about tlircf years ago. and now reside at New Salisbury 

 about three miles from Haminondsville and sixty miles froin 

 Pittsburg. Accept my thanks for your kind efforts in 

 endeavoring to draw the attention of the community to the 

 advantages of my process. 



This letter suggests that the Kelly jMocess had been 

 dormant since 1858. Whether or not as a result of 

 the publication of this letter, interest was resumed in 

 Kelly's experiments. Captain Eber Brock Ward of 

 Detroit and Z. .S. Diirfee of New Bedford, Massa- 

 chusetts, obtained control of Kelly's patent. Durfee 

 himself went to England in the fall of 1861 in an 

 attempt to secure a license from Bessemer. He 

 returned to the United .States in the early fall of 1862. 

 assuming that he was the only "citizen of the United 

 States'' who had even seen the Bessemer apparatus.'" 



In June, 1862, W^ F. Durfee, a cousin of Z. S. 

 Durfee, was asked by Ward to report on Kelly's 

 process. The report "- was unfavorable. "The 

 description of [the apparatus] used by Mr. Kelly at 

 his abandoned works in Kentucky satisfied me that it 

 was not suited for an experiment on so large a scale 

 as was contemplated at Wyandotte [Detroit]." 

 Since it was "confidently expected that Z. S. Durfee 

 would be successful in his efforts to purchase [Besse- 

 mer's patents], it was thought only to be anticipating 

 the acquisition of property rights ... to use such of 

 his inventions as best suited the purpose in view." 



Thus the first "Bessemer" plant in the United 

 States came into being without benefit of a license 

 and supported only by a patent "'not suited" for a 

 large experiment. Kelly seems to have had no part 

 in these developments. They took some time to 

 come to formation. Although the converter was 

 ready by September 1862, the blowing engine was 

 not completed until the spring of 1864 and the first 

 "blow" successfully made in 1864. It may be no 

 more than a coincidence that the start of production 

 seems to have been impossible before the arrival in 



'" His claim is somewhat doubtful. Alexander Lyman 

 Holley, who was later to be responsible for the design of most of 

 the first Bessemer plants in the United States had been in 

 England in 18.S9, 1860, and 1862. In view of his interest in 

 ordnance and armor, it is unlikely that Bessemer could have 

 escaped his alert obseivation. His first visit specifically in 

 connection with the Bessemer process appears to have been in 

 1863, but he is said to have begun to interest financiers and iron- 

 masters in the Bessemer procc-ss after his visit in 1862 {Engineer- 

 ing, 1882, vol. 33, p. 115. 



11- W. F. Durfee: "An account of the experimental steel 

 works at Wyandotte, Michigan," Transactions of the American 

 Society of Stechanical Engineers, 1884, vol. 6, p. 40 fl". 



this country of a \oung man, L. M. Hart, who had 

 been trained in Bessemer operations at the plant of 

 the Jackson Brothers at St. Seurin (near Bordeaux) 

 France. The Jacksons had become Bcsscmcr's part- 

 ners in respect of the French rights; and the rcciniit- 

 ment of Hart suggests the possibility that it was from 

 this French source that Z. S. Durfee obtained his 

 initial technical data on the operation of the Bessemer 

 process.'" 



During the organization of the plant at Wyandolte, 

 Kell\- was called back to Cambria, probably by 

 Daniel J. Morrell, who, later, became a partner with 

 Ward and Z. S. Durfee in the formation of the KelK 

 Pneumatic Process Company."* We learn from John 

 E. Fry,"^ the iron moulder who was assigned to help 

 Kelly, that — 



in 1862 Mr. Kelly returned to Johnstown for a crucial, 

 and as it turned out, a final series of experiments by him 

 with a rotative [Bessemer converter] made abroad and imported 

 for his purpose. This converter embodied in its materials and 

 construction several of Mr. Bessemer's patented factors, of 

 which, up to the close of Mr. Kelly's experiments above 

 noted, he seemed to have no knowledge or conception. .And 

 it was as late as on the occasion of his return in 1862. to 

 operate the experimental Bessemer converter, that he first 

 recognized, by its adoption, the necessity for or the impor- 

 tance of any after treatment of, or additions required by the 

 blown metal to convert it into steel. 



Fry later asserted "* that Kelly's experiments in 

 1862 were simply attempts to copy Bessemer's ineth- 

 ods. (The possibility is under investigation that the 

 so-called "pioneer converter" now on loan to the 

 U. S. National Museum from the Bethlehem Steel 

 Company, is the converter referred to by Fry.) 



William Kelly, in eflfect, disappeared frotti the 

 record until 1871 when he applied for an extension 

 of his patent of June 23, 1857. The application was 

 opposed (by whom, the record does not state) on the 

 grounds that the invention was not novel when it was 

 originally issued, and that it would be against the 

 public interest to extend its term. The Coinmissioner 



1" Research in the French sources continues. The arrival 

 of L. M. Hart at Boston is recorded as of April 1, 1864, his 

 ship being the SS A/riea out of Liverpool, England (.\rchivcs 

 of the United States, card index of passenger arrivals 1849- 

 1891 list No. 39). 



11* Swank, op. cit. (footnote 42), p. 409. 



'^^ Johnstown Daily Democrat, souvenir edition, autumn 

 1894 (italics supplied). Mr. Fry was at the Cambria Iron 

 Works from 1858 until after 1882. 



11' Engineering, 1896, vol. 61, p. 615. 



PAPER ?>: BLGINNINGS OF CHEAP STEEL 



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