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Kosmoid (Metallurgical enterprise)
The early 20th-century, Scottish Kosmoid group of metallurgical operations (represented as "Kosmoid Ltd." plus 2 other associated companies) was in existence for only a short period of time (1904-1906) was touted as a major entry into the employment market in the vicinity of Dumbarton, Scotland, but collapsed in disarray after the abrupt departure of its founder, Dr Alexander Shiels. The main area of operation of the arm created as "Kosmoid Ltd." was never explicitly made public, despite the construction of a set of substantial buildings for unexplained purposes; it was later generally asserted to have been associated with an attempt to produce quicksilver (mercury), copper, and possibly also gold and silver via transmutation, in other words, alchemy via industrial processes, which is now known to be chemically impossible. However, one of the Kosmoid companies, Kosmoid Tubes Ltd, did establish a successful manufacturing operation for weldless metal tubes, and was subsequently bought by the firm of Babcock & Wilcox who operated the facility on the same site until 1997.
The Kosmoid Company portfolio, represented by three entities—Kosmoid Ltd, Kosmoid Locks Ltd, and Kosmoid Tubes Ltd—was founded by a medical doctor and self taught engineer, Dr Alexander Shiels of Glasgow and London, in 1904 and wound up in about 1907, utilizing a site of 53 acres on the Dumbuck estate near Dumbarton, Scotland. In its brief life span it promised employment to "6,000 workers" who would be housed in a a new "garden suburb" to be constructed on the slopes of Dumbuck Hill. The operation folded under mysterious circumstances in 1907, with the exception of the tube making facility, which was successfully purchased and re-launched as the Dumbarton Weldless Tube Company, subsequently subsumed by Babcock & Wilcox in 1915, an operation which lasted on the site until 1997. Evidence suggests that the real objective of Kosmoid Ltd., a company controlled very secretively by Shiels and employing a self confessed alchemist, one John Joseph Melville of Hampstead in London, was the (physically impossible) transmutation of base metals into higher value ones, such as quicksilver (mercury) from lead, copper from pig iron, and even gold, from an un-named precursor. Shiels was successful in raising initial capital from a group of investors, as well as a (supposed) control group the "Metallurgical Syndicate", although their oversight was quickly usurped solely by Shiels. A number of industrial buildings were constructed on the site but the employment for "6,000 workers" never materialised and nothing was ever produced, in the metallurgical context at least. Shiels died in 1907, having departed from the company; whether he was a "con-man" or himself believed that the future of metallurgical processes lay in alchemical principles will probably never be known.
Background
Alexander Shiels, b.1865, was a medical practitioner in Glasgow, Scotland, who carried out a second, parallel career as a self taught inventor and engineer, registering more than a hundred British patents for a range of engineering-related processes, some together with his brother-in-law, William Elliot of Lanark.