

WILLIAM SIEMENS, FJl.S. 303 



In tlif discussion of his Paper 



"ON THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON AND STEEL 

 BY A DIRECT PROCESS." 



[NOTE ON MR. SIEMKNS'S PAPER.* The Paper f "On the Manufacture 

 of Iron and Steel by a Direct Process," was prepared under severe 

 pressure of business, with the view of being amplified and corrected 

 after delivery. Unfortunately, however, the rough paper, with marginal 

 remarks having reference only to the reading, was handed to the 

 printer without my having had an opportunity of revising and ampli- 

 fying it, as I should have wished. C. W. S.] 



DR. SIEMENS \ said, amongst the observations which had been 

 made, he would notice only those that required an answer from 

 him. Some of them had been answered fully or partly by other 

 speakers, and need not therefore be referred to by him again, 

 because their time was naturally valuable. The first speaker was 

 Mr. Snelus, and he had spoken very much in favour of reducing 

 iron from the fluid condition, and had referred to a method, which 

 he had informed them was in course of being tried at Middles- 

 brough, of forcing, he supposed, carbonic oxide gas through fluid 

 ores. Now, he had tried that method of proceeding and he cer- 

 tainly had not succeeded. Carbonic oxide, or any other poor 

 description of gas, was so near the point of saturation with carbon 

 that, if it took up any oxygen from the ore which it contained, it 

 soon arrived at the point where it took no more, and there the 

 reaction would stop. The result would be that a vast amount of 

 gas had to be driven through the fluid ore in order to produce a 

 given amount of reducing work, but that large amount of gas had 

 the disadvantage upon the fluid ore that it cooled it, and thereby 

 checked the reaction that was going on. It was upon those re- 

 sults becoming apparent, which, however, he (Dr. Siemens) partly 

 expected, that that mode of proceeding was given up and solid 



* Excerpt Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, Vol. I. 1873, p. 253. 



f As both the paper "On Smelting Iron and Steel," see p. 283, ante, and this 

 one cover the same ground, the former has been reprinted, with the above dis- 

 cussion on the latter. 



J Excerpt Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, Vol. I. 1873, pp. 84-90. 



