16 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



certain time a second quantity of pi^s is thrown into the second 

 dish and melted there. The flame is now reversed in its direc- 

 tion ;^the oxidizing flame is made to enter at the side where the 

 fresh. pig iron is placed. In passing over this, and oxidizing the 

 carbon, silicon, and other impurities in the iron, the flame loses 

 its surplus oxygen, and becomes of a neutral, or, at least, only 

 slightly oxidizing character. In this state it passes over the 

 other bath of molten iron, now partly refined, and it continues to 

 act upon the impurities without attacking the iron itself. At a 

 certain moment this portion of iron is completely converted into 

 steel, and that part of the furnace is then tapped, so as to make 

 room for a fresh charge of pigs in that place. After that, the cur- 

 rent of gases is again reversed, the second bath now entering into 

 the position previously taken by the first ; and so the process is car- 

 ried on continuously with two portions of iron, one freshly intro- 

 duced and acted upon by the oxidizing flame, the other partly 

 converted into steel, and exposed to the neutral flame passing away 

 from the first. M. Berard states that by protracting his process, 

 and by adding speigeleisen, he can remove sulphur and phospho- 

 rus from the iron, and make steel from inferior pigs. Such 

 statements, however, have been so frequently made by inventors, 

 without having been borne out by facts in actual practice, that we 

 must be cautious in accepting them. 



Messrs. Emile and Pierre Martin, of Sireuil, have also commenced 

 steel-making in a Siemens furnace. They melt a quantity of pig 

 iron, and introduce wrought-iron scrap, puddled steel, or other mal- 

 leable iron, into the mass while exposed to the oxidizing influence 

 of the flame. They have produced steel of excellent quality by this 

 method, and are now about to introduce their process into several 

 steel works in France. The great advantage obtained by them, and 

 one which has not yet been arrived at by the Bessemer process, is 

 the conversion of old iron rails and similar articles into steel. This 

 is a great desideratum, particularly at this present moment of 

 transition of the permanent way from iron into steel, and at- 

 tempts have been made by Mr. Bessemer, Mr. Adamson, and sev- 

 eral others, to eifect the same thing in the Bessemer converter. 

 The first trials, although they proved the possibility of converting 

 old iron rails into steel in that manner, gave an unsatisfactory 

 commercial result. It was found that the rails required to be 

 heated to a white heat before being introduced into the converter; 

 that no more than one-third of such rails could be added to the pro- 

 portion of two-thirds of very graphitic pig iron, and, with all this, 

 that there was a greater waste in the converter, and more " scull " 

 in the ladle, than with pig iron. Messrs. Martin, on the contrary, 

 are able to use a proportion up to two-thirds of old rails to one- 

 third of pig iron ; they can manage the fusing very completely, 

 and without excessive waste, and with a moderate consumption 

 of fuel, advantages which are all due to the Siemens furnace 

 which they employ. Mr. Siemens has himself very recently 

 patented an application of his furnace to the manufacture of iron 

 and steel direct from the ore, and he has exhibited a model of 

 such a furnace in Paris, to which is added a small piece of steeJ 



