pathic doses" of 70 or 80 pounds capable of being 

 handled by human labor.-" Bcsscmcr's claim to 

 "do" 800 pounds of metal in 30 minutes against the 

 puddlins; furnace's output of 500 pounds in two 

 hours was calculated to arouse the opposition of those 

 who feared the loss of capital invested in puddling 

 furnaces and of those who suspected that their jobs 

 might be in jeopardy. The ensuing criticism of 

 Bessemer has to be interpreted, therefore, with this 

 in mind; not by any means was it entirely based on 

 objective consideration of the method or the product.-' 



Within a month of his address, Bessemer had sold 

 licenses to several ironmasters (outside Sheffield) and 

 so provided himself with capital with which to con- 

 tinue his development work; but he refused to sell his 

 patents outright to the Ebbw Vale Iron Works and 

 by this action, as will be seen, he created an enemy 

 for himself. 



The three years between 1856 and 1859. when 

 Bessemer opened his own steel works in Sheffield, were 

 occupied in tracing the causes of his initial difficulties. 

 There was continued controversy in the technical 

 press. Bessemer (unless he used a nom-de-plume) took 

 no part in it and remained silent until he made 

 another public appearance before the Instituii(jn of 

 Civil Engineers in London (May 1859). By this time 

 Bessemer's process was accepted as a practical one, 

 and the claims of Robert Mushet to share in his 

 achievement was becoming clamorous. 



ROBERT MUSHET 



Robert (Forester) Mushet (1811-1891), born in the 

 Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, of a Scots father 

 (David, 1772-1847) himself a noted contributor to 

 the metallurgy of iron and steel, is, like the .American 

 William Kelly, considered by many to ha\"c been a 

 victim of Bessemer's astuteness — or villainy. Because 

 of Robert Mushet's preference for the quiet of Cole- 

 ford, many important facts about his career are lack- 

 ing; but even if his physical life was that of a recluse, 

 his frequent and verbose contributions to the corre- 

 spondence columns of the technical press made him 

 well-known to the iron trade. It is from these letters 

 that he must be judged. 



In view of his propensity to intervene pontifically in 



every discussion concerning the manufacture of iron 

 and steel, it is somewhat surprising that he refrained 

 from comment on Bessemer's British A.ssociaiion 

 address of August 1856 for more than fourteen months. 

 The debate was opened over the signature of his 

 brother David who shared the family facility with 

 the pen.^^ Recognizing Bessemer's invention as a 

 "congruous appendage to [the] now highly developed 

 powers of the blast furnace" which he describes as "too 

 convenient, too powerful and too capable of further 

 development to be superseded by any retrograde 

 process," David Mushet greeted Bessemer's discovery 

 as "one of the greatest operations ever devised in 

 metallurgy." " A month later, however, David 

 Mushet had so modified his opinion of Bessemer as to 

 come to the conclusion that the latter "must indeed be 

 classed with the most unfortunate inventors." He 

 gave as his reason for this turnabout his discovery that 

 Joseph Martien had demonstrated his process of 

 "purifying" metal successfully and had indeed been 

 granted a provisional patent a month before Bessemer. 

 The sharp practice of Martien's patent lawyer, Mushet 

 claimed, had deprived him of an opportunity of 

 proving priority of invention against Bessemer. 

 Mushet was convinced that Martien's was the first in 

 the field.-' 



Robert Mushet's campaign on behalf of his own 

 claims to have made the Bessemer process effective 

 was introduced in October 1857, two years after the 

 beginning of Bessemer's experiment and after one 

 year of silence on Bessemer's part. Writing as 

 "Sideros" -' he gave credit to Martien for "the great 



=0 The Times, London, .AuRiist 14, 1856. 



-' David Mushet rt-cognizcd that Bossi-mor's great feature 

 was this effort to "raise the after processes ... to a level 

 commensurate with the preceding case"" (Mining Journal, 

 1856, p. 599). 



" See Mining Journal, 1857, vol. 27, pp. 839 and 853. David 

 Mushet withdrew from the discussion after 1858 and his relapse 

 into obscurity is only broken by an appeal for funds for the 

 family of Henry Cort. A biographer of the Mushets is of the 

 opinion that Robert Mushet wrote these letters and obtained 

 David's signature to them (Fred M. Osborn, The slory of the 

 Mushels, London, 1952, p. 44, footnote). The similarity in the 

 style of the two brothers is extraordinary enough to support this 

 idea. If this is so. Robert Mushet who disagreed with himself 

 as "Sideros"' was also in controversy with himself writing as 

 "David." 



-' Mining Journal, 1856, vol. 26, p. 567. 



-* Ibid., pp. 631 and 647. The case of Martien will be dis- 

 cussed below (p. 36). David Mushet had overlooked Bessemer's 

 patent of January 10, 1855. 



-■■' Mining Journal, 1857, vol. 2"", p. 723. Robert Mushet was 

 a constant correspondent of the Mining Journal from 1848. The 

 adoption of a pseudonym, peculiar apparently to 1857-1858 

 (see Dictionary oj national biography, vol. 39, p. 429), enabled 

 him to carry on two debates at a time and also to sing his own 

 praises. 



PAPER .3: BEGINNINGS OF CHEAP STEEL 



