CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 225 



perhaps, as the germ from which some really successful process was yet to 

 spring, to revolutionize at once the iron manufacture of the world. It has 

 been, however, all along suspected by many thinking men, that the inherent 

 impurities of the ores operated upon, and of the fuel, were the cause of the 

 want of success, which the philosophical and simple nature of the new pro- 

 cess so fully promised. That the air-boiling effectually decarbonized the 

 iron, and that to any required degree, was clearly established; and, according 

 to all our knowledge of the constitution of iron, the product therefore should 

 have been a malleable bloom, or at least, a steel ingot. If the product was 

 neither of these, what was it? Calling it refined iron, did not answer the 

 question ; for, beyond the commercial application of that term, steel itself is 

 merely iron in a certain stage of refinement. 



"NVhile public attention was subsiding in Europe and the United States, and 

 Mr. Bessemer was being left to disappointment, a Swedish iron-master, who 

 had examined the process, ordered the requisite apparatus to be sent to his 

 works at Edsken, and, after considerable delay in experimenting, has, within 

 a recent period, succeeded in establishing the manufacture of good steel, on 

 a practical scale, by the Bessemer process; and, in short, devotes his whole 

 establishment to this one process. This steel has been made into engineers' 

 tools, boiler-plates, and cutlery ; and the improvement must now be regarded 

 as an accomplished commercial fact, which can no longer admit of question 

 of theoretical grounds. 



Mr. Goransson, the Swedish iron-master in question, states that he has 

 earned out Bessemer's invention to the fullest extent, without ever having 

 had recourse to any one of the numerous plans which have been patented 

 by others, under the idea of improving the original simple process. The 

 converting vessel is erected near the tap-hole of the blast-furnace, so that 

 about one ton of fluid pig-iron can be run into the apparatus at a time. 

 The pressure of the blast is from seven to eight pounds to the square inch; 

 and when continued for six or seven minutes, the whole charge is converted 

 into steel. The fluid steel is discharged into a loam-lined ladle, where it is 

 well stirred, and considerable carbonic oxide disengaged and inflamed. 

 After a short interval of repose, which is probably necessary for the steel to 

 condense from the aerated condition in which it leaves the converting vessel, 

 it is run off from the bottom of the ladle, in a vertical stream, into the ingot 

 moulds. 



The whole time occupied, from the moment the fluid pig-iron leaves the fur- 

 nace until it is cast into the mould, does not exceed twelve minutes. The loss 

 in weight, including the impurities thrown off, does not exceed fifteen per 

 cent., which is only about one-half the waste incurred in the manufacture of 

 bar-iron by the old system in Sweden. By this improvement Mr. Goransson 

 states, in a letter to the London Engineer, that more than one thousand tons 

 annually of cast-steel can be made with the same quantity of fuel as is now 

 required for making five hundred tons of bar-iron. He says: "So com- 

 pletely have we accomplished the object, that we now make several tons of 

 large ingots of cast-steel, in succession, without a single mishap or failure of 

 any kind. The steel can be made either hard, medium, or soft, at pleasure. 

 It draws under the hammer perfectly sound and free from cracks or faults of 

 any kind, and has the property of welding in a most remarkable degree." 



