S7X WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 357 



malleable iron. Well, that was higher than he wished to see it, 

 but Mr. Bell admitted it was no higher than his consumption in 

 smelting nud puddling iron. 



Mr. I. L. /Icll, M.P. : No ; smelting and making into steel. 



The President : I am now speaking of iron. 



Mr. I. L. Bell, M.P. : Pardon me, Mr. President, for interrupt- 

 ing you. 1 was contrasting the conversion of iron from the ore 

 into steel by the two methods, considering the fact that we have 

 steel to look forward to. 



The President : Mr. Bell says he wishes to compare my iron 

 with his steel, but in the description which he gives of his process 

 I do not see a trace of steel. He describes a method of purifying 

 the pig metal of its phosphorus and then transferring it remelting 

 it, it appears, before he can puddle it, and then he says this puddled 

 iron may be converted into steel in an open hearth furnace ; but 

 he fails entirely to bring forward any proof that by his method he 

 produces steel in one operation. 



Mr. L L. Bell, M.P. : You must let me explain, please. I am 

 quite willing, sir, to admit that if you can make bar iron by your 

 process from a poorer ore containing phosphorus, it is obvious 

 that there are certain advantages in doing so ; but if you inform us 

 that you require richer ores free from phosphorus, this is a totally 

 different matter. I did not intend to compare your process with 

 the one I had previously described, and I hope nothing I said 

 induced the meeting to imagine that such was my intention. All 

 I wished to draw attention to was that portion of your charge 

 which consisted of hematite, and the question I raised was whether 

 such ore was most economically treated by being made into malle- 

 able iron, and then converted into steel, than by being smelted in 

 the blast furnace, and the pig iron then treated in the Bessemer 

 converter or in the open hearth for the purpose of obtaining steel. 



The President said he wished, first of all, to reply to the obser- 

 vations with regard to the production of iron, considering iron as 

 the goal to which they tended. If he had rich ores, and wanted 

 to convert these rich ores into steel, he modified the process 

 entirely ; and, indeed, he described the modus operamii which he 

 adopted in that case. If he had rich ores and wanted to make 

 steel, he put five or six tons of a mixture of that rich ore with 

 fluxing material and carbonaceous matter on the bed of an open 



