226 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
direct from the ore have been tried upon a small industrial scale in 
Italy, France, and Canada. 
The first of these—the Stassano—has not achieved success, although 
large sums of money were expended upon the trials at Rome and 
Darfo in Northern Italy. An arc furnace of the rotai, : 
employed, and the ore was ground and briquetted with t’ abs er 
coke, before charging into the furnace. The costs of grinding and 
briquetting all the raw materials, and the difficulty of maintaining a 
durable lining to the furnace, were the principal causes of failure. 
The Keller furnace and process for the production of gray, mot- 
tled, and white pig iron from the ore has been operated at Livet in 
France for several years, with moderate success. The furnaces are 
of 1,000-horsepower and 308-horsepower capacity, of the two-shaft 
type, with large carbon-block electrodes slung in chains in the ~ ~ 
of each shaft. The heat is obtained by combined are and resi 
heating. A canal connects the hearths of the two shafts, and wi 4 
filled with molten iron this canal serves as the electrical connecting 
link between the two portions of the furnace. The ore is crushed 
roughly, to a size of 2 inches, and is charged with the lime and coke 
into each shaft of the furnace. The electric power required per short 
ton of pig iron produced at Livet averages 2,300 kilowatt hours, 
it is estimated that with power at $10 per electrical horsepower yc 
a ton of pig iron could be produced by the Keller furnace and process 
for $11.60. A furnace designed to produce 20 tons of gray iron 
castings per twenty-four hours has been erected at Livet, but I am 
not aware whether it is yet in work. 
The third process and furnace are that of Heroult, and the most 
important trials have been conducted at Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, 
under the auspices of the Canadian government. The furnace is a 
single-shaft furnace of most simple type. The smelting of the ore is 
carried out by combined are and resistance heating, the raw materials 
being charged without grinding into the shaft of the furnace, in 
which hangs the heavy carbon-block electrode, while the sole plate 
primes the other electrode. The experiments with this furnace at 
Sault Ste. Marie proved that magnetite and titaniferous iron sand 
could be smelted without difficulty and that charcoal could be substi- 
tuted for coke, without briquetting. The electric power required per 
ton of iron was 1,541 kilowatt hours, or less than at Livet, but later 
trials of the same furnace at Sault Ste. Marie have shown that the 
larger power consumption is the more correct. The furnace has now 
been taken over by the Lake Superior Company financing the devel- 
opment of this new industrial center, and 54 tons of nickel pig have 
been produced in it from the roasted pyrrhotite ore of the district. 
This attempt to found a new iron and steel center in Canada may 
