Paul-François Huart-Chapel [SEP] occupation
Paul-François Huart-Chapel
Paul-François Huart-Chapel was a Belgian industrialist, and politician.
Biography.
Paul-François Huart was born in Charleroi in 1770. He married Mary Chapel, the daughter of an industrialist.
In 1806 he inherited the factories of the Chapel family. He introduced a reverbatory furnace for melting metal in 1807, in 1821 the first Puddling furnace in Belgium (with J.M. Orban).
Shortly after John Cockerill had built the first blast furnace in Belgium in Liege,
had reached Belgium; in the Charleroi area Paul-François Huart-Chapel would be instrumental in the development of the steel industry as his contemporary, the naturalised Belgian John Cockerill was in the nearby Liege area. In the 1820s he introduced puddling furnaces then coke fired blast furnaces.
In 1828 the "maison de commerce" "Fontaine-Spitaels" bought land for the construction of iron works and in 1830 merged with "Usines des Hauchies" of Paul Huart-Chapel to form "Fontaine-Spitaels et Cie".