AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 461 



take the balance if we would take a small patent flour-mill at $125 

 in pay, which Mr. Campbell did. He shipped it here. We tried 

 it, but it was no good, and we sold it to a man in the mountains 

 for $30 ; and thus ended our coke business.' These gentlemen lost 

 heavily in their venture. It was not until the Baltimore and Ohio 

 Railroad was completed to Pittsburg, and Connellsville coke had 

 been used successfully in the Clinton Furnace of Graff, Bennett & 

 Co., at Pittsburg, that its value as a furnace fuel was thor- 

 oughly demonstrated and the foundation laid for the demand that 

 has resulted in such a development of the coke manufacture in 

 the Connellsville region. This furnace was blown in, in the fall 

 of 1859. The coke was at first made from Pittsburg coal, near 

 the furnace on the south side of the Monongahela River, nearly 

 opposite the Point, at Pittsburg. The furnace was run for about 

 three months, when, the coke made in this way not proving satis- 

 factory, it was blown out, and arrangements made to secure a 

 supply from the Connellsville region. The furnace blew in again 

 early in the spring of 18G0, the coke used being from the Fayette 

 Coke-works on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, made at first on 

 the ground in pits. The result was so satisfactory that thirty 

 ovens were built in 1860, and arrangements were made to secure a 

 continued supply." 



The general tendency toward improvement in all branches of 

 manufacturing that began to manifest itself in America about 

 the year 1840, and which, fortunately for the welfare of the coun- 

 try, has grown with the years and strengthened with each new 

 triumph of inventive thought, prompted investigation with a 

 view to determine what constructive ideas were really essential to 

 the building of a thoroughly efficient blast-furnace in which coke 

 was to be used as the fuel ; and it was very soon ascertained that 

 European metallurgical engineers had discovered that it was not 

 at all necessary to purchase a stone quarry before commencing 

 the erection of a furnace, and that all the functions of successful 

 smelting could be performed in a structure consisting substan- 

 tially of a sheet-iron casing lined with fire-brick, supported upon 

 cast-iron columns, between which were the tuyeres and dam, which 

 were thus rendered readily accessible ; the furnace being entirely 

 unincumbered with ponderous masses of supporting masonry. 

 This form of furnace was not a creation, but the result of a grad- 

 ual evolution from the old truncated pyramidal structure whose 

 massive proportions were ignorantly supposed to be absolutely 

 necessary, not only to support the weight of ore and fuel, but also 

 to confine the heat in the furnace. The first deviation from the 

 old construction consisted in a reduction of the quantity of mate- 

 rial used by making all that part of the furnace above the tuyere 

 arches either cylindrical or conical, and binding it with iron 



