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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



masses as were required for cannon, armor-plate, tlie shafts of 

 ocean steamers, and parts of steain-engines of the largest class, 

 was the making of steel by a modification of the puddling process, 

 whence the new product was called " puddled steel." The opera- 

 tion consisted in using a superior quality of charcoal pig iron, and 

 in so manipulating it that the carbon was only partly removed ; 

 and the resulting product was a weldable and f orgeable metal, pos- 

 sessing many of the qualities of the softer varieties of steel. The 

 art of puddling steel is of German origin. The first efforts to prac- 

 tice it are said to have been made at Frantschach, by Schlegel 

 and Miiller, in 1835. This and several other attempts failed, and 

 " it was not until 1850 that good puddled steel was produced in 

 the iron-works of Messrs. Lehrkind, Fakenroth & Co., at Haspe, 

 by following the suggestions of the chemist Lahaye." * 



The process was introduced into England in 1850 by Ewald 



Fig. 54. Old Style of Steel " Tilting-Hammers." 



Reipe, and hence became known there as the " Reipe process " ; it 

 was patented in 1859 in the United States by Anton Lohage, and 

 was operated for a time by Messrs. Corning & Winslow, of Troy, 

 K Y., and by Messrs. James, Horner & Co., at Pompton, N. J. In 

 1870 there were eleven hundred and eighty-five tons of '" puddled 

 steel " made in this country, valued at $218,500; but before the 

 year 1880 the process appears to have become obsolete in America. 

 By their neglect of tins process the owners of American iron and 

 steel works threw away what would have been to many of them 

 a source of great profit during the twenty years preceding the 

 introduction of the " Bessemer " and " open-hearth " processes of 

 manufacturing steel. In Europe, however, during the past forty 

 years, a very large amount of stool has been made in this way, 



* Practical Treatise on Metallurgy, by Crookes and Rohrig. 



