William Champion

William Champion (born 1710) was a Bristol brass maker who developed the first large-scale commercial process for producing metallic zinc from calamine in Britain. Born in Bristol on 26 April 1710, the son of Nehemiah Champion III and grandson of Nehemiah Champion II, a close Quaker friend of Abraham Darby, he travelled to the manufacturing areas of Europe when young, returned to Bristol at 20 and spent six years experimenting in his father's works and laboratories. He was granted patent number 564 in 1738 for a process in which pots of calamine and charcoal in a furnace released zinc vapour downward through iron pipes into water, where it condensed as spelter. Production began at Bristol and moved to Warmley by 1742, and his method was used in Britain for over a hundred years. He died in 1789.