140 THE ADDRESSES, LECTURES, ETC., OF 



of blows per diem from each converter. Thus I was informed that 

 at the North Chicago Steel Works, as many as 73 blows had been 

 obtained in one pit in 24 hours, although I have reason to doubt 

 whether this rate of working could be maintained for any length 

 of time. The Americans have not adopted, so far as I could 

 ascertain, the direct process of working, but are content to remelt 

 their pig metal in large cupolas in immediate proximity to the 

 converters ; the capacity of the converters has latterly been much 

 increased, and the degree of heat engendered by a blast of increased 

 power, has been augmented to such an extent that a considerable 

 amount of scrap metal can be re-melted within the fluid bath 

 before discharging the same into the ingot moulds. 



Whilst the Bessemer process has been making rapid strides, 

 another process has gradually grown up by its side, which I cannot 

 pass over without remark. I allude to the open-hearth steel pro- 

 cess, with which my name and the joint names of Siemens and 

 Martin are associated. The conception of this process is really as 

 old as that of cast steel itself. The ancient Indian steel, the 

 Wootz, was the result of a fusion of a mixture of malleable iron 

 and carbon. Reaumur, as already stated, proposed to melt wrought 

 iron and pig metal together for the production of steel, as early as 

 1722 ; and J. M. Heath, to whom we owe the important dis- 

 covery that by the addition of manganese to cast steel its 

 malleability is greatly increased, endeavoured to realize the con- 

 ception of producing steel in large masses upon the open hearth of 

 the furnace in the year 1839, and he again has been followed in 

 these endeavours by Gentle Brown, Richards, and others in the 

 same direction. 



When, in 1856, I first seriously gave my attention, in conjunc- 

 tion with my brother (Frederick Siemens) to the construction of a 

 regenerative gas furnace, I perceived that this furnace would be 

 admirably adapted to the production of steel upon the open 

 hearth, and I remember proposing it for such a purpose to Mr. 

 Abraham Darby, of Ebbw Vale, in 1861. Ever since that time 

 I have been engaged in the realization of this idea, which has been 

 retarded, however, by those untoward circumstances which ever 

 intervene between a mere conception and its practical realization. 

 Although two of my earlier licensees, Mr. Chas. Attwood, of Tow 

 Law, and the Fourchambault Company, in France (with whom 



