ruled that,"" on the first qucsiion. it was settled prac- 

 tice of the Patent Ollice not to reconsider former de- 

 cisions on questions of fact; the novehy of Kelly's 

 invention iiad been re-examined when the patent 

 was reissued in November 1857. Testimony showed 

 that the patent was very valuable; and that Kelly 

 "had been untirinij in his efforts to introduce it into 

 use but the opposition of iron manufacturers and the 

 amount of capital required prevented him from re- 

 ceiving anythine; from his patent until within very 

 few years past." Kelly's expenditures were shown to 

 have amounted to $11,500, whereas he had received 

 only $2,400. Since no evidence was filed in support 

 of the public interest aspect of the case, the Commis- 

 sioner found no substantial reason for denying the 

 extension; indeed "very few patentees are able to 

 present so strong grounds for extension as the appli- 

 cant in the ca.se." 



In a similar application in the previous year, 

 Bessemer had failed to win an extension of his U. S. 

 patent 16082, of November 11, 1856, for the sole 

 reason that his Briti.sh patent with which it had been 

 made co-terminal had duly expired at the end of its 

 fourteen years of life, and it would have been in- 

 equitable to give Bessemer protection in the United 

 States while British iron-masters were not under 

 similar restraint. But if it had not been for this 

 consideration, Bessemer "would be justly entitled to 

 what he asks on this occasion." The Commissioner '"* 

 ob.served". "It may be questioned whether [Be.s.semer] 

 was first to discover the principle upon which his proc- 

 ess was founded. But we owe its reduction to prac- 

 tice to his untiring industry and perseverance, his 

 superior skill and .science and his great outlay." 



Concl 



usions 



Martien was probably never a serious contender for 

 the honor of discovering the atmospheric process of 

 making steel. In the ])resent state of the record, it 

 is not an unreasonable a.ssumption that his patent 

 was never seriously exploited and that the Rbbw 

 Vale Iron Works hoped to use it, in conjunction with 

 the Mushet patents, to upset Bessemer's patents. 



The position of Mushet is not so clear, and it is 

 hoped that further research can eventually throw a 



clearer light on his relationship with the I".l)i)w Vale 

 Iron Works. It may well be that the "opinion of 

 metallurgists in later years" "'' is .sound, and liiat iioih 

 Mushci and Bessemer had successfulK worked at the 

 same proijlem. The study of Mushei's letters to the 

 technical press and of the attitude of the editors of 

 those papers to Mushet suggests the possibility that he, 

 too, was used by Ebbw Vale for the pin-poses of their 

 attacks on Bessemer. Mushet admits that he was not 

 a free agent in respect of these patents, and the failure 

 of Ebbw Vale to ensure their full life under English 

 patent law indicates clearly enough that by 1859 the 

 firm had realized that their position was not strong 

 enough to warrant a legal suit for infringement 

 against Bessemer. Their purchase of the Uchatius 

 process and their final attempt to develop Martien's 

 ideas through the Parry patents, which exposed them 

 to a very real risk of a suit by Bessemer, are also indi- 

 cations of the politics in the case. Mushet seems to 

 have been a willing enough victim of Ebbw \'ale's 

 scheming. His letters show an almost presumptuous 

 assumption of the mantle of his father; while his 

 sometimes absurd claims to priority of invention (and 

 demonstration) of practically every new idea in the 

 manufacturing of iron and steel progressively reduced 

 the respect for his name. Bessemer claiiTis an impres- 

 sive array of precedents for the use of manganese in 

 steel making and, given his attitude to patents and his 

 reliance on professional advice in this respect, he 

 should perhaps, be given the benefit of the doubt. 

 A dispassionate judgment would be that Bessemer 

 owed more to the development work of his Swedish 

 licensees than to Mushet. 



Kelly's right to be adjudged the joint insentor of 

 what is now often called the Kelly-Bes.semer process is 

 questionable.'^" Admittedly, he experimented in the 

 treatment of molten metal with air blasts, but it is by 

 no means clear, on the evidence, that he got beyond 

 the experimental stage. It is certain that he never 

 had the objective of making steel, which was Besse- 

 mer's primary aim. Nor is there evidence that his 

 process was taken beyond the experimental stage by 

 the Cambria Works. The rejection of his "apparatus" 

 by W. F. Durfee must have been based, to some extent 

 at least, upon the Johnstown trials. There are strong 



'" Sec U. S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of 

 PatcnU, dated June 15, 1871. 



'" U. S. Patent OfTice, Decision of Commissioner of Patents 

 dated February 12, 1870. 



'" William 1'. Jeans, The creators of the age of steel, London, 

 1884. 



'^'' Bessemer dealt with Kelly's claim to priority in a Utter to 

 Engineering, 1896, vol. 61, p. 367. 



46 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY .AND TECHNOLOGY 



