SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



ord of their results, as in the character of a flame, in the feehng of a 

 refractory mixture, in the behavior of a metal under treatment; nor arc 

 they the men who, by familiarity with objects and phenomena, are best 

 fitted to pursue that original investigation which is the foundation of 

 even theoretical progress. The expert who delights to call himself "prac- 

 tical," is honestly amazed at the attempts of experts by school graduation, 

 who have not been graduated in works, to solve the engineering prob- 

 lems of the day. And from his standpoint there are numerous and con- 

 spicuous illustrations. While metallurgists are still disputing over the 

 nature and sequence of reactions in combustion and reduction, the 

 practical ironsmelter has felt his way from the barbarous practice 

 of a century ago, to the vast and economical production of to-day. 

 The attainment of powerful and sufficiently hot blast by means of 

 waste heat, the adaptation of shape and proportion of stack to differ- 

 ent fuels and ores, labor-saving appliances and arrangements, — all these 

 have grown out of the constant handling, not of books, but of 

 furnaces. 



Proceeding upon a chemical knowledge little superior to that of the 

 average schoolboy, Bessemer developed his revolutionary process. Not 

 knowing for years that the combustion of silicon or of manganese are 

 the chief sources of the necessary heat; ignoring the fact that not alone 

 the reaction but the presence of manganese is a cause of soundness and 

 malleability in steel; magnifying the hypothesis that silicon should pro- 

 mote soundness; instructing his licensees to avoid all irons containing 

 aboV'C 0.02 per cent, of phosphorus; and sharing the ignorance of the 

 whole metallurgical profession as to the sequence of reactions in the 

 converter and the probability of changing their character, Bessemer and 

 his followers, during the first fifteen years of their practice, neverthe- 

 less brought this difficult art, which the metallurgical schools call a 

 chemical art, to a high degree of commercial success, and this in the 

 absence of any metallurgical change or chemical improvement whatever, 

 in the treatment of the metal. During all this time, there was almost no 

 literature of the Bessemer manufacture, and no instructor save that grim 

 sphinx the converter and the well-nigh inscrutable process. It was a 

 hand-to-hand fight, involving mechanical details, refractory linings, celer- 

 ity of operations, regularity of melting and conversion and economy of 

 labor. With every fact written in his book, the closeted scientist could 

 no more adequately prescribe the practical conditions of improvement, 

 than could the student in optics specify in words and formulae the glory 

 of an Italian sunset. 



Here is a cupola-furnace, an old and exceedingly simple device; 

 but one may know all the laws of combustion and fluxing that are writ- 

 ten in the cyclopedias, and yet fail to change its working at will, or fail 

 to detect the coming change, until by long familiarity, the phenomena 

 reveal themselves as it were instinctively. One may have learned every 

 law of the reactions of oxides and fluxes upon a refractory material, yet 

 until his practiced hand and eye and ear can nicely detect its physical 

 qualities and measure the results of new ingredients and temperatures, 

 he may wander for years in a maze of uncertainties. Notwithstanding all 

 our previous knowledge about the inevitable combustion of carbon and 



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