Peregrine Phillips

Peregrine Phillips Junior (born 1800) was a vinegar maker of Bristol who invented the contact process for making sulphuric acid, for which he obtained patent number 6096 in 1831. His specification proposed passing sulphurous acid gas and the oxygen of the atmosphere through hot tubes containing finely divided platinum and other substances, and described how to obtain a more perfect condensation of the sulphuric acid once it was made. He was born in Philadelphia Street, Bristol, on 30 January 1800, the fourth of six children of the tailor Peregrine Phillips senior. Little is known of his later life: he disappeared from the Bristol records after 1831, and one source states that a Peregrine Phillips and his family settled in Campbell County, Kentucky, where he farmed.