the Royal Society, that if silver wires were im-mersed in a solution of copper sulphate and a dis-charge was passed between them

"the negative conductor had a precipitate formed on itssurface, which, upon being burnished, was evidentlycopper".

The Brugnatelli LetterBut for the first reference ever made to gold

plating, and apparently to the deposition of a reason-ably even film of metal, we have to go back to theUniversity of Pavia, where Volta was Professor ofNatural Philosophy. His colleague and friend in thechair of chemistry was Luigi Brugnatelli, almost asdistinguished a scientist as Volta. Brugnatelli was aprolific correspondent with his fellow scientiststhroughout Europe, and also the editor of Annali diChimica, published in Pavia during the years 1790to 1805. In a letter to his friend Professor JeanBaptiste Van Mons of Brussels, the editor of asimilar journal, Annales de Chimie de Van Mons,published in Paris, Brugnatelli describes the goldplating of two large silver medals from a solution ofammoniuret of gold. The extract from this letter,published by Van Mons in 1803, is reproduced here.(It has often been quoted in its English translationpublished in the Philosophical Magazine of 1805,but never hitherto has the original been located.)

Curiously this announcement by Brugnatelli ap-pears to have escaped notice for many years, doubtlesslargely due to the state of war that persisted until1815, and it was not even mentioned by the dis-

tinguished scientists commissioned by Napoleon toreport on scientific progress after the French Revolu--tion. In fact, George Shaw of Birmingham, writingin 1842 in his book A Manual of Electrometallurgy,says

"From Brugnatelli to 1830 no experiments were pub-lished on the applications of electricity to the depositionof metals for the purpose of art."

We shall never know, of course, anything of thequality of Brugnatelli's gold plating. We can onlyaccept that he was a scientist of repute and integrity,and that his report was probably soundly based.But no real progress in electroplating could be madewith Volta's pile or with the many versions of abattery that were constructed on the same basis byscientists all over Europe in the years immediatelyfollowing his discovery. Over thirty years had to goby before there was made available, as will bementioned later, a reliable primary cell that did notdeteriorate rapidly from local action or polarisationor both.

The Davys and FaradayThe great Sir Humphry Davy, working at the

Royal Institution, delivered the first of his Bakerianlectures to the Royal Society in 1806 on "SomeChemical Agencies of Electricity", and while hementioned briefly that

"when metallic solutions were employed, metallic crystalsor depositions were formed, as is common in GALVANICexperiments, on the negative wire.... In a case in whichsolution of nitrate of silver was used on the positive side,and distilled water on the negative, silver appeared on thewhole of the transmitting amianthus,* so as to cover itwith a thin metallic film",

his mind was dwelling upon quite different aspects ofelectrochemistry, particularly the separation ofhydrogen and the alkalies at the negative surface andof oxygen and acids at the positive surface, and ofcourse he went on to discover the elements sodiumand potassium by this means, as reported in hissecond Bakerian lecture the following year, 1807.

In fact it seems that the great excitement occasionedby Volta's discovery was now beginning to die down,and in some scientific circles it was even felt thatpractically everything had been discovered that mightusefully be expected from the pile! The followingtwenty years and more were therefore something of afallow period in electrochemistry, but in 1830 thereoccurs a rather tantalising reference to electroplatingon the part of Edmund Davy, Sir Humphry's youngcousin who was then Professor to the Royal DublinSociety. Davy proposed that electrochemical methodscould be used to detect the presence of minute

* A type of asbestos, moistened with water, used by Davy to completehis circuits. The idea was first conceived by Wollaston.

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quantities of "metallic poisons" or impurities, butreferred in passing to

"the different electro-chemical experiments I have madeon the other metals and their compounds, together withthe application of the facts to the processes of gilding,silvering, tinning, etc".

Davy promised to "give himself the pleasure ofcommunicating this part of his research at no distantperiod", but there is no record of his ever havingfulfilled the undertaking.

And now we come to Michael Faraday. As ayoung man of not quite 21, Faraday had built himselfa Voltaic pile in the crude laboratory that he hadestablished at the back of the shop belonging toRiebau, the book-binder to whom he was apprenticed.In a letter to his friend Benjamin Abbott, in July,1812, he wrote

"Another phenomenon I observed was this: on separat-ing the discs from each other, I found that some of the

zinc discs had got a coating—a very superficial one insome parts—of metallic copper, and that some of thecopper discs had a coating of oxide and zinc. In this casethe metals must both have passed through the flanneldisc holding the solution of muriate of soda, and theymust have passed by each other. I think this circumstancewell worth notice, for remember, no effect takes placewithout a cause. The deposition too, of the oxide ofzinc in the flannel was curious, and will tend to illustratethe passage of the metals from one side to the other."

