Isaac Wilkinson (1695 - 1784)

A plaque at Backbarrow Ironworks states: "Isaac Wilkinson c1704 - 1784 practical metallurgist and inventor. British ironmakers profitably gained from his inventions. Foundryman Backbarrow Iron Company. Lived here c1730 - 1748"

T. S. Ashton. Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution (1924):

"...he was engaged as a pot-founder by the Backbarrow Company. The conditions of his employment here have been described as an example of the domestic system in the metal-smelting industry : whether correctly or not must depend on our interpretation of that most ambiguous and elastic phrase. It appears that Wilkinson bought iron in a molten condition from the blast-furnace, and, carrying it in ladles across the road to his foundry, cast it into pots and other utensils, which were subsequently sold to the Company that had provided the raw material"

In 1738 Wilkinson took a patient for a process for making box smoothingirons of cast, instead of wrought metal, and carried the process to commercial success.

T. S. Ashton. Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution (1924):

"Here Isaac Wilkinson engaged in casting operations on a large scale ; and if the commodities enumerated in his patents of 1753 and 1758 are an index of his own productions, he was concerned with the manufacture of " Guns or Cannon, Fire Engines, Cylinders, Pipes and Sugar Rolls." In this he was assisted by his sons John and William, the former of whom also acted as manager for the New Willey Company at Broseley—near Coalbrookdale, but on the south side of the Severn—an undertaking which in 1763 passed under his sole control. Following upon the financial failure of Isaac, the Bersham concern was reconstituted as a partnership between the two sons under the name of the New Bersham Company."