William Champion had obtained a patent for a process to reduce zinc oxide to zinc in 1738, but the process is energy inefficient.

The difficulty is that a temperature of 1000°C is needed to reduce the oxide to the metal, but zinc vaporizes at 907°C.

It is thus necessary for the furnace to provide a means of condensing the vapor.

The distillation process produces around four hundred kilograms of zinc per charge from six crucibles located in the furnace.

The zinc is collected by iron tubes into water.

His initial works are on Old Market in Bristol and he makes two hundred tons of spelter (as zinc is at this time called) by 1742, when he is required to move because his premises are a 'common nuisance'.

Champion comes from a family who are already concerned in the metal trade at Bristol, his father being a leading partner in the Bristol Brass Company.

As a young man, he had toured Europe, returning in 1730.

He then experimented with smelting calamine, developing a method very similar to those long in use at the Zawar mines in India (except in scale), but no mechanism for technology transfer has yet been established.