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:
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)