Posterity
The existence of Metallum Martis meant that many historians have noted his achievements. Dudd has been seen as the forerunner of later success by Abraham Darby and others in smelting iron with coke in the 18th century. However it remains unclear to what extent he was its technological ancestor rather than a mere precursor. In Metallum Martis, he named a relative of his first wife to whom he would leave his knowledge, but nothing came of that. However, there are two possible linkages to later developments:
- Abraham Darby, who took over the ironworks at Coalbrookdale in 1709, was descended from Dudd's older full sister (also the daughter of Elizabeth Tomlinson).
- Sir Clement Clerke, a partner in the Dudley furnace, developed lead smelting in reverberatory furnaces. He and his son Talbot Clerke then applied this to copper smelting and to iron foundry work. Associates in the latter business, floated as the Company for Making Iron with Pitcoal built a coke furnace at Cleator in Cumberland in the 1690s. That company had some dispute with Shadrach Fox of Coalbrookdale who was casting shot for the Board of Ordnance, and may have used coal at another furnace at Wombridge.
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Famous quotes containing the word posterity:
“Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“No man ever walked down to posterity with so small a book under his arm.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)