178 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



such as among the French Alps, and the importations into this coun- 

 try have been on a large scale. Fortunately, we are commencing at 

 Niagara Falls, in Virginia, and in Canada to supply ourselves with 

 these necessities of the steel industry, and we may look forward to 

 a steady and large domestic development of this industry. Within 

 a few miles of this hall a small electric furnace is now at work making 

 ferrotungsten to go into expensive high-class steel. Pittsburgh is 

 going to take its share in the running of this particular electrometal- 

 lurgies! industry. 



Pig iron would seem to be about the last item to find a place in an 

 address upon the electrochemical industries. But the truth must 

 "out" — electric-furnace pig iron is now being made, and made and 

 sold at a profit. We will hasten to admit that the furnaces are small, 

 that they are in California and Sweden, where fuel is expensive and 

 power is cheap, that a great deal of money has been sunk in bringing 

 them to their present condition ; but after all has been admitted, the 

 fact remains that electric furnace production of pig iron is not a 

 chimera, but an accomplished fact. Pittsburgh has been able to 

 boast that she "could manufacture a ton of pig iron and put it down 

 anywhere in the world cheaper than it could be there produced." 

 That may be still true of the kind of pig iron which Pittsburgh is able 

 to make, but there are grades and qualities of pig iron (Swedish 

 charcoal pig iron, for instance) which are still imported into this 

 country and sold at double the price of our domestic pig iron. And, 

 in the country where that charcoal pig is slowly, laboriously, and 

 skillfully made, the electric shaft furnace is able to compete with the 

 charcoal blast furnace in producing this high quality pig iron. Dr. 

 Haanel, of the Canadian department of mines, has in a recent report 

 given us the most reliable information about the running of this 

 furnace. The construction is peculiar, and still somewhat experi- 

 mental, the full power for which the furnace was designed has not 

 yet been available for running it, the workmen are new to their tasks, 

 the overseers are still learning, the irregularities in the running are 

 not yet all overcome, and many of the minor details are yet being 

 adjusted. The furnace is still, hi brief, decidedly in the formative or 

 experimental stage. Yet, notwithstanding, Prof. Odelstjerna, one of 

 the most expert of Swedish metallurgists, states that the cost of pro- 

 duction is $1.50 per ton less than in the Swedish blast furnaces. If 

 that is true now, it needs little gift of prophecy to figure out at least 

 $2.50 per ton saving when the furnace is properly run. Three similar 

 furnaces of greater capacity, 2,500 kilowatts each, are to be erected in 

 Norway; three similar ones are to be put up at Sault Ste. Marie, 

 Canada. These are only the forerunners, we may be sure, of dozens 

 or perhaps even hundreds which will be built and operated within the 



