Standing opposite the Birmingham Assay Office the original 19th century Silver Electroplating factory of George Elkington, built in 1838, once occupied a much longer and grandiose building on Newhall Street which was largely demolished in the mid 1960s. The works had many workshops and warehouses along and over the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and the now filled-in Whitmore's Arm (or Miss Colmore's Arm) canal, which ran through the site. In the early 1850s there was a steam-powered electric generator with 64 permanent magnets arranged in a circle and a rotating wrought iron armature. The electroplating process involved solutions of cyanide of silver and potassium cyanide (an extremely toxic process).