This intriguing phenomenon remained at the backof Faraday's mind for many years, but he was unableto give his full attention to it until in 1832 be beganhis famous series of investigations on electrochemicaldecomposition that, when published as his SeventhSeries of Experimental Researches in December 1833,

Warren de la Rite

1815-1889Eldest son of Thomas de la Rue, founder of the famousfirm of printers, Warren entered the business but at thesame time carried out experiments on electrochemistry. In1836 he observed the exaet reproduction of the polish andscratches on the copper cathode of a Daniell cell and soinitiated the idea of securing smooth deposits instead of thedendritic growths so far obtained. Later he turned toastronomy, and achieved the rare distinction of becomingPresident of both the Chemical Society and the Royal

Astronomical Society.(From a portrait by William Troutschold in the possession of the Dc La

Rue Company)

put the whole subject of electrochemistry firmly uponits foundations.

These are too well known to need discussion here,except that one should in passing acknowledge ourindebtedness for the nomenclature he establishedand which we use so freely today. Faraday turned forhelp to William Whewell of Trinity College, Cam-bridge, and a lengthy correspondence followed inwhich Whewell proposed anode and cathode insteadof Voltode and Galvanode or eisode and exode amongothers suggested by Faraday, and followed these withanion and cation. Faraday himself had coined thewords electrolysis and electrolyte.

The Great BreakthroughThe year 1836 was a significant one in the history

of electrodeposition, for during its course the namesof three men who in different ways greatly influencedits development were first brought into prominence.

In February of this year Professor J. F. Daniell,of King's College, London, described the first self-polarising cell or constant battery. In the course ofhis experiments he found that metallic copper wasdeposited on his copper cylinders:

"The fresh-precipitated copper had a most beautifulappearance, being of a bright pink colour."

The great importance of Daniell's work was ofcourse in providing at last a more reliable source ofcurrent for researchers in electrodeposition and inleading the way to the deposition of thin uniformcoatings.

In the following June, George Richards Elkingtonof Birmingham filed his first patent for "An ImprovedMethod of Gilding Copper, Brass and Other Metalsor Alloys of Metals". Elkington referred to himselfas "Gilt Toy Maker", a phrase that covered hisactivities, in partnership with his cousin Henry, as amanufacturer of military badges and buttons andother small articles such as snuff boxes and spectacleframes. In this context they were naturally interestedin discovering improved means of gilding to replacethe amalgamation method which had such injuriouseffects on the workmen. Here, however, we must

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leave Elkington for the moment, to return to themajor part he played in gold plating a little later.

In September of 1836 Warren de la Rue, the eldestson of Thomas de la Rue, founder of the well-knownfirm of security and bank note printers that still bearsthe family name, was experimenting with Daniell'snew source of current, and observed that

"the copper plate is also covered with a coating of metalliccopper which is continually being deposited; and soperfect is the sheet of copper thus formed that, beingstripped off, it has the polish and even a counterpart ofevery scratch of the plate on which it is deposited".

De la Rue's paper was published immediately inthe Philosophical Magazine, but in his "Elements ofElectrometallurgy", first published in 1840, AlfredSmee (for whom a special post was created at theBank of England to enable him to pursue his re-searches on electrodeposition and electrotyping inparticular) writes of de la Rue's observations:

"This paper appears to have attracted very littleattention; and what appears still more singular, theauthor, although well qualified, from his scientificattainments, to have applied these facts, never thoughtof any practical benefit to which this experiment mightlead."

Now de la Rue, then a young man of only 21, wasalready active in the family printing business, and itis on record that "he earnestly applied his scientificknowledge to the improvement of various processesand the invention of many new ones." Unfortunatelyhe did not follow up his experiments, although by 1840

he was actively engaged in the preparation of electro-types, and it is worth recording that in 1845 hepublished a paper "On the Structure of Electro-precipitated Metals", in the Philosophical Magazinein which for the first time the microscope was usedto examine their cross-sections. He also recognisedthe effects of impoverishment of the cathode layer inelectrodeposition.

