450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In the year 1835 the Franklin Institute offered a gold medal "to 

 the person who shall manufacture in the United States the great- 

 est quantity of iron from the ore during the year, using no other 

 fuel than anthracite coal, the quantity to be not less than twenty 

 tons." This medal was never awarded, and it is fair to presume 

 that the required quantity of iron was not manufactured by any 

 one person in 1835 by " using no other fuel than anthracite coal." 

 Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence to prove that from the 

 year 1830 to the year 1840 there were a number of attempts to use 

 mineral fuel for the smelting of iron-ores. 



The most successful of these experiments was tried at Potts- 

 ville, Pa., and the works were called the Pioneer Furnace. It was 

 built for Burd Patterson, by William Lyman, of Boston, and blast 

 was unsuccessfully applied July 10, 1839, but the furnace was 

 finally successfully blown in by Benjamin Perry, October 19, 1839, 

 and produced twenty - eight tons per week of good foundry 

 iron. " This furnace," say Bishop, " made a continuous blast of 

 ninety days, and secured for its proprietor a premium of $5,000 

 which had been subscribed by citizens of the State." On June 5, 

 1839, Mr. David Thomas, who had been associated with Mr. George 

 Crane in making pig iron with anthracite coal at Yniscedwin, in 

 Wales, arrived in America, and on July 9th of the same year he 

 commenced the erection of the first furnace of the Lehigh Crane 

 Iron Company at Catasauqua, Pa. This furnace was successfully 

 blown in by him on the 3d of July, 1840, and the first " cast " was 

 made on July 4th. The furnace was provided with a hot blast, 

 and was blown by water power derived from the Lehigh Canal. 

 This enterprise was a success from the start, the furnace producing 

 fifty tons of good foundry iron per week, and it continued to be 

 profitably operated until 1879, when it was torn down. Notwith- 

 standing the fact that there were several promising experimental 

 attempts to smelt iron with anthracite coal prior to the erection of a 

 furnace at Catasauqua by Mr. Thomas, yet this furnace, from its 

 large initial output (as measured by the practice of the time) and 

 continuous operation, and the fact that it pointed out clearly the 

 essential requisites of success in smelting with anthracite coal 

 viz., large capacity of furnace, supplied with abundance of blast at 

 a high temperature * may fairly be considered the first furnace in 

 America that achieved a satisfactory commercial success in mak- 

 ing iron with anthracite as a fuel. From his success in the erec- 

 tion and operation of this furnace, and subsequent life-long iden- 

 tification with the manufacture of anthracite pig iron, on a scale 

 far surpassing any of his contemporaries, Mr. Thomas is fairly 

 entitled to be called the father of the anthracite iron industry of 



* The "hot blast" was invented by James Beaumont Neilson, of Glasgow, in 1828. 



