compound" to "iron . . . puriiied by the action of 

 air, in the manner invented l)y Joseph Gilbert 

 Martien," '^ and that this and his other manganese 

 patents were imder the elVective control of Eblnv \'ale. 

 It seems a reasonable deduction from these circum- 

 stances that Brown's ofler to buy out Bessemer and his 

 subsequent threat were the consequences of a deter- 

 mination by Ebbw \'ale to attack Bi'sscnier by means 

 of patent infringement suits. 



Some aspects of the Ebbw \ ale siuiaiion are not 

 yet explained. Martien came to South Wales from 

 Newark, New Jersey, where he had been manager of 

 Renton's Patent Semi-Bituminous Cloal Furnace, 

 owned by James Quimby, and where he had some- 

 thing to do with the installati(jn of Renton's first 

 furnace in 1854. The first furnace was unsuccessful.^' 

 Martien next appears in Britain, at the Ebbw \'ale 

 Iron Works. No information is available as to whether 

 Martien's own furnace was actually installed at Ebbw 

 \'ale, although as noted above, I)a\id Mushet claims 

 to have been in\iied to see it there. 



Martien secured an .American patent for his process 

 in 1857 and to file his application appears to have 

 gone to the United States, where he remained at least 

 until October 1858.''" He seems to have taken the 

 opportunity to apply for another patent for a furnace 

 similar to that of James Renton. This led to inter- 

 ferences proceedings in which Martien showed that 

 he had worked on this furnace at Bridgend, Glamor- 

 ganshire (one of the Ebbw Vale plants), improving 

 Renton's design by increasing the number of "de- 

 oxydizing tubes." This variation in Renton's design 

 was held not patentable, and in any case Renton's 

 firm was able to show that they had successfully 

 installed the furnace at Newark in 1852-1853, while 

 Martien could not satisfy the Commissioner that his 

 installation had been made before September 1854. 

 Priority was therefore awarded to Quimby. Brown, 

 Renton, and Creswell.'" 



»» BritLsh patent 2219, September 22, 1856. 



"Joseph P. Lesley, I'he iron manufacturer's guide. New York, 

 1859, p. 34. Martien's name is spelled Martcen. A descrip- 

 tion of the furnace is given in Scientific American of February 11, 

 1854, (vol. 9, p. 169). In the patent interference proceedings 

 referred to below, it was stated that the furnace was in success- 

 ful operation in 1854. 



*" U. S. patent 16690, February 22, 1857. A correspondent 

 of the Mining Journal (1858, vol. 28, p. 713) states that Martien 

 had not returned to England by October 1858. 



*' U. S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of Patents, 

 dated May 26, 1859 in the matter of interference between the 

 application of James M. Quimby and others . . . and of Joseph 

 Martien. 



Since Renton had not patented his furnace in 

 Great Britain, Martien's use of his earlier knowledge 

 of Renton's work and of his experience at Bridgend 

 in an attempt to upset Renton's priority is a curious 

 and at present unexplainable episode. Perhaps the 

 early records of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works, if they 

 exist, will show whether this episode was in some 

 way linked to the firm's optimistic combination of 

 the British patents of Martien and Mushet. 



That Ebbw Vale exerted every effort to find an 

 alternative to Bessemer's process is suggested, also, 

 iiy their purchase in 1856 of the British rights to the 

 Uchatius process, invented by an .Austrian Army 

 officer. The provisional patent specifications, dated 

 Octolaer 1. 1855, showed that Uchatius proposed to 

 inake cast steel directly froin pig-iron by melting 

 granulated pig-iron in a crucible with puKerized 

 "sparry iron" (siderite) and fine clay or with gray 

 oxide of manganese, which would determine the 

 amount of carbon combining with the iron. This 

 process, which was to prove commercially successful 

 in Great Britain and in Sweden but was not u.sed in 

 .America,*" appeared to Ebbw \'ale to be something 

 from which, "we can ha\e steel produced at the [jrice 

 proposed by Mr. Bessemer, notwithstanding the 

 failure of his process to fulfil the promise." *^ 



So far as is known only one direct attempt was 

 made, presumably instigated by Ebbw \'ale, to 

 enforce their patents against Bessemer, who records " 

 a visit by Mushet's agent some two or three months 

 before a renewal fee on Mushet's basic manganese 

 patents became payable in 1859. Bessemer "entirely 

 repudiated" Mushet's patents and ofTered to perform 

 his operations in the presence of Mushet's lawyers 

 and witnes.ses at the Sheffield \\'orks so that a prose- 

 cution for infringement "would be a very simple 

 matter." That, he says, was the last heard from the 

 agent or from Mushet on the subject.*' The renewal 

 fee was not paid and the patents were therefore 

 abandoned by Kl)bw \'aie and their associates, a 



♦- J. S.Jeans, op.cil. (footnote 5), p. 108. The process is not 

 mentioned by James M. Swank, History oj the manujaclure of 

 iron in all ages, Philadelphia. American Iron and .Steel Asso- 

 ciation, 1892. 



" Mining Journal, 1856, vol. 26, p. 707. 



*' Bessemer, op. cil. (footnote 7), p. 290. 



'^ The American Iron and Steel Institute's "Steel centen- 

 nial (1957) press information" (see footnote 2), includes a 

 pamphlet, "Kelly lighted the fireworks . . ." by Vaughn 

 Shclton (New York, 1956), which asserts (p. 12) that Bessemer 

 paid the renewal fee and became the owner of Mushet's 

 "vital" patent. 



36 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM ()!■ HIS!<)R^ ANU TECHNOLOGY 