Jacobi and ElectroformingIt was in the February of the following year, 1837,

that the famous Jacobi appeared on the scene.Moritz Hermann von Jacobi was born in Potsdamin Germany in 1801, but left in his early thirties, asdid many other educated young men at that time,to make his career as an architect in Russia. Here hebecame known as Boris Semenovich Jacobi, and in1834 he was appointed a professor at the EstonianUniversity of Dorpat (nowadays known as Tartu) andit was here that he began his studies in electro-chemistry by repeating the experiments alreadyreported by Daniell in 1836 and again finding adeposit of copper. A month later, following up theobservations of de la Rue, he employed as a cathodean engraved copper plate that had been used to printhis visiting cards and obtained a clear impression ofthe engraved lines when the deposit was removed.

Later in this year Jacobi moved to St Petersburgto take charge of the Physics Laboratory of theAcademy of Sciences. Here he continued his workin electrochemistry, and in October 1838 he reportedto the Academy of Sciences on his process of"galvanoplastik". This was of course what we nowcall electroforming, and the first account of thispractical application of electrochemistry was brieflynoted in England in The Athenaeum of May 8th,1839. A detailed account appeared a little later in theform of a letter from Jacobi to Faraday published inthe Philosophical Magazine.

Moritz Hermann von Jacobi1801-1874

Following up the announcement of Daniell's primary celland also the observations of de la Rue, Jacobi, in 1837 whena Professor in Estonia, also reproduced an engraved surfaceby the electrodeposition of copper. Later, when at theAcademy of Sciences in St Petersburg, lie fully developedthe process of electroforming. After the publication of theElkington and Wright cyanide process in 1840 Jacobiplayed a major role in fostering the use of gold plating inRussia. So enthusiastic was he on his subject that lieproposed to the Tsar the formation of a regiment of Sapeurs

Galvanique!

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Almost immediately controversy erupted. ThomasSpencer, who had a thriving business as a carver andgilder in Liverpool, claimed that in the latter part of1837 he had carried out experiments leading to theelectroforming of medals and printing plates, whileC. J. Jordan, a London printer, claimed that experi-ments he had made "about the commencement oflast summer" resulted in impressions from engravedcopper plates. Both had almost certainly benefitedfrom de la Rue's original observations of 1836.

The ensuing arguments were to last for manyyears, but they cannot be detailed here; the namesof Spencer and Jordan were to crop up again,however, in a much later controversy over theorigins of successful gold plating. The immediateeffect of these announcements was, however, averitable explosion of interest and activity in electro-forming on the part of both scientists and enthusiasticamateurs, the latter being able to buy simple apparatusand the necessary chemicals from a number ofenterprising suppliers. Jacobi's monograph "DieGalvanoplastik", published in 1840, was at oncetranslated into English by William Sturgeon, alecturer and journalist specialising in electricalsubjects, while Jacobi himself attended the meetingof the British Association for the Advancement ofScience held in Glasgow in that year, at which someheated discussions and even demonstrations wereapparently indulged in by the contesting parties.

But all these activities were confined to the produc-tion of heavy deposits of copper, and copper only,and there was still no sign of the electrodeposition ofthinner films of gold or of any other metal as a meansof protection or decoration.

The Elkingtons and John WrightJacobi was to play his part here too, but first

we must return to the Elkingtons whom we leftin the year 1836. Elkington's first patent did notinvolve electroplating, but rather an immersion orreplacement process in which a thin layer of copperwas dissolved by a boiling solution of gold oxide inpotassium bicarbonate and replaced by an equallythin layer of gold. In the following year cousinHenry also filed two patents, but again these coveredonly immersion gilding. But in July 1838 one ofElkington's assistants, Oglethorpe Wakelin Barratt,together with the senior partner, filed a patent forcoating copper and brass with zinc, the processinvolving the immersion of the metal to be coatedin solution of zinc while in contact with a piece ofmetallic zinc or with zinc amalgam. Although nomention was made of a battery, this showed the firstglimmer of the idea of a galvanic circuit.

All these four patents are of importance, however,as the fore-runners of British Patent 8447, which was

to play a major part not only in the rapid developmentof gold plating but in subsequent controversy andlitigation. This was in the joint names of GeorgeRichards Elkington and Henry Elkington—now,incidentally, described as "gentlemen". Filed onMarch 25th, 1840, it covered "Improvements inCoating, Covering, or Plating certain Metals" anddetailed a number of solutions of silver and goldcompounds "in connection with the application of agalvanic current." The sources of current found tobe most efficient and convenient were

"some forms of those used for philosophical purposes,and known by the name of constant or sustaining batteries.That which we prefer, and most frequently employ,consists of two concentric cylinders closed at the bottom,the outer one of which is of glazed and the inner one ofunglazed and porous earthenware. The space betweenthem forms a cell, into which is poured a solution ofchloride of sodium or other exciting fluid; into this acylinder of zinc is immersed, with a wire of coppersoldered to it and made to bend over and dip into theinner vessel wherein is contained the solution of silveror gold".

