a patent granted to another who has taken proper 

 measures to put the piihlic in possession of the in- 

 vention."** 



Little authentic is known about Kelly's activities 

 following the grant of his patent. His biographer "" 

 does not document his statements, many of which 

 appear to be based on the recollections of members of 

 Kelly's family, and it is diHicult to reconcile some of 

 them with what few facts are available. Kelly's 

 own account of his invention,'"^ itself undated, asserts 

 that he could "refine fifteen hundredweight of metal 

 in from five to ten minutes," his furnace "supplying a 

 cheap method of making run-out metal" so that 

 "after trying it a few days we entirely dispensed with 

 the old and troublesome run-out fires." '"^ This 

 statement suggests that Kelly's method was intended 

 to do just this; and it is not without interest to note 

 that several of his witnesses in the Interference pro- 

 ceedings, refer to bringing the metal "to nature," a 

 term often used in connection with the finery furnace. 

 If this is so, his assumption that he had anticipated 

 Bessemer was based on a misapprehension of what the 

 latter was intending to do, that is, to make steel. 



This statement leaves the reader under the impres- 

 sion that the process was in successful use. It is to be 

 contrasted with the statement quoted above (page 

 43), dated September 1856, when the process had, 

 clearly, not been perfected. In this connection, it 

 should be noted that in the report on the Suwanee 

 Iron Works, included in The iron manufacturers 

 guide,^"* it is stated that "It is at this furnace that Mr. 

 Kelly's process for refining iron in the hearth has 

 been most fully experimented upon." 



"» Scifnlific American, 1857, vol. 12, p. 341. 



'»' Boucher, op. cit. (footnote 97). 



'°- U. S. Bureau of the Census, Report on tlie manu/arturets of llie 

 United Slates at the lent/i census {June 7, 1SS0) . . ., Manufacture 

 of iron and steel, report prepared by James M. Swank, special 

 agent, Washington, 1883, p. 124. Mr. Swank was secretary 

 of the American Iron and Steel Association. This material 

 was included in his History oj the rnanujaclure oj iron in atl ages, 

 Philadelphia, 1892, p. 397. 



"" Ibtd., p. 125. The run-out fire (or "finery" fire) was a 

 charcoal fire "into which pig-iion, having been melted and 

 partially refined in one fire, was run and further refined to 

 convert it to wrought iron by the Lancashire hearth process," 

 according to .^. K. Osborn, An encyclopaedia oj the iron and steel 

 industry. New York, 1956. 



'"« J. P. Lesley, op. cit. (footnote 39), p. 129. The preface is 

 dated April 6, 1859. The data was largely collected by Joseph 

 Lesley of Philadelphia, brother of the author, during a tour 

 of several monllis. .Since Suwanee production is given for 44 

 weeks only of 1857 (i.e., through November 4 or 5, 1857) it is 

 concluded that Lesley's visit was in the last few weeks of 1857. 



A major financial crisis affected United States 

 business in the fall of 1857. It began in the first week 

 of October and by October 31 the Economist (London) 

 reported that the banks of the United States had 

 "almost universally suspended specie payment." '"* 

 Kelly was involved in this crisis and his plant was 

 closed down. According to Swank,'"* some experi- 

 ments were made to adapt Kelly's process to need of 

 rolling mills at the Cambria Iron Works in 1857 and 

 1858, Kelly himself being at Johnstown, at least in 

 June 1858. That the experiments were not particu- 

 larly successful is suggested by the lack of any Ameri- 

 can contributions to the correspondence in the English 

 technical journals. Kelly was not mentioned as 

 having done more than interfere with Besscmer's first 

 patent application. The success of the latter in 

 obtaining patents'"" in the United States in November 

 1856, covering "the conversion of molten crude iron 

 . . . into steel or malleable iron, without the use of 

 fuel . . ." also escaped the attention of l)oth Entjlish 

 and .American WTiters. 



It was not until 1861 that the question arose as to 

 what happened to Kelly's process. The occasion was 

 the publication of an account of Bessemer's paper at 

 the Sheffield meeting of the (British) Society of 

 Mechanical Engineers on August 1, 1861. Accepting 

 the evidence of "the complete industrial success" of 

 Bessemer's process, the Scientific American '"* asked: 

 "W'ould not some of our enterprising manufacturers 

 make a good operation by getting hold of the [Kelly] 

 patent and starting the manufacture of steel in this 

 country? 



There was no response to this rhetorical question, 

 but a further inquiry as to whether the Kelly patent 

 "could be bought" '"'' elicited a response from Kelly. 

 Writing from Hammondsville. Ohio, Kelly "" said, in 

 part: 



I would say that the New England states and New York 

 would be sold at a fair rale ... I removed from Kentuckv 



^"^ Economist (London), 1857, vol. 15, pp. 1129, 1209. 



'"* Swank, op. cit. (footnote 42), p. 125. John Fritz, in his 

 Autobiography (New York, 1912, p. 162), refers to experiments 

 during his time at Johnstown, i.e., between June 1854 and 

 July 1860. The iron manufaiturer^s guide (see footnote 104) also 

 refers to Kelly's process as having "just been tried wiih great 

 success" at Cambria. 



">■ U. S. patents 16082, dated November 11, 1856, and 16083, 

 dated November 18, 1856. Bessemer's unsuccessful application 

 corresponded with his British patent 2321, of 1855 (see foot- 

 note 98). 



"" Scientific .American, 1861, new sen, vol. 5, pp. 148153. 



'« I hid., p. 310. 



""/AiW., p. 343. 



44 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



