1857.] Manufacture of Malleable Iron loilhout Fuel. 41 



with oxygen. He therefore put up an apparatus capable of convert- 

 ing about seven cwt. of crude pig into malleable iron, and so success- 

 ful was the result, that crude pig iron was rendered into malleable 

 iron in half an hour. 



He then put up a cylindrical vessel three feet in diameter and five 

 feet high, like an ordinary cupola furnace, the interior of which he 

 lined with fire brick. At about two inches from the bottom are in- 

 serted five tuyre pipes, having nozzles of fire clay. At one side of 

 this vessel, half way up, is a tap-hole for running in the crude 

 molten pig iron from a common blast furnace, and on the op- 

 posite side is another tap-hole, to run out the metal when the pro- 

 cess is completed. A blast of air of a pressure of eight pounds to 

 the square inch is let into this cylinder a few minutes before the 

 crude iron is allowed to flow into it from the blast furnace. The 

 molten crude iron is then let in by its tap, and it soon begins to 

 boil and toss about with great violence. Flames and bright sparks 

 then begin to issue from the vessel's top ; the oxygen of the air from 

 the blower combines with the carbon in the metal, evolving a most 

 intense heat producing carbonic acid gas, which escapes ; the metal 

 is deprived of its carbon without roasting by fuel, as by the common 

 mode, and thus it is rendered into malleable iron. 



By this simple process the heat generated is said to be so intense 

 that all slag is thrown out in large foaming masses, and all the sul- 

 phur is driven off, together with the d'eteriorating earthy bases, so 

 that the metal is completely refined — more pure than any puddled 

 iron. It is also stated that one workman by this process can con- 

 vert five tuns of crude pig into malleable iron in about thirty minutes. 

 Its advantages are painted in such dazzling colors, that we are afraid 

 to rely on them implicitly. If they are such as Mr. Bessemer has 

 described, a new era in the iron manufacture has dawned upon the 

 world, and malleable iron will soon be reduced to a price but little 

 above common pig iron. 



We hail every improvement in the manufacture of iron, either to 

 cheapen its price or improve its quality, as of vast consequence to 

 mankind, because it is the principal material employed in the me- 

 chanic arts ; it is the great material of modern progress in physical 

 science. Without it, we should neither have steam engines, steam- 

 ships, railroads, cotton or woolen factories ; we should be as defi- 

 cient in machinery as our forefathers who lived in the age of bronze. 



An immense amount of fuel is employed in the common process 