The articles to be plated, after being carefullycleaned, were to be placed in the latter solution,attached to the copper wire, and the thickness of thedeposit would depend upon the length of time theywere allowed to remain in the solution and in contactwith the wire of the battery.

At this period the Elkingtons employed anotherassistant, Alexander Parkes, later to become wellknown as the inventor of celluloid and also ofphosphor-bronze. Parkes was engaged, together withthe partners, in experimental work with the object ofobtaining thicker and more coherent electrodepositsof gold and silver, and it is on record that he was paid£200 for his help in drafting the specification of the1840 patent, in which O. W. Barratt also had a hand.The Elkingtons kept in touch with several leadingchemists of the day, and were obviously mostanxious to develop a more reliable plating technique.

Now during the six-month period between thefiling of their patent and its completion date, Septem-ber 25th, a certain amount of excitement took place.In August the Elkingtons were introduced to JohnWright, a local surgeon, by Charles Askin, who hadabandoned his profession as a veterinary surgeon toenter into partnership with Brooke Evans in themanufacture of nickel-silver (the firm later becomingHenry Wiggin & Co Limited). John Wright, whowas born in 1808 in the Isle of Sheppey, began hismedical career as an apprentice to a Dr Shearman ofRotherham, near Sheffield (a geographical circum-stance that was to give rise to more controversy manyyears later), completed his training in Edinburgh,Paris and London and then settled in the Bordesleydistrict of Birmingham in 1833. Like many othermedical men of the time, he enjoyed experimentingwith the new voltaic electricity. Undoubtedly, living

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as he did in the centre of the metal working industry,he became aware of the interest being taken in findingimproved means of electrodepositing silver and gold.He would have been equally aware that solutions ofmany compounds of these metals had been tried andhad yielded some kind of an electrodeposit, but thatthese were still most unsatisfactory for commercialpurposes. He then happened to read a passage inScheele's "Chemical Essays". In the course ofScheele's "Dissertation on Prussian Blue" included

In 1783 Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the famous Swedish chemist,published "A Dissertation on Prussian Blue". This paper,together with a number of his others, was translated intoEnglish by Thomas Beddoes and published in 1786. It wasfrom reading this passage that John Wright conceived theidea of trying the complex cyanides as electrolytes for goldand silver plating.

The passage refers to the solubility in hydrocyanic acid(our colouring matter) of the cyanides (calces) of gold,silver and copper to give complex salts that arc not de-composed, as is an aqueous solution of potassium cyanide(lixivium sanguinis), on exposure to the carbon dioxideof the air (hie aerial acid)

in this volume Wright noticed the paragraph re-produced here, describing the solubility of gold andsilver cyanides in excess potassium cyanide, and heimmediately tried these solutions as electrolytes.Success rewarded his experiments at once, coherentand firmly adherent deposits being obtained.

Wright showed his specimens to the Elkingtons,who were impressed by their appearance, but actingon the advice of Charles Askin, he firmly declinedto disclose the details of his process until an agreementhad been signed. A memorandum of agreement wastherefore drawn up, dated September 1st, 1840,under which the new process was to be purchased bythe Elkingtons for £300, with further substantial sumsto follow if the process was later adopted and worked.Then, to quote from a letter written by G. R.Elkington:

"We found the process the same in principle as wewere about to specify and we decided to embrace thevariation, which consisted of a different solution, in ourspecification."

The signatures to the final agreementbetween the Elkingtons and Dr JohnWright. This document details theterms on which Wright's discoveryof the complex cyanides as success-ful gold plating electrolytes wasincorporated into the Elkington'spatent, they to pay Wright £300 uponthe disclosure of his process, fol-lowed by a further £500 if the patentwas granted and another £700 aftera six-month trial period

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Thus with about three weeks to spare before thecompletion of their patent, the Elkingtons hastilyhad the cyanides written into the specification. Alittle later a more formal agreement, dated retro-spectively to March 25th, 1840, the date of the filingof the patent, was drawn up. The three signaturesto this agreement are illustrated here. John Wright'sname thus never appeared in the patent literature,nor did he ever put his experimental work on record.Instead he seemed content to receive royalties fromthe Elkingtons and, conscious that he was not arobust individual, to secure substantial life paymentsfor his wife. Unfortunately he did not live long to seehis ideas successfully applied; he died in 1844 fromparalysis caused by a fall from his carriage.

