PROCEEDINGS. Ixv 



this fusing and blending, so to speak, of the mass by mixing it well while in a 

 state of fusion would materially assist in rendering the metal much more uniform. 

 This seems to have been the way in which the change from blistered steel to its 

 more uniform and denser relative cast steel was effected. This improvement is 

 said to have been efifeoted by Benjamin Huntsman about 1740 in a little town 

 near Sheffield. It is said that Huntsman and his family enjoyed an enviable 

 success as steel makers, and as the process employed by them was kept a pro- 

 found secret their success naturally aroused the cupidity of his less fortunate 

 competitors who were engaged in the productions of those articles, for which 

 this improved steel was especially adapted, and, as the story goes, on a very 

 stormy night when Huntsman and his workmen in an apartment brightly lighted 

 by the fires were employed in these metallurgical operations, a traveller 

 besought permission to enter and escape for a while the inclemency of the 

 weather, and admission having been obtained the stranger lay down upon the 

 floor and soon feigned sleep, but during the operation of melting and pouring 

 the molten steel he *' kept his weather eye open" and became acquainted with 

 the secrets of the process. 



It is reasonable to assume that a part of the secret lay in mixing with the 

 molten steel fragments of a more highly carbonized metal, such as had been pro- 

 duced by the direct process, and so, from that time on, various improvetnents 

 were from time to time effected in the composition, adapting it ultimately for 

 the great varietj^ of purposes for which this most indispensable combination of 

 iron and carbon is so cninently useful. 



But while these several processes were being developed for the productien of 

 steel, and of different kinds or qualities of steel, adapted to the various purposes 

 for which steel was necessary, the demands for malleable iron in much greater 

 quantities than previously, stimulated continued efforts to cheapen its production 

 and improve its qualitj'. One of the most important advances in this direction 

 was made towards the latter part of the 18th century when it was learned that 

 more energetic mechanical agitation of the metal while in a molten state, in the 

 presence of a blast of air, facilitated the decarbonizing process from the condition 

 of cast iron to that of malleable iron, and the operation of puddling was perfected. 

 In this process the molten metal is continually stirred and agitated by the work- 

 men with the aid of a kind of hook or " rabble" so called, and by this means new 

 surfaces and portions of the molten iron are successively exposad to the decar- 

 Ijonizing effects of the stream of air thrown into the furnace while the process 

 goes on. After a while the refined portions of the metal begin to stick together 

 and the workman, with the aid of his rabble, collects together enough to consti- 

 tute a ball which he pushes to one part of the furnace while he continues the 

 process and gathers together su(;cessivelj' ball after ball until as much as possible 

 of the metal has been recovered from the mass of molten slag and scoria which 

 remains in the furnace, this is then drawn off at suitably prepared orifices and 

 the furnace prepared for another charge. These balls or spongy masses of malle- 

 able or decarbonized iron, glowing with a brilliant white heat, and dripping with 

 iluid slag or scoria which is contained in their numerous cracks and fissures, are 

 then taken and subjected to the action of powerful squeezers, or sometimes steam 



