21 Facts About James Keir

James Keir FRS was a Scottish chemist, geologist, industrialist, and inventor, and an important member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham.

James Keir attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where he met and formed a lasting friendship with Erasmus Darwin.

At the age of 22, Keir joined the army and was commissioned into the 61st Regiment.

James Keir found one congenial friend in Alexander Blair, afterwards a captain in the 69th regiment of foot.

James Keir ultimately settled at Hill Top, West Bromwich, Staffordshire, and devoted himself to chemistry and geology.

In 1772, with others, James Keir leased a long-established glassworks at Amblecote near Stourbridge, which he managed.

Early in the same year James Keir completed his translation of Macquer's Dictionnaire de Chymie, with additions and notes, published at London in two quarto volumes.

In 1778 James Keir gave up his glass business to undertake, in the absence of Boulton and Watt, the sole charge of their engineering works at Soho, Birmingham near Handsworth.

James Keir declined the offer of a partnership on account of the financial risk, and limited his connection with the firm to the letter-copying machine department.

In 1779 James Keir invented and took out a patent for an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron, which could be forged hot or cold.

The alloy, which James Keir called "Eldorado metal," originally intended for sheathing ship bottoms, but later adopted for architectural fixtures.

When Joseph Priestley came to Birmingham in 1780, he found an able assistant in James Keir, who had discovered the distinction between carbon dioxide gas and atmospheric air.

James Keir worked closely with Priestley to investigate the properties of gases.

James Keir published the first part of his "Dictionary of Chemistry" in 1789.

James Keir discontinued it upon becoming convinced of the weakness of his theory of phlogiston.

James Keir studied the mineralogy of Staffordshire, and in 1798 wrote an article on it for Stebbing Shaw's History of Staffordshire.

In February 1811 James Keir forwarded to the Geological Society "An Account of the Strata in sinking a Pit in Tividale Colliery", accompanied by a number of specimens.

On 19 December 1807, while James Keir was staying with Blair at Hilton Park, his house at West Bromwich was burnt, though most of his books and papers were saved.

James Keir died at West Bromwich on 11 October 1820, and was buried at All Saints Church, Charlemont.

In 1791 James Keir wrote, at the special desire of the widow, a memoir of his friend Thomas Day, author of "Sandford and Merton".

In 1793 James Keir published a pamphlet entitled 'The Martial Character of Nations,' arguing that the French were not likely to become so pacific as to make national defence less necessary.