The Great Controversy in FranceThe Elkingtons pursued a policy of filing patent

applications in a number of countries, and thecorresponding French patent to No. 8447 was filedin France on September 29th and published onDecember 8th, 1840. But on December 19th aspecification was filed in the French patent office byHenri-Catherine-Camille Ruolz, otherwise known asthe Comte de Ruolz-Montchal, and was published onFebruary 15th, 1841. Ruolz, during his twenties, hadbeen a pupil of Rossini and had composed threeoperas, none of which had been successful. Havinglost a great deal of money, he abandoned his musicalcareer, taking up industrial chemistry instead, andvery soon his attention was drawn to the dangers tothe health of the workmen using the mercury processof gilding and to the very real need for a better process.The first patent by Ruolz concerned itself only withthe problem of obtaining a gold coating—by im-mersion only—upon silver. During 1840 the wellknown scientist Professor A. A. de la Rive of Genevahad disclosed that, as long ago as 1828, he hadsucceeded in gilding silver and platinum wires byemploying them as negative electrodes in a solutionof gold chloride, but that the deposits were notsufficiently adherent, and he had abandoned theprocess. Ruolz now claimed that this procedure,while satisfactory on copper and brass, was useless inattempting to gild silver, and his patent covered theprior deposition of a thin immersion coating ofcopper on the silver. During the following June,however, he filed an addition to his patent, publishedon October 11th, 1841, which covered both the use ofthe battery and "the employment, for the first time, ofthe compounds of cyanogen with gold and silver".

Ruolz, financially highly embarrassed, sold hisrights in his patents to a Paris dyer, Guillaume-Edouard Chappee, but apparently acquired themback again. He also arranged with his numerouscreditors that they should receive three-fifths of the

The first successful electroplating of a really coherentand adherent gold deposit was carried out by DrJohn 'Wright at his house in the Bordesley districtof Birmingham. An ordinary flowerpot containingthe cyanide solution was placed in an outer vesselcontaining dilute sulphuric acid; the vase to be platedwas connected by a wire to a sheet of wine surroundingthe porous cell and immersed in the dilute acid. Onlya little later did the idea occur of separating thesource of current from the plating bath, proposedindependently by Thomas Mason of London and byProfessor Jacobi of St Petersburg

profits from his inventions, he to retain two-fifthsfor his personal needs.

The great possibilities of Ruolz's patent were atonce realised by Charles Christofle, the founder of athen small but enterprising jewellery manufacturingconcern in Paris, and after seeing a demonstration inJanuary 1842 he quickly secured an exclusive licenceto operate the patent for gold and silver plating forwhich he paid 150,000 francs, while he also retainedthe services of Ruolz as a consulting chemist.

In the meantime, however, the Académie desSciences, much concerned with any method thatmight replace mercury gilding, had appointed acommission of five scientists, led by the distinguishedJean Baptiste Dumas, to report on the methodsproposed by de la Rive, the immersion methodscovered by the earlier Elkington patents and the newclaims of Ruolz for the alkaline cyanides. At onceG. R. Elkington, who seems to have operated aformidable intelligence service, instructed his Parislawyer to advise the commission of his patent forgold plating from a cyanide bath, a matter on whichthe commission expressed surprise at their ignorance.Demonstrations of the processes were carried outbefore the commission, and John Wright journeyedto Paris to play his part in these. The commissionreported somewhat hastily by December 1841,leaning rather heavily towards their own national,Ruolz, and six months later they awarded prizes of3,000 francs to de la Rive for the application of thepile for the gilding of metals, 6,000 francs to Elkingtonfor his galvanic method of gilding, and also 6,000

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francs to Ruolz for "the industrial application of agreat number of means of gilding and silvering".

