708 



STEATORNIS 



STEEL 



world, and U found in various parU of Britain. It 

 is generally white, reddish white, or yellow. It ia 

 soft and greasy to the touch, easily cut, hut broken 

 with difficulty. It is used in the manufacture of 

 porcelain. It writes readily on glaRs, itnd is used 

 by glaziers for marking plates of glass before they 

 are cut with the diamond. Tailors use it for murk 

 ing cloth before they cut it It is also used by 

 shoemakers to give nnctuosity to the heels of 

 stockings that new boots may more easily be tried 

 on. It is sold for such purposes under the names 

 of Briancon Chalk, French Chalk, and Venice 

 Talc. It readily absorbs oil or grease, and is used 

 in powder for extracting spots of them from silken 

 and woollen stuffs. It is the liasis of Kouge (q.v.). 

 It is used for imitating engraved stones, belli-; easily 

 cut, and afterwards hardened by heat ; after w hicli 

 it may be coloured by metallic solutions. It also 

 forms a polishing material for serpentine, alabaster, 

 and glass. The so-called Agalmatolite or Pagodite 

 of China, which is carve<l into images, miniature 

 pagodas, &c., is usually not steatite but a variety 

 of the mineral called finite. In other coses it is 

 a compact variety of Pyrophyllite. Now and 

 again it is steatite, 



Steatornis. See GUACHARO. 



Ktedmnn, EDMUND CLARENCE, American poet 

 and critic, was born at Hartford, Connecticut, 8th 

 October 1833. He studied at Yale and early took 

 to journalism, was war-correspondent of the New 

 York World during the war, but ultimately became 

 a stockbroker at New York. He contributed 

 actively to the more important magazines, and pub- 

 lished his tirst volume of verse in istm. His critical 

 work Victorian Poets appeared in 1875, and has 

 gone through many editions. The Poets of Atnerica 

 appeared in 1886, but naturally proved less inter- 

 esting. The Library of American Literature, in 

 1 1 volumes, edited in conjunction with Ellen M. 

 Hutchinson, was completed in 1890, and in 1895 

 was published A Victorian A nthology. 



Steel. The discovery of a material which is 

 capable of cutting ami otherwise shaping nearly 

 every other substance known to man, and which can 

 l>e so modified in hardness as to be able also to 

 easily cut and otherwise shape itself, was of sufficient 

 importance to make a distinct epoch in the pro- 

 gress of the human race. Such a material is 

 steel, which may lie made nearly as hard as the 

 diamond, or so soft that it can ! cut, bent, 

 or hammered into any shape, rolled into sheets, 

 or drawn into wire even of hair-like thinness. 

 It is composed of iron and carbon, but U not a 

 true chemical compound of these substances. True 

 chemical compounds have fixed and definite pro- 

 portions of the elements composing them, but 

 steel varies in all proportions from per cent, of 

 carbon to 2J per cent. The more carbon the 

 greater becomes the hardness of the steel, until a 

 limit is reached owing to the brittleness which 

 accompanies the hardness. The fusibility of steel 

 increases with the amount of carbon. Ordinary 

 steel contains a little silicon, manganese, sulphur, 

 phosphorus, \T., but these are merely impurities. 

 The removal of these, or their reduction to the 

 smallest possible quantity, is very desirable, as 

 upon such removal the quality of steel mainly 

 depends. These impurities are derived partly 

 from the iron ores and partly from the fuel 

 used in smelting them. When a pure ore, such 

 as the magnetic oxide of iron, and a nearly 

 pure carbon, such as wood -charcoal, are used, the 

 manufacture of steel of fine Quality is very simple 

 and easy. With such materials steel is made quite 

 M easily as iron, the carbon of the fuel readily 

 combining with the iron as it becomes reduced from 

 the ore. The ancient iron-makers obtained their 



steel in this way, and the ironmasters of the 

 East, who still work in the primitive manner 

 with small furnaces and much lahom. do the siime, 

 but they are not able to accurately regulate the 

 quantity of carbon in the Bteel and its consequent 

 hardness. 



Owing to the scarcity of these pure iron ores and 

 the high cost of charcoal, they are but little used 

 by the modern steel-maker, who adopts a very 

 roundabout process, the true reasons for whicli 

 have been much misunderstood. He first makes 

 an impure steel (pig-iron or cast-iron) containing 

 3 or 4 per cent, of carbon, then he reduces this 

 quantity to about -fa per cent or less in mak- 

 ing malleable or wrought iron by puddling (see 

 IRON), and afterwards by another expensive pro- 

 cess restores about half as much carbon as he lias 

 taken away. Steel has been defined by high scien- 

 tific authority as ' iron carbonised in degrees inter- 

 mediate between malleable and cast iron,' a descrip 

 lion that bos led to a multitude of futile and 

 costly attempts to produce steel by mixing ca-i 

 and wrought iron together, and other similar 

 devices for simply_ diminishing the proportion of 

 carbon. Such devices would be successful if cast- 

 iron were a compound or mixture of iron and 

 carbon only ; but ordinary cast-iron contains silicon, 

 sulphur, and phosphorus in quantities that are 

 ruinous to steel. 



The modern maker of the best steel therefore 

 uses the best puddled iron, preferably Swedish 

 charcoal iron. He has it rolled into bars, usually 

 3 inches wide and J inch thick, and 10 to 15 feet 

 long, and submits these to a process which has 

 received the name of cementing. The cementiiig- 

 furnace is a circular brick structure terminating 

 upwards in a wide truncated conical chimney nf 

 somewhat dome-like appearance, a familiar feature 

 in the gloomy landscape of Sheffield. Fig. 1 



Fig. 1. 



shows it in section with the upper part of the 

 chimney cutoff: / is the ashpit with the I>ar8 of 

 the fireplace seen endwise above; c, c are two 

 'chests, or converting pots, shown in section. 

 These are made of firebrick or firestone, and sup- 

 ported over the fire, with Hues so ai tanked that the 

 flame and smoke shall pass up the arched space 

 liet ween them, and l*Iow and around their outer 

 sides, BO as to heat them all round as equally 

 as possible. The smoke and lurid smoky flame 

 after traversing these flues rise into the arch, a, 

 which is thus heated and consequently radiates 

 downwards to the upper side of the chesta. 



The chests, 15 to is feet long and 2J to 3 feet 

 deep and same width, are charged by liist spreading 

 over the bottom a layer of coarsely ground charcoal 

 (from hard wood preferred) about 2 inches deep. 

 Upon this is placet! a layer of bars with a space of 

 J to J inch lietween each. Over those bars and 

 into the spaces between them is sifted another 

 layer of charcoal to about an inch deep almve the 

 bars ; then another layer of bars, and another of 



