The engineer Eugène Karr and his contribution to the nineteenth-century steel industry in Catalonia

Abstract

In this article we trace the imprint of the activity carried out by the metallurgical engineer Eugène Karr i Vergé (París 1810 – Barcelona 1884). From a microhistorical approach to his biography, we raise a series of questions about the relations between technique and society in the nineteenth century. Trained at the École des Arts et Métiers de Châlons (France) between 1825 and 1830, he worked as a construction engineer and director of several iron installations in France and in Spain. Karr considered that the iron tuned in charcoal reverb furnaces was of superior quality than the iron obtained by the more economical English procedure using coke and directed his efforts to improve the efficiency of charcoal casting and refining procedures. In our country he directed the new ironworks at Vila-rodona, and designed blast furnaces and finery furnaces in Malgrat de Mar and Cortsavi (Vallespir), projects that, despite not being successful, show us the panorama of the steel industry in nineteenth-century Catalonia.