The Story of 100 Years of Phosphorus Making, 1851-1961

First edition, first impression.  [viii], 400pp, with tipped in colour portrait plate frontispiece, monochrome plate illustrations interleafed in text and various figures and diagrams in text.  Fawn cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on brown relief front and spine.  8vo.  Cloth is a little tired and slightly soiled, gently rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends, moderately sunned over a mildly marked spine.  A former library copy with gilt numbers on spine, a faint ownership stamp on the title page repeated on the last leaf and a stamp cataloguing stamp on the copyright page (no other library markings).  Endpapers mildly toned, and a corner crease on the frontispiece else internally neat, clean, bright and tight.

A substantial corporate history of Albright & Wilson, the chemical manufacturing company founded in 1856 by Arthur Albright and John Edward Wilson – two Birmingham-based Quakers –  in Oldbury in the Black Country, holding a UK monopoly on phosphorus manufacturing until the early part of the 20th century..  Initially producing potassium chloride and the white phosphorus for the match industry, turning its expertise to the manufacture of phosphorus bombs during the first world war.