FROM BRISTOL HISTORY PAGE
Bristol, England was long a center for lead manufactoring.

Legend has it that William Watts, a local plumber, had a dream about molten lead falling from the sky and producing perfectly round spheres (shot) as it did so. (This is the story I read in a history of iindustry book as a kid)
Others say that he dreamed that his wife was standing on the tower at St. Mary Redcliffe Church, pouring molten lead on him through the holes in a rusty frying pan.
Another version says that he'd been drinking heavily one night and fell asleep at the foot of the tower of St. Mary Redcliffe church. He then had a dream that the church caught fire and that as the lead on the roof melted it dropped to the ground, where it landed in pools of water and solidified as perfectly spherical shot.

http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/bristol/blead1.htm

FROM TRAPHOF
At the top, he poured lead into a sieve. The lead formed into spheres as it fell six floors. By the time the drops hit the water below, they'd started to solidify. The water caught and cooled them the rest of the way. Up to then, most shot was cast. That was very labor-intensive. Shot was also made by pouring lead into a sieve over a barrel. That really did give tear-shaped drops. Before Watts, no one had yet realized that a much longer fall would give spheres.

Watt's old house -- his original shot tower -- kept producing shot until 1968.

Watt's invention teaches us the two essential elements of good invention. The first is perception. Watts gazed more closely at nature and saw what other people had missed. The other element is simplicity. Others had labored to control the process with their own hands. Watts had the grace to stand aside and let nature do the work for him. The real beauty of this process is that, in the end, there is no human process at all.

(This is a poem (NOT Lyrics) so don't think it gives wings to this oh, too leaden thread - that does not belong in the "Upper Kingdom."

John Dix, who was enjoying some notoriety as a surgeon, writer of bad poetry and an alcoholic, penned these words...

Mr. Watts very soon a patent got,
So that only himself could make Patent Shot,
And King George and his son declared they'd not
Shoot with anything else—and they ordered a lot.
The Regent swore that the smallest spot
In a small bird's eye he'd surely dot:
And every sportsman, both sober and sot,
From the peer in his hail to the hind in his cot,
Vowed that they cared not a single jot,
When the game was strong and the chase was hot,
For anything else than the Patent Shot.

http://www.traphof.org/shot-towers-2/shot-towers-page-1.htm

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

It is a truely - VERY efficent way of producing shot. I tried it as a kid but the house roof was too low, the sieve too small and cold, the heat source too far removed from the roof and the seive quickly gummed up with the molten lead from wheel-balancing-weights (which are much better suited for casting deep-sea-fishing-weights using a broomstick end in garden-soil with a coat-hanger loop for attachment)