Charles Christofle clearly saw the merits of theElkington and Wright process, and in May of 1842came to an agreement with them to take a licenceunder their patent, for which he paid the very con-siderable sum of 500,000 francs. Christofle thus hadthe rights to both the Ruolz and the Elkingtonpatents, but his troubles were by no means over.There were numerous cases of infringement to befought, some of the defendants claiming that bothBrugnatelli and de la Rive had successfully carried outgold plating, but the courts held that true inventionlay with Elkington and Ruolz in covering objects tobe gilt with an adhesive and continuous layer of goldacceptable in commerce, and without attacking thesurface to be plated, as had de la Rive's process.

Then in 1845 Ruolz severed his connection withChristofle and began to pursue something of avendetta against him and Elkington, although he hadin fact benefited financially from the arrangement toa very considerable extent. The unsavoury andlengthy campaign, stoutly rebutted by Christofle(who alleged among other items that Ruolz had hadprior access to Elkington's French patent and hadsimply added in the cyanides in his own patent ofaddition) went on for some five years and produced avast amount of letters, affidavits, agreements and otherlegal documents, mostly to the discredit of Ruolz.Finally in 1851, Christofle published the whole of thedocuments in a book running to well over 400 pages(and carrying an approving foreword from Elkington)entitled "Histoire de la Dorure et de l'ArgentureElectro-chimique". By now, he was well establishedas the leading gold and silver plater in France.

Further Progress with the ElkingtonsAt home in Birmingham the Elkingtons too had

their problems. Opposition and scepticism from thetrade, failure to secure the sale of licences to work theprocess, the necessity to acquire for themselvesallied patents taken out by others including membersof their own staff, infringement of their patents—all these worries beset them in full as well as theproblems of bringing the process nearer to perfection

Charles Christofle1805-1863

Founder of the well-known Paris firm of goldsmiths, silver-smiths and cutlery manufacturers that still bears his name,Christofle had the foresight to realise the great importanceof the patents filed by Ruolz and Elkington and he became alicensee of both. Despite an extraordinary number of legalactions he had to fight, and even more violent debate lastingfor over five years, he established a highly successful

business in gold and silver plating in France.(From a portrait in the possession of L'Orfeverie Christofle ,Paris)

and the need for more capital in the business. But astout partner was at hand. In 1840 George Elkingtonhad purchased a house from Josiah Mason, and onthe acquaintance developing, Mason entered into thepartnership and in March 1842 the firm becameElkington, Mason and Co. The new partner was aself-taught man of great character and business abilitywho had made a considerable success as a manu-facturer of split-rings and steel pens. Although hisnew venture was regarded with alarm by his friends,Mason saw the important future awaiting the platingof both gold and silver, and threw his energies intothe business side of the firm and into the building andequipping of a new factory employing 300 workers.

Many years later, in the course of replying to anaddress on his founding of the Mason ScienceCollege, the forerunner of the University of Birming-ham, Mason, then Sir Josiah, observed that

"accident brought me in close relations with my latevalued friend and partner Mr G. R. Elkington who wasthen applying the great discovery of electrodeposition,and through my association with him in this undertakingI may claim a share in the creation of a form of scientificindustry which has so largely enriched the town ofBirmingham and increased its fame throughout theworld".

The Elkingtons, as well as eagerly acquiring rightsin patents filed by others, now acquired a usefulworking team of assistants. Oglethorpe WakelinBarratt and Alexander Parkes have already beenmentioned. In 1842 they also took on to their staffJames Napier, a Glasgow-born chemist who hadearlier worked in dyeing but had carried out experi-ments in electrotyping for the publisher J. J. Griffin.

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Alexander Parkes

1813 —1890

One of the Elkington's most stalwart supporters, Parkesjoined the company in charge of the Casting Departmentbut quickly interested himself in electroplating and inelectroforming. He took part in the early experimentson the cyanide electrolytes with John Wright and in 1841secured his first patent on "Producing Works of Art in

Metals by Electric Deposits"

concept of agitating either the articles to be platedor the plating solution in order to obtain smoothdeposits at higher current densities, the use of mer-cury "quicking", and some hundreds of compoundsof silver, gold and the platinum metals as electrolytes.Leeson was an assistant lecturer in chemistry andforensic medicine at St Thomas' Hospital in London,later becoming a senior physician and dean, but heevidently gave a great deal of time to his electro-deposition studies. This patent, as usual, was drawnto the attention of the Elkingtons, and by the Augustof 1843 they had acquired exclusive rights therein for,0300.

