1869.] Metallurgy. 563 



pipes, is already an accomplished fact ; and when the difficulties 

 and objections which usually adhere for a considerable time to new 

 mechanical arrangements are removed from these machines, they 

 will probably attain extensive application." 



Metaxlurgy. 



Mr. Henry Bessemer has recently patented a means of pro- 

 ducing heat, which is of a very remarkable character. The principle 

 involved will be understood from the following remarks by the 

 inventor : — " I am at the present time busily engaged in investi- 

 gating the action of combustion under pressure in furnaces where 

 the flame is bottled up (so to speak) like steam in a steam-boiler, 

 by which means heat is intensified in the ratio of the pressure 

 employed, so that the most refractory substances known to man may 

 be fused or dissipated in vapour with the same quickness and facility 

 with which our most fusible substances are melted. In one modi- 

 fication of these furnaces the workmen operate in a large iron room, 

 where the pressure of the atmosphere is greater than it would be 

 at a depth of ten miles below the surface of the earth, and where 

 the temperature, under ordinary circumstances, would be such that 

 no attendant of a Turkish bath could endure it for a single hour. 

 Yet these men and the furnace they tend may, by a simple arrange- 

 ment of apparatus, be supplied with thousands of cubic feet of air 

 per minute, as cool, or if necessary much cooler, than the surround- 

 ing atmosphere." 



The following new process for obtaining iron from its ores has 

 been brought before the Academy of Sciences by M. Ponsard. The 

 author of this paper has applied Siemens's fiu'nace to the manufac- 

 ture of iron ; he states that he has succeeded in producing one ton 

 of cast iron, of excellent quality, with a consumption of only one 

 ton of fuel. The author summarizes his results in the following 

 manner : — 



(1) A great saving of fuel can be made, and iron obtained from 

 its ores, without the use of blast furnace ; (2) that, since the heat 

 produced by flame is sufficient to effect all the chemical reactions 

 and melt the metal, there may be used all kinds of fuel which pro- 

 duce gas — that is to say, all kinds of coal, no matter whatever their 

 quality, wood, hguite, peat, hydrogen gas, and mineral oils ; (3) it 

 is possible to obtain, at will, a more or less carburetted metal, 

 according to the quantity of carbonaceous matter which is mixed 

 with "the ore, and placed in the crucibles to act as chemical agent 

 only. Specimens of iron, of very good quality, obtained by the 

 process as carried on by the author, were exhibited to the members 

 of the Academy at this meeting. 



2 Q 2 



