1886.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 14 7 



iron used in his first rails was excellent; a section of one of them, 

 jifter forty years of service, is here for exhibition. Another spe- 

 cimen is a piece of one of the early rails used on the Boston and 

 Albany Eailroad. The latter were only nine feet in length, and 

 the ends cnt in a diagonal form. A few lengths are now in a 

 siding at Sonthville, Mass. During the last annual inspection, 

 my car was run on this siding, and the deflections of the old 

 rails were over twenty times greater than of their present 73-lb. 

 rail. In the early times, each master mechanic had to fabricate 

 most of his material for construction. He made and fashioned 

 his springs as best he could, and is entitled to more credit than 

 he received. The important and serious question was to keep 

 his locomotives in running order; for if one made a round trip 

 in the spring of the year without breaking down it was thought 

 to be good luck. Men had to do many things unexpectedly and 

 on short notice, and those who could not make the same thing 

 do for a dozen purposes in an emergency were of little use. 

 Short roads were being consolidated, slowly evolving the present 

 great trunk lines; heavier and special types of locomotives, of 

 thirty to forty tons, to draw more cars and faster trains had taken 

 the place of the lighter ones. Under the increased tonnage, iron 

 rails were giving way with unexpected rapidity, crushing at the 

 joints, centres, and other places where the welds of the pile were 

 imperfect. Thousands of tons of iron rails did not last three 

 months, while two to three years' service was considered good for 

 trunk lines. Eates for transportation were of necessity high to 

 meet operating expenses. To improve the wear of the rail, phos- 

 phorus was i)ut in the head, which after re-rolling would be 

 mixed through the entire rail, making it brittle. The sections 

 of the rail were made heaviei', but Avithout improving the results. 

 Proper distribution and quality of iron were needed, as well as 

 quantity. 



During the civil war, the demands of the government for trans- 

 portation of troops and munitions of war were so great and re- 

 munerative that the railroads prospered, but the benefits to them 

 were small compared to those conferred upon the country. Steel 

 tires for the driving wheels had replaced those of Lowmoor iron, 

 giving many times increased service. Bessemer, in England, had 

 long been working to make steel directly from the pig iron. As 

 four to five per cent of carbon in it makes it weaker than wrought 

 iron, while only three-tenths to one per cent makes it stronger, his 

 idea was to remove a part of the carbon, leaving the rest to make 

 the superior metal. In this new field of inquiry, he started with 

 the assumption that crude iron contains about five per cent of 

 carbon, which could not exist in the presence of oxygen at high 

 temperatures without uniting therewith. So he blew air 