Another patent problem was also giving themanxiety at the same time. This, No. 9431, was filedin August 1842 by John Stephen Woolrich, theyoung son of John Woolrich who was lecturer inchemistry at the school of medicine and surgeryin Birmingham and who is reliably reported—inGeorge Shaw's "Manual of Electrometallurgy"published in 1842—to have

"succeeded in gilding an article by voltaic precipitationfrom the ammonical solution of gold before the publishedexperiments of Mr Jordan and Mr Spencer appeared".

Probably young Woolrich was brought up in anelectrochemical atmosphere, but in any case the

Napier was soon given charge ofthe electroplating department in theLondon works that they had opened,and in 1844, together with anotherassociate Charles Glassford, publish-ed a very comprehensive paper onthe chemistry of the gold and silvercyanides in the Philosophical Magazine.In 1852 his "Manual of Electrometal-lurgy" appeared. Another employeewas William Millward, the originatorof the use of carbon bisulphide as abrightener in silver plating baths.

In June 1842 Dr Henry BeaumontLeeson of Greenwich filed a massivepatent, No. 9374, published in thefollowing March, which included the

Two electroformed and gold plated vasesproduced by Alexander Parkes and now inthe possession of the Science Museum inLondon. They bear the Elkington's datemark for 1845

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claims of his patent were twofold, first the use of amagneto-electric machine instead of batteries forelectroplating, and secondly (and of more concern tothe Elkingtons) the use of the sulphites of gold andsilver—a form of electrolyte even nowadays causinga certain amount of debate! Woolrich junior firstasked the Elkingtons for the astonishing sum of£15,000 for his patent, an offer they naturally de-clined. Counsel's opinion was sought, interestinglyenough from William Grove, the inventor of thebattery who later turned to the law, and a great deal ofacrimonious correspondence followed, including let-ters from Charles Askin who had now befriendedWoolrich. The latter disposed of his patents toBrooke Evans (the other co-founder of HenryWiggin) who licensed three other plating firms beforeElkingtons, in May 1845, also came to an agreementto pay £100 at once and £400 per annum for the lifeof the patent. Curiously, Woolrich himself was alsolicensed back under his own patent to operate in thesmall business he had set up in Great Charles Street,Birmingham, the Magneto-Plating and GildingWorks, but unfortunately he died in 1850 at theearly age of 29.

Progress in Germany and RussiaSo far we have been recounting the history of gold

plating largely in England and France. What washappening in the other countries of Europe ? Onerather interesting development that was unfortunatelynot destined to come to fruition took place in thefortress of Magdeburg in Prussia, where in 1841Werner Siemens, then a young artillery officer, hadbeen confined to barracks for taking part in a duel.Deeply interested in Jacobi's published work oncopper electrodeposition, Siemens had smuggledinto his cell enough apparatus and chemicals topursue experiments in electrolysis, and working byanalogy with the use of sodium thiosulphate in thedissolution of silver salts in Daguerre's new processof photography he tried the same compound ingold plating, using a louis d'or as an anode, and metwith instant success. He then sold his process to aMagdeburg jeweller and also commissioned hisbrother William (afterwards Sir William) to journeyto England and to endeavour to market his patent.William duly visited the Elkingtons in Birminghamin 1842 and after some discussion sold the patent for£1,500, a transaction that Werner later referred to as"in our then circumstances a colossal sum which putan end for some time to our financial difficulties".

Another leading exponent of gold plating inGermany at this time was Professor Franz Carl LeoElsner of the Royal Technical Institute in Berlinwho in 1843 examined and reproduced the methodsput forward by Ruolz but endeavoured at some

length to establish a process that did not involve thecyanides. None the less the use of cyanide bathsbegan to spread slowly and plating shops were setup in Berlin, Stuttgart and other major cities, althoughthe further development of electroplating had to waitanother thirty years for the more general industrialdevelopment of Germany after its unification in 1871.

It was in Russia, however, that the most excitingdevelopments in gold plating took place. Jacobi,now established as a scientist and regarded withfavour by Tsar Nicholas I, was naturally in a positionto encourage the further exploitation of electro-deposition in any form, and in 1843 he reported to theSt Petersburg Academy of Sciences on a method putforward by a local dentist named Briant. Jacobi hadhimself repeated the methods of de la Rive, Ruolz andElkington as set out in the Dumas report to theAcademie des Sciences in Paris, and he was readyenough to acknowledge that

"this important and interesting aspect of electroplatingtechnique for which we have to thank Mr Elkington nowoccupies an important place in technical arts and crafts".

