Philip W. Bishop

“ At any rate, Martien's American patent is in terms similar to those of the British specification; he or his advisers seem to have attached no significance to the distinction between a gutter and a receptacle.
Mushet's claim to have afforded Bessemer the means of making his own process useful is still subject to debate. Unfortunately, documentation of the case is almost wholly one sided, since his biggest publicizer was Mushet himself. An occasional editorial in the technical press and a few replies to Mushet's "lucubrations" are all the material which exists, apart from Bessemer's own story. ”

“ J. G. Martien left off and is proceeding on the Bessemer plan of patenting each idea as it occurs to his imaginative brain. He proposes to make both iron and steel but does not appear to have quite decided as to the course of action ... to accomplish his object, and therefore claims various processes, some of which are never likely to realize the inventor's expectations, although decidedly novel, whilst others are but slight modification of inventions which have already been tried and failed. ”

“ The Scientific American sympathized with Bessemer's realization that his American patent was "of no more value to him than so much waste paper" but took the opportunity of chastising Kelly for his negligence in not securing a patent at a much earlier date and complained of a patent system which did not require an inventor to make known his discovery promptly. ”

“ Heath's failure to word his patent so as to cover also his method of producing carburet of manganese led to the effective breakdown of that patent and to the general adoption of his process without payment of license or royalty. In spite of this reduction in the cost of its production, steel remained, until after the midpoint of the century, an insignificant item in the output of the iron and steel industry, being used principally in the manufacture of cutlery and edge tools. ”

“ Since Renton had not patented his furnace in Great Britain, Martien's use of his earlier knowledge of Renton's work and of his experience at Bridgend in an attempt to upset Renton's priority is a curious and at present unexplainable episode. Perhaps the early records of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works, if they exist, will show whether this episode was in some way linked to the firm's optimistic combination of the British patents of Martien and Mushet. ”

“ The process consists in forcing through molten cast iron, held in a vessel called a converter, a stream of cold air under pressure. The combination of the oxygen in the air with the silicon and carbon in the metal raises the temperature of the latter in a spectacular way and after "blowing" for a certain period, eliminates the carbon from the metal. Since steel of various qualities demands the inclusion of from 0.15 to 1.70 percent of carbon, the blow has to be terminated before the elimination of the whole carbon content ”

“ Two men claimed that they had anticipated Bessemer in the invention of a method of treating molten metal with air-blasts for the purpose of "purifying" or decarbonizing iron. Both were Americans. Joseph Gilbert Martien, of Newark, New Jersey, who at the time of Bessemer's address was working at the plant of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works, in South Wales, secured a provisional patent a few days before Bessemer obtained one of his series of patents for making cast steel, a circumstance which provided ammunition for those who wished to dispute Bessemer's somewhat spectacular claims. ”

“ Figure 2.—Only Known Design for Kelly's Air-Boiling Furnace, From U.S. Patent 17628. A is "the flue to carry off the carbonic gas formed in decarbonizing the iron," B is the port through which the charge of fluid iron is received, C and C' are the tuyères, and D is the tap hole for letting out the refined metal.
The discussion in the Scientific American, which was mostly concerned with Martien's claim to priority, soon evoked a letter from William Kelly. ”

“ Kelly at his abandoned works in Kentucky satisfied me that it was not suited for an experiment on so large a scale as was contemplated at Wyandotte [Detroit] ." Since it was "confidently expected that Z. S. Durfee would be successful in his efforts to purchase [Bessemer's patents] , it was thought only to be anticipating the acquisition of property rights ... to use such of his inventions as best suited the purpose in view." ”

“ The development of the world's productive resources during the 19th century, accelerated in general by major innovations in the field of power, transportation, and textiles, was retarded by the occurrence of certain bottlenecks. One of these affected the flow of suitable and economical raw materials to the machine tool and transportation industries: in spite of a rapid growth of iron production, the methods of making steel remained as they were in the previous century ”

“ Martien was probably never a serious contender for the honor of discovering the atmospheric process of making steel. In the present state of the record, it is not an unreasonable assumption that his patent was never seriously exploited and that the Ebbw Vale Iron Works hoped to use it, in conjunction with the Mushet patents, to upset Bessemer's patents. ”

“ Slow preparation of the steel by cementation or in crucibles meant a disproportionate consumption of fuel and a resulting high cost. Production in small quantities prevented the adoption of steel in uses which required large initial masses of metal. Steel was, in fact, a luxury product.
The work of Réaumur and, especially, of Huntsman, whose development of cast steel after 1740 secured an international reputation for Sheffield, had established the cementation and crucible processes as the primary source of cast steel, for nearly 100 years. ”

“ Bessemer," being "merely a vigorous offshoot proceeding from that great discovery; but, combined with Mr. Bessemer's process, it places within the reach of every iron manufacturer to produce cast steel at the same cost for which he can now make his best iron."71
One of Mushet's replies to the paper itself took the form of the announcement of his provisional patent for the use of his triple compound which, in the opinion of The Mining Journal appeared to be "but a very slight modification of several of Mr. Bessemer's inventions." ”

“ While every detail of production was a profound secret, there were no improvements made by the outside public in any one of the machines employed during the whole thirty-five years; whereas during the fourteen years, if the invention had been patented, there would, in all probability have been many improved machines invented and many novel features applied to totally different manufactures. ”

