Birmingham, to one of their glass-smelting furnaces, and proved a 

 complete and undoubted success. As showing the saving to this 

 industry alone, it may be observed that glass-smelting furnaces upon 

 Siemens' principle are now in operation in which the fuel consumed 

 is only 15 cwts. for every ton of glass produced, instead of 2 or 3 

 tons of fuel as was formerly the usual consumption for each ton of 

 glass. 



The great economy of fuel effected by the regenerative gas furnace, 

 together with the great ease with which its high temperature could 

 be maintained and regulated, soon led to its application in the 

 production of iron and steel. In 1862 a paper by Siemens appeared 

 in the "Chemical News" "On the Regenerative Gas Furnace as 

 applied to Glass Furnaces, Paddling, Heating, &c.," and from that 

 year the application of the regenerative principle to the processes of 

 iron and steel making gained increasing attention from those 

 concerned, having been very early adopted in the iron district of 

 Lanarkshire in Scotland. 



But Siemens did not rest content with the application of his 

 regenerative gas furnace to the then known methods of iron and 

 steel-making. With this new appliance he now turned his attention 

 to the improvement of the methods of manufacture. His first 

 attempt was in the production of steel on the open hearth according 

 to the well-known experiments of Beamur, and in 1862 a practical 

 trial of the arrangements devised by him to effect this was made at 

 Tow Law by Mr. Charles Atwood, under a licence from William 

 Siemens. This arrangement was found, however, to be faulty, and 

 had to be laid aside. After one or two other disappointments, 

 Siemens took the matter into his own hands, and in the famous 

 sample steel works which he founded at Birmingham in 1865, he 

 wrought out to a thorough practical success the process of steel 

 making known as the Siemens Process, a subsequent improvement of 

 which is the now well-known Siemens-Martin Process. Within three 

 or four years after this the Landore Works, near Swansea, were 

 organised on an extensive scale for the carrying out of this manu- 

 facture, William Siemens being here associated with Mr. Dill- 

 wyn, M.P., as the pi-incipal owners. The new material mild steel 

 thus introduced, speedily proved its surpassing excellence for 

 metallic structures in which strength and lightness were desired : 

 while its manipulation was less difficult than that of iron on account 

 of its greater ductility. Hence it at once began to displace iron in 

 the construction of the highest class of steam-ships and marine 

 steam-boilers, whilst of late years it seemed destined to altogether 

 supplant iron as a material for the purposes of marine architecture 

 and engineering. As an evidence of the extent to which these 

 Siemens and Siemens-Martin Processes have been adopted, it may be 



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