ELECTROCHEMISTRY—RICHARDS. 179 
lifetime of most of this audience. The time at our disposal forbids 
my describing these interesting furnaces; I can only refer you to Dr. 
Haanel’s interesting reports and to the transactions of this society, 
particularly to our Volume XV. One surmise of my own I will, how- 
ever, take time to mention: I have predicted that this electric-furnace 
pig iron, made without the admittance or use cf air blast, will be far 
superior to ordinary pig iron for conversion into steel, because of the 
absence of oxygen or, particularly, of nitrogen. Time will test this 
prediction, too. 
Electric steel is at present a topic of absorbing interest and great 
potentialities. It was primarily a competitor of the most expensive 
kind of steel—crucible steel. It was first made commercially in 1900, 
by Mr. F. A. Kjellin, of Sweden, by melting together in an electric 
furnace the same high-grade materials which are usually melted 
down in crucibles to form crucible steel. The product was made 
equal in quality to crucible steel, it was produced in lots of a ton or 
more at a melt, of very satisfactory uniformity, and with cheap water 
power to furnish electricity the cost was considerably below that of. 
crucible steel. 
The steel melting pot or crucible is a siliceous vessel, holding about 
100 pounds of steel, lasting only a few heats, and lifted in and out of 
the furnace by manual labor. The consumption of fuel to get the 
required melting heat is wickedly wasteful; not over 5 per cent of 
the heat-developing power of the fuel used is efficiently utilized as 
heat in the melted steel, and the actual proportion is usually less than 
half that much. The cost of labor, crucibles, and fuel is excessive, 
and to this must be added the high cost of the pure material which 
must be used—practically the purest iron which can be made. 
The electric furnace is changing all this, rapidly in continental 
Europe, slower in Sheffield, and still slower in America; but the change 
is spreading surely and inevitably. Real crucible steel will soon be a 
thing of the past, supplanted entirely by electric furnace steel of 
equal quality, made and sold much more cheaply. 
The electric furnaces used are of almost all types. The induc- 
tion furnace was developed commercially by Kjellin in Sweden, 
improved, enlarged, and greatly developed by his associates in 
Germany, combined with the Colby pattern in America, and still 
further modified by Hiorth in Norway. Thirty-six of these furnaces, 
the maximum capacity being one at Krupp’s works at Essen, 84 tons 
at a charge, are now built or building. The American Electric 
Furnace Co. is organized to push their building and operation in 
America. ‘The arc radiation furnace was developed by Maj.Stassano, 
an Italian artillery officer. It melts by heat radiated from powerful 
electric arcs. Several of these are in operation in Europe, and a 
