1 8 'La'^GE, Bessemer, Goranssoii and MusJiet. 



ordinary Sheffield price of ^^50 — ^60 a ton, and was 

 regularly supplied to important firms, including Messrs. 

 Beyer, Peacock & Co. Bessemer had, by now, abandoned 

 all attempts to purify common pig, and had turned his 

 attention to the production of a special class of pure pig- 

 iron from British ores, thereby laying the foundation of 

 the great British hematite industry. In 1859 there were 

 already two blast furnaces built at Ulverston for pro- 

 ducing Bessemer hematite. 



The selection of a sufficiently refractory converter 

 lining, and the formulating of the first theoretical furnace 

 charges so as to produce a British pig-iron suited to the 

 Bessemer process, represented the solution of the last of 

 the metallurgical difficulties that had faced Bessemer and 

 his expert advisers, and which he has so graphically 

 described. The best converter lining was found to be 

 Sheffield ganister, which contained approximately 93% of 

 silica, 4% alumina, i to 2% of oxide of iron, and, the 

 remainder, the carbonates of potash, soda, and lime. In the 

 puddling furnace the absence of silica in the slag enabled 

 the phosphorus to form stable combinations with the iron 

 oxides, but under no circumstances could this happen in 

 the Bessemer converter, 40% of silica in the slag or even 

 less sufficing to prevent this. Gruner," of I'aris, was the 

 first to point this out, in the year 1857, a fact the import- 

 ance of which for the Bessemer process could not be 

 over-estimated. The rich hematites of Cumberland and 

 Lancashire yielded a pig-iron sufficiently low in phosphorus 

 and sulphur, and sufficiently high in silicon and carbon, 

 to give a hot blow. The comparatively high silicon, and 

 the comparatively low manganese, prevented, however, 

 any working according to the Swedish method to which I 

 have referred, and the metal had to be blown to nearly 



1' Bulletin de r Industrie JMivo ale, T. II., p. 199. 



