lions," after which he wimld have time to tackle "the 

 difficiihies which have so far retarded the iron 

 operations." '"' 



Mushet ^' claims to have taken out his ])atent of 

 September 22, 1856, co\-crino- the famous "triple 

 compound," after he — 



had fully ascenaincd, upon the ordinary scale of manu- 

 facture that air-purified cast-iron, when treated as set forth 

 in my specifications, would afford tough malleable iron . . . 

 I found, however, that the remelting of the coke pig-iron, 

 in contact with coke fuel, hardened the iron too much, 

 and it became evident that an air-furnace was more proper 

 for my purpose . . . [the difficulties] arose, not from anv 

 defect in my process, but were owing to the small quantity 

 of the metal operated upon and the imperfect arrangement of 

 the purifying vessel, which ought to be so constituted that 

 it may be turned upon an axis, the blast taken off, the alloy 

 added and the steel poured out through a spout . . , Such 

 a purifying vessel Mr. Bessemer has delineated in one of his patents. 



Mushet also claimed to have designed his own 

 "purifying and mixing" furnace, of 20-ton capacity, 

 which he had submitted to the Ebbw \'ale Iron 

 Works "many months ago, " without comment from 

 them. There is an intriguing reference to the pain- 

 ful subject of two patents not proceeded with, and 

 not discussed "in the a\aricious hope that the parties 

 connected with the patents will make me honorable 

 amends . . . these patents were suppressed without 

 my knowledge or consent. " Lest his qualifications 

 should be cjuestioned, Mushet concludes: 



I do not profess to be an iron chemist, but I have un- 

 doubtedly made more experiments upon the subject of 

 iron and steel than any man now living and I am thereby 

 enabled to say that all I know is but little in comparison 

 with what has yet to be discovered. 



So began Mushet's claim to have solved Be.s.semer's 

 problem, a claim which was to fill the correspondence 

 cokmnis of the engineering jotirnals for the next ten 

 years. Interpretation of this correspondence is made 

 difficult by our ignorance of the facts concerning the 

 control of Mushet's patents. These have to be pieced 

 together from his scattered references to the subject. 



His experiments were conducted, at least nearly up 

 to the close of the year 1856, with the cooperation 

 of Thomas Brown of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works. '" 

 The price of this assistance was apparently half in- 

 terest in Mushet's patents, though for reasons which 

 Mushet does not explain the deed prepared to effect 



"/AiV., p. 791. 



" IhiJ., p. 770 (italics supplied). 



" Ihid., p. 770. 



PAPER .3: BEGINNINGS OF CHE.\P STEEL 

 471274—59 4 



the transfer was never executed," Mushet contin- 

 ued, however, to regard the patents as "wholly my 

 own, though at the same time, I am bound in honor 

 to take no unfair advantage of the non-execution of 

 that deed." .\ possible explanation of this situation 

 ma\- be found in Ebbw \'ale's activities in connection 

 with Martien and Bessemer, as well as with an 

 Austrian inventor, Uchatius, 



Ebbw Vale and the Bessemer Process 



After his British .^s.sociation address in .\ugust 

 1856, Be-ssemer had received applications from several 

 ironmasters for licenses, which were issued in return 

 for a down payment and a nominal royalty of 25 

 pence per ton. ,\niong those who started negotia- 

 tions was Mr. Thomas Brown of Ebbw Vale Iron 

 Works, one of the largest of the South Wales plants. 

 He proposed, however, instead of a liccn.se, an out- 

 right purchase of Bessemer's patents for £50,000. 

 Bessemer refused to .sell, and according to his '* ac- 

 count — 



intense disappointment and anger quite got the better of 

 [Brown] and for the moment he could not realize the fact 

 of my refusal . . . [He then] left me very abruptly, saying 

 in an irritated tone . . . "I'll make you see the matter 

 differently yet" and slammed the door after him. 



David Mushet's advocacy of Martien's claim to 

 priority over Besseiner has already been noticed 

 (p. 33). From him we learn '^ that Martien's cxf>eri- 

 ments leading to his patent of September 15, 1855, 

 had been carried out at the Ebbw Vale Works in 

 South Wales, where he engaged in "jx'rfectins; the 

 Renton process." "' Martien's own process consisted 

 in passing air through metal as it was run in a trough 

 from the furnace and before it passed into the puddling 

 furnace. 



It is known that Martien's patent was in the hands 

 of the Ebbw \'ale Iron Works by March 1857.^" This 

 fact nnist be added to our knowledge that Mushet's 

 patent of September 22. 1856 was drawn up with a 

 specific reference to the application of his "triple 



" Ihtd., p. 823, 



"Bessemer, op. cit. (footnote 7), p. 169. 



5' Mining Journal, 1856, vol. 26, p. 631. 



'"James Rcnton's process (U. S. patent 8613. December 23, 

 1851) had been developed at Newark, Now Jersey, in 1854, 

 It wa« a modification of the puddlini; furnace, in which the 

 ore and carbon were heated in tubs, utilizing the waste heat 

 of the revcrbcratory furnace (sec the Mechanics' .\taga-ine, 

 vol. 62, p. 246, 1855). Ronton died at Newark in September 

 1856 (Mechanics' Maga-int, 1856, vol. 65, p. 422). 



" Mining Journal, 1857, vol. 27, p. 193, 



J-T 



