1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Weldon, Walter

WELDON, WALTER (1832–1885), English technical chemist, was born at Loughborough on the 31st of October 1832. In 1854 he began to work as a journalist in London in connexion with the Dial, which was afterwards incorporated in the Morning Star, and in 1860 he started a monthly magazine, Weldon’s Register of Facts and Occurrences relating to Literature, the Sciences and the Arts, which was discontinued after about three years' existence. Though he was without practical knowledge of the science, Weldon turned to industrial chemistry, and in the course of a few years took out the patents which led to his “manganese-regeneration” process (see Chlorine). This was put into operation about 1869, and by 1875 it was being used by almost every chlorine manufacturer of importance throughout Europe. He continued to work at the production of chlorine in connexion with the processes of alkali-manufacture (q.v.), and became a leading authority on the subject, but none of his later proposals—not even the Weldon-Pechiney magnesia process, which was established on a commercial scale only a year or two before his death—met with equal success. He died at Burstow, Surrey, on the 20th of September 1885. He professed Swedenborgian principles and was a believer in spiritualism.

His son, Walter Frank Raphael Weldon (1860–1906), was appointed in 1899 Linacre professor of comparative anatomy at Oxford.