Betancourt arrives in England in November in company of Bartolomé Sureda. In the three years that his stay lasts, Betancourt goes all over England visiting factories, observing machines and devises and meeting mechanics, industrialists and scientists. Betancourt probably began his investigations upon machines at this time pushed by the surge that takes place in England at this period and in this field.
Sureda learns, at the same time, the techniques of the wash and aquatint as new techniques of engraving on copper plates, which he will introduce as a novelty when he returns to Spain.
The fever of the telegraph in England, spurred by Chappe’s success in France who Betancourt must have known through Breguet, seems to have had some influence on him. It is also possible that Betancourt did some tests, with the still premature for the time, electrical telegraph.
On his part Peñalver publishes in Spain the Catalogo del Real Gabinete de Máquinas. It is in 1794 when Betancourt builds two steam engines on the request of the count of Casa Montalvo with the idea of using them in sugar refineries. The following year they will propose to Betancourt to move to Cuba to apply these machines as well as building canals and roads on the Island. Betancourt will accept, the proposal, initially.
In February 1795 Betancourt’s father dies in La Orotava.
This year Betancourt receives a prize from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, for a machine for cutting weeds in rivers and canals whose design was published the following year by the Society and had a notable success.
In February 1796 the Royal Board of Agriculture of Whitehall, London prizes another two of Betancourt’s inventions, one of them a machine to grind flint.
The following month he finishes his memoir Explication des principales parties du moulin pour moudre le silex, with a plan of the mill, to be built between the lock of the inclined plane –of which Betancourt makes a plan- and the iron bridge over the River Severn, at Coalbrookdale.
Betancourt is disputed from Cuba by the Consulate of the Island, through its Governor, and the count Mopox, sub inspector of its troops. It is the latter that receives the royal approval to organize an expedition to Cuba, and for which Betancourt is going to buy, in England, all the needed materials to work as a technician of Mopox’s venture. He also calls up Lanz for the exploitation of Guantanamo Bay, and Sureda, who was going to accompany Betancourt as a technician for the drawing of plans and levelling.
On August 18th 1796 diplomatic relations are broken between England and Spain and all the subjects of the respective countries are to be expelled. Betancourt and Sureda are able to leave through France at the beginning of October when war had been declared between both countries.