Briant's variation consisted chiefly of using theferrocyanides instead of the more readily decompos-able potassium gold cyanide patented by Elkington,and Jacobi expressed the opinion that this processwas more suitable for large-scale production. AleksieFedorovich Grekov, who began as a photographerand camera maker but turned to electroplating, alsoused ferrocyanides, adding a little copper sulphateto give a redder colour to the deposit in order tocompete more favourably with the appearance ofmercury gilding. He also deposited gold alloyscontaining silver.

The industrial development of gold plating reallybegan, however, with the opening in 1844 of a largeplant for electroforming and electroplating in StPetersburg by Duke Maximilian von Leuchtenberg,a German nobleman who had married the eldestdaughter of the Tsar and had settled in Russia.Leuchtenberg had the cooperation of Jacobi as wellas the financial support of the Tsar, and a great deal ofelectroforming of copper statuary and bas-reliefs wascarried out as well as silver and gold plating fromcyanide solutions.

But the most astonishing achievement in thisplant was the gold plating of the bronze domes of thenew Church of the Redeemer, then being built inMoscow. All the many domes of the Moscowchurches had hitherto been gilt either with gold leafor by a hot dipping method but electroplating hadnow advanced sufficiently for it to be used on thislarge scale. The five domes were first assembled inthe plating shop, each sheet being numbered, andthen dismantled. The gold plating was carried outin three large wooden vats, each containing over

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The first example of gold plating tospecification was almost certainly thegilding of the five domes of the Churchof the Redeemer in Moscow. Built tocommemorate the defeat of Napoleon,work began in 1839 and continued formany years. In 1854 the domes—thelargest 100 feet in diameter—were goldplated in the plant of Duke Maximilianvon Leuchtenberg in St Petersburg, theamount of gold deposited being testedby a special commission which checkedtwo out of every 100 sheets plated. Thespecification called for 28.44 grams ofgold per square metre, with a toleranceof 20 per cent, and if the samples did notmeet these requirements the wholebatch was rejected. The total weight ofgold deposited was slightly less than 500kilograms. Unfortunately the churchwas demolished after the revolutionand its site is now occupied by thegiant Moskva swimming pool

5,000 litres of cyanide solution, the sheets beingslowly agitated by hand.

The Later ControversiesReturning now to England, where the Elkingtons

had acquired a dominating position in silver and goldplating—in 1851 they are recorded as employing500 workpeople—and were also very active in theelectroforming of reproductions of works of art, wefind still more disputes and controversies. In 1863one Henry Dirks, a civil engineer, published ahundred-page pamphlet with the title "A Contribu-tion towards a History of Electrometallurgy estab-lishing the Origin of the Art". This, dedicated toFaraday, extolled the merits and claims of C. J.Jordan as the "inventor" of electrometallurgy inJune 1839!

George Ellington died in September 1865 (cousinHenry had died in 1852) but even in death he wasnot free from controversy. On December 5th TheTimes published a short obituary notice reproducedfrom the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts but gaveit the heading "The Inventor of Electro-Plate". Thisat once drew letters to the Editor from ThomasSpencer who claimed that

"early in 1838 he had succeeded in plating articles thicklywith the precious metals"

and also a disclaimer from the Editor of the Journal ofthe Royal Society of Arts about the heading of the

obituary notice, adding the comment that as regardsthe invention of electroplating at least four persons,Spencer, Jacobi, Jordan and Wright, had some claim.This prompted a further letter from Spencer whichreferred to "a Mr Wright of whom, I assure you,I now hear for the first time".

The last round of this correspondence came, how-ever, from John Wright's brother William, who wroteon December 12th

"I claim for my brother, the late Mr John Wright,surgeon of Birmingham, the honour of being the inventorof that process. I have never heard of Mr Spencer orany one else disputing the patent with Mr Ellington oryet claiming any royalty."

Even further debates and controversy occurred andrecurred quite some years later, particularly in theSheffield newspapers of 1881, 1887, 1890 and againas late as 1903-04. These arose from the erroneousconviction that Elkington's collaborator Dr Wright—the Christian name had numerous versions—wasassociated with Sheffield, and that the origins ofsilver and gold plating really belonged to that city.(Even the great Dr John Percy got it wrong in his"Metallurgy of Silver and Gold", published in 1880,where he referred to "Mr Alexander Wright, surgeonof Birmingham). This firmly held view was finallyrefuted, however, by the researches of R. E. Leaderinto the Elkington archives which he painstakinglycollated in 1913 and which are now preserved in theVictoria and Albert Museum in London.

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