“ He challenged the trade, not only to attack his theories but to produce evidence from their own plants that they could provide an alternative means of satisfying an emergent demand. Whether or not Bessemer is entitled to claim priority of invention, one can but agree with the ironmaster who said:6 "Mr. Bessemer has raised such a spirit of enquiry throughout ... the land as must lead to an improved system of manufacture." ”

“ Writing as "Sideros"25 he gave credit to Martien for "the great discovery that pig-iron can, whilst in the fluid state, be purified ... by forcing currents of air under it ...," though Martien had failed to observe the use of temperature by the "deflation of the iron itself"; and for discovering that—
when the carbon has been all, or nearly all, dissipated, the temperature increases to an almost inconceivable extent, so that the mass, when containing only as much carbon as is requisite to constitute with it cast steel ... ”

“ It was not, in fact, the presence of one-tenth of a percent of sulphur or phosphorous which affected the result if the Bessemer process were combined with his process by adding a triple compound of iron, carbon, and manganese to the pig. "There never was a bar of first-rate cast steel made by the Bessemer process alone"; (and that included Goransson's product) "and there never can be, but a cheap kind of steel applicable to several purposes may be thus produced." ”

“ The provocation came from his claims that the product of the first stage of the conversion was the equivalent of charcoal iron, the processes following the smelting being conducted without contact with, or the use of, any mineral fuel; and that further blowing could be used to produce any quality of metal, that is, a steel with any desired percentage of carbon. ”

“ Thus the first "Bessemer" plant in the United States came into being without benefit of a license and supported only by a patent "not suited" for a large experiment. Kelly seems to have had no part in these developments. They took some time to come to formation. Although the converter was ready by September 1862, the blowing engine was not completed until the spring of 1864 and the first "blow" successfully made in 1864. ”

“ This study reviews the controversy as to the origin of the process which, for more than 35 years1 provided the greater part of the steel production of the United States. It concerns four men for whom priority of invention in one or more aspects of the process has been claimed. ”

“ Within three weeks of his experiments in France, he had applied for a patent for "Improvements in the Manufacture of Iron and Steel."14 This covered the fusion of steel with pig or cast iron and, though this must be regarded as only the first practical step toward the Bessemer process,15 it was his experiments with the furnace which provided Bessemer with the idea for his later developments. ”

“ Accepting the evidence of "the complete industrial success" of Bessemer's process, the Scientific American108 asked: "Would not some of our enterprising manufacturers make a good operation by getting hold of the [Kelly] patent and starting the manufacture of steel in this country?"
There was no response to this rhetorical question, but a further inquiry as to whether the Kelly patent "could be bought"109 elicited a response from Kelly. Writing from Hammondsville, Ohio, Kelly110 said, in part:
I would say that the New England states and New York would be sold at a fair rate.... ”

“ Although the application of chemical knowledge to the manufacture of malleable iron cannot fail to produce beneficial results, the quality of the metal depends more upon the mechanical than the chemical processes.... ”

“ Steam and pure hydrogen gas were tried, with more or less success in the removal of sulphur, and various flues, composed chiefly of silicates of the oxide of iron and manganese were brought in contact with the fluid metal, during the process and the quantity of phosphorous was thereby reduced. ”

“ The journal advocated a "certain fixed time" after which such an inventor "should not be allowed to subvert a patent granted to another who has taken proper measures to put the public in possession of the invention."100
Little authentic is known about Kelly's activities following the grant of his patent. His biographer101 does not document his statements, many of which appear to be based on the recollections of members of Kelly's family, and it is difficult to reconcile some of them with what few facts are available. ”

“ From 1880 through 1895, 80 percent of all steel came from this source: Historical Statistics of the United States 1789-1945 (Washington, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1949) , Tables J. 165-170 at p. 187.
2See especially material distributed by the American Iron and Steel Institute in connection with its celebration of the centennial of Steel: "Steel centennial (1957) , press information," prepared by Hill and Knowlton, Inc., and released by the Institute as of May 1, 1957
3Holley's work is outside the scope of this paper. ”

“ The patent was not renewed when application was made in 1870, on the grounds that the original patent had been made co-terminal with the British patent. The latter had been abandoned "by Mushet's own fault" so that no right existed to an American renewal (U.S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of Patents, dated September 19, 1870) ”

“ With regard to steel, there may be a large field for chemical research ... however, we believe that unless the iron be of a nature adapted for the manufacture of steel by ordinary processes, the purely chemical inventions will only give a metal of a very uniform quality.
Another correspondent, William Green, was of the opinion that Mushet's "new compounds and alloys," promised well as an auxiliary to the Bessemer process but that "the evil which it was intended to remove was more visionary than real." Bessemer's chief difficulty was the phosphorus, not the oxide of iron "as Mr. ”

“ Figure 1.—Bessemer's Design for a Converter, as Shown in U.S. Patent 16082. This patent, dated November 11, 1856, corresponds with British patent 356, dated February 12, 1856. The more familiar design of converter appeared first in British patent 578, March 1, 1860. The contrast with Kelly's schematic drawing in Fig. 2 (p. 42) is noticeable.
Experiments were continued and several more British patents were applied for before Bessemer made his appearance before the British Association on August 13, 1856.18 Bessemer described his first converter and its operation in some detail. ”

“ It was a modification of the puddling furnace, in which the ore and carbon were heated in tubs, utilizing the waste heat of the reverberatory furnace (see the Mechanics' Magazine, vol. 62, p. 246, 1855) . Renton died at Newark in September 1856 (Mechanics' Magazine, 1856, vol. 65, p. 422) ”