SHORT PAPERS 703 



deservedly high. His friend, Dr. A. A. Hayes, has testified to " his great fertility 

 in original devices for general and technological work." While chemist to the 

 Merrimac Manufacturing Company of Lowell, Massachusetts, he undertook 

 systematic researches on the action of the dung of beeves then used for 

 removing the excess of mordant in printing calicoes with madder which 

 resulted in the discovery that crude phosphates in a bath with bran are 

 a complete substitute for the expensive material before deemed indispensable. 

 This important discovery led the way to the commercial employment of " dung 

 substitutes." His studies of the chemical changes involved in the process of 

 bleaching cotton brought about the universal adoption of the methods recom- 

 mended and resulted in the recognition of the American method of bleaching 

 which, according to the French chemist Persez, " realizes the perfection of 

 chemical operations." 



It would be an ungracious task to discuss in this paper the much-controverted 

 " ether discussion," but I may say, without fear of doing injustice to any of the 

 several claimants for the honor of the discovery of this important anesthetic, that 

 Charles Thomas Jackson (1805-1880), said to be one of the foremost chemists of 

 his time in this country, claimed, from experiments made by himself during the 

 winter of 1841-42 in his own laboratory, that he obtained results showing " that 

 a surgical operation could be performed on the patient under the full influence of 

 sulphuric ether without giving him any pain." Four years later (in 1846) this was 

 successfully accomplished by Dr. William T. G. Morton, who had studied chemis- 

 try in Dr. Jackson's laboratory. The French Academy of Sciences decreed one of 

 the Montyon prizes to Jackson for his discovery of etherization and one to Morton 

 for his application of that discovery to surgical operations. 1 



Metallurgy is little more than the application of chemical knowledge to the 

 extraction of metals from their ores, and I, therefore, beg to claim for the United 

 States the first commercial production of steel. Zerah Colburn, the well-known 

 engineer, gives William Kelly (1811-1888), an ironmaster of the Suwannee fur- 

 naces of Lyon County, Kentucky, the credit for the " first experiments in the 

 conversion'of melted cast-iron into malleable steel by blowing air in jets through 

 the mass in fusion." Later, when Sir Henry Bessemer made efforts to secure the 

 patent of the process that bears his name, it was decided by the United States 

 Patent Office that William Kelly was the first inventor and entitled to the patent, 

 which was promptly issued to him. In 1871, when application was made for a 

 renewal of the -patents originally issued to Bessemer, Mushet, and Kelly, the last 

 was successful, while the claims of the first were rejected. 2 



The successful electro-deposition of nickel and its commercial development are 

 chiefly due to the energy of Isaac Adams, a resident of Cambridge, Massachu- 

 setts. He carefully studied the subject and found that the failure to obtain satis- 

 factory results was caused by the presence of nitrates in the nickel solutions 

 previously used. His invention gave rise to prolonged litigation, but in the end he 

 was victorious. Dr. Chandler thus describes it in the following words: "The 

 novel proposition was presented to the court, of a patent for not doing something, 



1 Dr. Jackson published a Manual of Etherization, with the History of this Dis- 

 covery (Boston, 1861), and much interesting information is to be had from a " Re- 

 port of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, vindicating 

 the rights of Charles T. Jackson on the Discovery of the Anesthetic Effect of Ether 

 Vapor." The other side of the controversy is given in The Discovery of Modern 

 Anesthetics : By whom was it made? by Laird W. Nevius, New York, 1894. 



2 Much has been written of the claims of Kelly, and nearly all of the leading 

 American metallurgists agree in conceding his priority. Swank and various 

 writers in the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers may be 

 consulted. Kelly's own story, as he gave it to the present writer, appears in the 

 Iron Age, February 23. 1888, p. 339. 



