[2] Most of the British alkali works are situated in South Lancashire and the adjoining part of Cheshire, near the mouth of the Tyne and in the West of Scotland.
The Leblanc process thus remained the sole purveyor of chlorine in its active forms, and in this way the fact is accounted for that, at least in Great Britain, the Leblanc process still furnishes nearly half of all the alkali made, though in other countries its proportional share is much less.
[2] The ammonia-soda process was first patented on 30 June 1838 by Harrison Gray Dyar and John Hemming,[3][4] who carried it out on an experimental scale in Whitechapel.
Many attempts were soon after made in the same direction, both in England and on the continent of Europe, the most remarkable of which was the ingenious combination of apparatus devised by J. J. T. Schloesing and E. Rolland.
But a really economical solution of the problem was first definitely found in 1872 by Ernest Solvay, as the result of investigations begun about ten years previously.