72 president's address — section b. 



astrous. This experience induced a strong disinclination to test the 

 applicabiUty to copper with the use of small quantities only ; while 

 the courage, both financial and metallurgical, to face the possible loss 

 of large quantities of metal through miscarriage of experiment, was 

 not fostered by the cramped manipulative conditions under which all 

 copper-smelting was then carried out. It required an exceptional 

 working environment to provoke the necessary boldness. 



Unfortunately for their renown, the first successful investigators 

 of the true Bessemer principle appUed to copper were themselves not 

 as much impressed with the results of their labors as the modern re- 

 viewer of their endeavors is persuaded to be. ^Still, notwithstanding 

 this diffidence on their own part, there can be little doubt that a vera- 

 cious historian is compelled to bestow upon them, without reserve, the 

 honor of having first demonstrated the feasibiUty of the Besseraerising 

 of copper mattes to metallic copper in an absolutely convincing manner. 

 The time of which we are speaking were the years 1867-8, the place was 

 Bogoslowsk, in the Ural Mountains, and the agents were three Russian 

 engineers in the Government service. The facts which these men 

 established were of far-reaching import, but they undervalued them. 

 No present-day experimenter, however modestly constituted, would 

 read into the same results an equally restricted scope of usefulness. 

 On the contrary, with his wits sharpened by the testimony of numerous 

 similar instances, in which unforeseen industrial mountains have grown 

 out of chemical molehills, he would rather be inclined to magnify the 

 value of every at all practically useful or significant feature into one 

 of permanent and consequential importance, especially when on the 

 scent of a patent. Not so the Russian engineers referred to. After 

 conclusive empirical evidence, on a fair working scale, that the Besse- 

 merising of copper mattes was within the region of achievable things, 

 they withdrew from the field, reported semi-adversely, and left the 

 practical rediscovery of the facts they were the first tonote — together with 

 the settlement of a ftw bothersome, but actually quite trifling, practical 

 difficulties — to other hands. The latter are now currently credited 

 with the entire inveiition ; but, though they are unreservedly entitled 

 to the distinction of having made copper-converting a complete practical 

 success, it will be noted that this success was won on purely eclectic 

 lines, i.e... that every element which led to it had some forerunner, to 

 which the priority properly belongs. 



First Practical Investigation of Stibject h>^ Semennihoiv, von Jossa, 

 and Lnletin. — It is only natural that the absence of powerful pneu- 

 matic appliances at copper-smelting plants suitable for the purpose, 

 and the fear of metal losses, should have restrained the copper men of 

 most localities from branching out into the unknown. A happy con- 

 junction, however, brought the requisite apparatus and materials into 

 close juxtaposition with each other in the isolated locality named 

 above, on the western boundary of Russia — perhaps the only such 

 combination extant anywhere at that time — so that it was only natural 

 again that the first really adequate investigation should be conducted 

 there. The Bogoslowsk mining field contains both iron and copptir 



