Manchester Memoirs, Vol. hit. ( 1 9 1 3 ), No. 11. 13 



American Institute of Mining Engineers and the Verein 

 Deutscher Eisenhiittcnleute, held in Allegheny City, Fa., 

 1890,^'" did Bessemer give an}' clue to the cause of this 

 dramatic and swift change in his fortunes, but this part 

 of the story is to be found in the following letter written 

 to Professor Richard Akermann, of Stockholm, by 



GORAN FREDRIK GORANSSON. 



" Dear Sir, 



" In conformity to your friendly letter of the 2nd 

 "instant, I will try to give you, in English, a short sketch of 

 " the ditificuUies I had in commencing with the Bessemer 

 " method and how I at last overcame them. 



" My full name is Goran Fredrik Goransson. I bought 

 "part of the Swedish Bessemer patent in June, 1857, 

 " after a conversation with Sir (then Mr.) Henry Bessemer, 

 " and on his promise that he would arrange the necessary 

 "plant and send over an engineer for starting the manu- 

 "facture in accordance with his patents. 



" In the autumn he sent over his plant, namely, a 

 " converter of his construction and a steam blast-engine 

 "constructed by Messrs. Galloway «& Co., of Manchester, 

 " accompanied by an engineer for conducting the manu- 

 " fact are. We started in November, but we soon found 

 " that the converter was impracticable, difificult to handle, 

 " and giving no good result. We then constructed a fixed 

 "converter (see PL III.) on the same principle as the small 

 " fixed vessel which Mr. Bessemer used for his first experi- 

 "ments at Baxter House, in London, but, according to 

 "Mr. Bessemer's advice, with two rows of tuyeres, six in 

 "each, the lower row at the bottom of the converter and the 

 " other some inches above ; but the result Avas not good. 

 " Mr. Bessemer then advised us to augment the pressure of 

 " the blast, and, to effect this, we took away the upper 

 " tuyeres and used only the six below, each about five-eighths 

 " of an inch in diameter, and we then sometimes succeeded, 

 "particularly during the cold, dry, winter days, in getting 

 " malleable ingots, but very irregular and generally full of 

 " slag. The engineer, not knowing anything more than 

 "myself, then left the works. 



"We tried every possible means of augmenting the 

 " pressure of the blast by reducing the diameter of the 

 " tuyeres and using smaller charges, as we had reached the 



^- See Trans, of A.I.M.E., vol. xix., p. Sio. 



