Daniel Towers Shears
1784 Born son of James Shears
By 1810 Daniel Towers Shears appears to have been responsible for the day-to-day running of the family business, James Shears and Sons. During his career he took out a number of patents, all clearly related to the business of copper and brass manufacture or to industries which used utensils made of these materials:
1817 Machine to cool liquids, e.g. in the process of distillation or brewing. (This has been described as the first true heat-exchanger)
1824 Manufacture of zinc (with his brother James Henry Shears and Frederick Benecke)
1830 Apparatus for distilling (subsequently described as "a bad imitation of the Pistorius still")
1845 Production of ingots of zinc from ores
1847 Treatment of zinc ores to produce ingots
1850 Manufacture and refining of sugar
1853 Improvements in brewing
In 1842 Daniel Towers Shears married his second wife, a Maria Dickenson; at the time he was living at The Lawn, South Lambeth and this was still his home at the time of his death in 1860. Maria Shears died in 1862.