£1,000,000 PAID FOR AN IDEA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3203, 26 April 1911, Page 2

£1,000,000 PAID FOR AN IDEA.

GREAT SALT INDUSTRY INVENTION. ENGLISHMAN’S CLEVER SCHEME

Mr. James Hougirinson, of Salford, has sold for £1,000,000' tlie American rights of a new invention which, lie asserts, will revolutionise tlie whole salt industry. A telegram from an agent readied him in the United States last Saturday saying, “Sold American rights to strong Amencan-C’anadian syndicate. Terms, 5,000,0000 dollars and royalty.” The invention is a Salford merchant, head of the firm of James Hodgkinson (Salford), Limited, makers of mechanical stokers and economisers. The invention, besides making Mr. Hodgkinson a millionaire, will have the effect it is said, of cheapening salt to users throughout the world. Only a week previously Mr. Hodgkinson had disposed of the -Canadian rights to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company for a substantial sum. He desires that these transactions should be kept secret until the tests now being conducted at the Norwich works of the Salt Union, Limited, had been completed. The option of purchase of the English rights rests with the Salt Union. INVENTOR AT 70.

Mr. Hodgkinson is a septuagenarian, and resides in a modest villa in Eecies Old Road, Pendleton, within a shortdistance of his works.

The manner in which Mr. Hodgkinson conceived the idea -of his patent is interesting. Four years ago lie was engaged in the course of liis business on the plant at the Nortliwich Salt Works, and he then formed the opinion that there was room for vast improvement in the salt-making process. He went home and labored at the scheme for four years, until it has at last borne fruit. “My idea was scouted at first,” he said. “ ‘What- do you know of tlie salt industry?’ I was asked, but I kept pegging away, and now I am as certain as it is possible to he of the success -of my invention.” Mr. Hodgkinson's plant consists of three covered and four uncovered pans, all heated from one fire, instead of from seven, as at present. This fire is regulated by, the Hodgkinson patent stoker to ensure automatically a uniform temperature. He can so regulate the intensity of the fire by draught-con-trol that he can produce.all varieties of salt and all sizes of crystal simultaneously by the one fire. As examples Mr. Hidgkinson produced four boxes containing different kinds of salt produced in this way. In the first pan, -heated at a uniform temperature of anything up to l.SOOdeg., a table salt was produced by a process of pure crystallisation finer than any previously -made. No grinding or further treatment was necessary. From the first pan the waste gases and steam are carried underneath tlie other pans by a draught system, and the heat- is regulated and controlled by dampers under each pan. Precipitation is also hastened by the steam fans. The second and third pahs produced a dairy salt slightly coarser than the table salt, and the remaining pans, which are covered, received the gases at a considerably reduced temperature, and produced the coarser salts used in preserving fish. The whole system forms a sequential working of a cascade of heat, economising fuel and using the full value of the steam- which had formerly been allowed to escape. As there is no smoke a chimney is unnecessary. ROMANTIC CAREER. Mr. Hodgkinson has had a romantic career. Born of humble parents in Bolton, lie was at the age of eight years sent to work in a factory in order to supplement the family income. He had to walk three and a half miles to work, and be there at six o’clock in the morning. He had a craving for knowledge, and bought his first arithmetic book with half a crown earned- by grooming a horse. He would rise at three and four o’clock to snatch an hour before going to work. A few years later a friend lent him a cottage where on winter evenings he taught other child workers. “A rough sort of elementary instruction it was,” he said, “increasing my own knowledge at the same time, for I was only a lesson each week in front of my pupils.” -Subsequently Mr. Hodgkinson was appenticed to the textile trade. “I have been working over sixty years,” lie said, “with tlie exception of a break in 1871 when I went to Paris and had to pass through the lines of the- German Army. But idleness I could not tolerate, and I came- to Salford and started the present business of James Hodgkinson {Salford), Ltd., makers of mechanical stokers and economisers.” As Mr. Hodgkinson had personally to install the the mechanical stokers in -various countries it became necessary for him to learn foreign languages, which lie did with remarkable rapidity.