Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ivii. (191 3), No. 17. 21 



Bessemer and Ebbw Vale. 

 To correctly understand the relations between Bes- 

 semer and Mushet, it is necessary to understand those 

 between Bessemer and Ebbw Vale, as the former seem 

 quite clearly to me to be the reflex of the latter, and 

 cannot be separately considered. Bessemer relates that 

 of the many persons who called on him after the Chelten- 

 ham paper with proposals for a licence, none was more 

 energetic than Thomas Brown, of the Ebbw Vale Iron- 

 works. Brown eventually made him an offer of ^50,000 

 in cash for the patent rights in Great Britain for all his 

 iron and steel inventions. This offer Bessemer refused, 

 to the intense disappointment and chagrin of Brown. 

 From then onwards, the attitude of Ebbw Vale to Bessemer 

 was one of enmity. On September 15th, 1855, or a year 

 previous to the Cheltenham paper, Joseph Gilbert Martien 

 had taken out a patent for an improved method of making 

 steel. The idea was to let the metal, tapped from a blast 

 furnace or finery, flow through gutters which were per- 

 forated, in order to allow a stream of air or steam being 

 forced through the metal, thus purifying it. Martien 

 thought nothing about a decarburization or a generation 

 of heat. This patent was bought by Ebbw Vale, and 

 their furnace-manager, the well-known George Parry, 

 tried to develop it. Parry tried treating 30 cwts. of 

 molten pig-iron from a blast furnace by taking same into 

 a reverberatory furnace, the bottom of which was per- 

 forated for an air-blast. A violent reaction was set up, 

 the metal broke out, and the experiment was discon- 

 tinued. Percy says, " lucky for Bessemer"; but this is not 

 the fact. Others like Kelly^' and Eck'*^ had tried the same 

 idea without knowing how to utilise it. Therefore, as 



^* Engineer, vol. Ixxxi., p. 299. 



i« Pretissiscke ZeitschriftfiirBerg—Hiiticn tmd Salinemvesen, Bd.XI. 



