June i, 1893] 



NATURE 



1 1 



this meeting Sir John Franklin took part, and as he sailed on 

 his last voyage shortly afterwards it is possible that his absence 

 prevented the matter from being further discussed. The pro- 

 visional resolution come to by the committee was to give the 

 following names and limits to the oceans : — Arctic Ocean and 

 Antarctic Ocean, to the waters lying within the Arctic and 

 Antarctic Circles respectively. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans 

 stretched from the Arctic to the Antarctic Circles, and were 

 separated from e.ich other by the meridian of Cape Horn. The 

 Indian Ocean extended from India to the Antarctic Circle, 

 divided from the Atlantic by the meridian of Cape Agulhas and 

 from the Pacific by that of the south point of Tasmania. Mr. 

 Arrowsmith, the eminent cartographer, was present at the meet- 

 ing, and it is customary in Continental works to refer this 

 systematic definition of the oceans to him. As a matter of fact 

 his maps had a great deal to do with the nomenclature acquiring 

 popularity. The committee proposed a triple sub-division of 

 the Atlantic and Pacific into a northern, southern, and inter- 

 tropical part. This has not come into general use. It is time 

 that the question of oceanic nomenclature should be seriously 

 considered again, and that the morphology and physiology of 

 these great features be taken into account as well as their 

 superficial outlines in determining a scientific classification. 



THE IRON AND STEEL INSTITUTE. 



A MEETING of the Iron and Steel Institute was held on 

 "^ Wednesday and Thursday of last week. May 24 and 25. 

 There was a somewhat short programme, only five papers being 

 on the agenda, and one of these was mt read. There were, 

 however, two additional papers afterwards brought in, but they 

 were only read by title, and as they were not discussed, had 

 very little influence on the proceedings. The papers read were 

 as follows : — On the elimination of sulphur from iron and steel, 

 by J. E. Stead, of Middlesbrough ; on the Saniter process of 

 desulphurisation, by E. H. Saniter, Wigan ; notes on puddling 

 iron, by John Head ; on the recording pyrometer, by Prof. W. 

 H. Roberts Austen. On the members assembling on Wednes- 

 day morning, the president. Sir Frederick Abel, occupied the 

 chair, and the usual formal business of reading the minutes was 

 first undertaken, after which the report of the council was read 

 by the secretary, from which it appears that the advance of the 

 institute in respect to membership has not been altogether satis- 

 factory of late. The resignation of the secretary, Mr. Jeans, 

 was also mentioned. The opportunity has been taken by the 

 council, of Mr. Jeans's retirement, to introduce some modifi- 

 cations in the secretarial and editorial arrangements. Mr. 

 Bennett H. Brough, an Associate of the Royal School of Mines, 

 who has for some time past been an assistant professor at the 

 Royal College of Science, has been appointed to the office 

 of secretary and editor to the institute. 



Sir Frederick Abel next evacuated the presidential chair, 

 which was then occupied by Mr. E. Windsor Richards, the new 

 president. Mr. Richards is an excellent representative of the 

 practical steel manufacturer, having been engaged in the iron 

 and steel trades all his life. He was for some time manager at 

 the important steel works at Eston in Middlesborough. Some I 

 time ago he vacated his position there to take the management \ 

 of the Lowmoor Iron Works, an eslahlishmeiit almost classical 1 

 in its antiquity, in an industry which has been so entirely re- 

 formed within the last few years. Lowmoor, however, keeps 

 to its old traditions and still produces best Yorkshire iron in 

 the manner practised from a period extending back into the \ 

 early days of iron manufacture, and this in spite of the improve- ! 

 ments and advances made in the manufacture of mild steel. 

 Mr. Richards having been conducted to the chair, at once pro- 

 ceeded to deliver his inaugural address. One of the most 

 important parts was his reference to the remarkable extent 

 to which English steel is made from foreign ore. It is, of 

 course, unnecessary to state at any length the reason for this, 

 as the fact must be well known to nearly all our readers. The 

 iron ores of Britain, upon which our engineering supremacy was 

 so long supposed to rest, is, with some not very important excep- 

 tions, unfitted for the production of ingot iron, more generally 

 known as, Bessemer, or mild steel. The chief reason for this is 

 the considerable percentage of phosphorus it contains. We 

 have, however, in Lancashire and Cumberland, hEematite 

 ores which are of a suitable description, but these are not 



~ largely worked as at first might be thought they would be. 



NO. 1231, VOL. 48] 



and the bulk of haematite ore required for steel making in Eng- 

 land is brought from Bilbao, in North Spain. It has been 

 generally thought of late that these deposits are being rapidly 

 exhausted, and though theuseof calcium will perhaps somewhat 

 extend the life of the supply, the end may be sufficiently near 

 to the present lime to make it worthy of the serious considera- 

 tion of steel makers. In the basic process, there is, however, 

 a means by which our native phosphoric ores can be rendered 

 suitable, to a large extent, for steel making purposes, and the 

 successful working of the basic system is therefore a matter of 

 national concern. In England, the process has received serious 

 opposition. Perhaps we have been over-conservative in this 

 matter ; or perhaps, on the other hand, we have displayed no 

 more than salutary caution. However this may be, the 

 Germans have gone far ahead of us in the production of basic 

 steel. Germany, like England, has large deposits of phosphoric 

 ore and, unlike England, has not that free sea communication 

 with Spain, which has rendered the importation of hscmatite 

 ores a matter of little difficulty and small expense. It was 

 natural, therefore, that Germany should take hold of the new 

 system with less caution and more vigour than the English steel 

 makers, but the result has been somewhat antagonistic to 

 English interests. Mr. Windsor Richards, in his presidential 

 address, told us that the west coast of England has raised 2\ 

 million tons of ore, free from phosphorus, and could probably 

 increase that quantity to produce l.^ million tons of pig iron, 

 should the demand arise. During the twelve months endiiig 

 December 1892, the quantity of basic steel made in England 

 was 406,839 tons. In Germany and Luxemburg 2,013,484 tons 

 of steel were made from phosphoric ores. 



Mr. Windsor Richards is now, as we have said, an "iron- 

 man," which seems a curious thing in the present day, afier he 

 has held, perhaps the most important position of his time in the 

 steel trade ; however, there is yet a large demand for Lowmoor 

 iron, and the old-fashioned methods of production are still in 

 vogue. Of this he gave some very interesting particulars. The 

 address dealt at some length with the question of over-produc- 

 tion, and it seems pretty evident that our facilities for making 

 steel are far ahead of the demand for the material. In spite of 

 this money is still being expended in steel-making plant, 

 although so large a part of that already existing is at present 

 lying idle, and appears likely to do so. The year 1892 was in 

 many respects one of the very worst the iron and steel industry 

 has ever known. 



The two papers by Mr. Stead and Mr. Saniter on the elimin- 

 ation of sulphur from iron, were contributions of great value. 

 The subject is one ofvery considerable importance, and fortunately 

 has h)een occupying the attention of metallurgists for some time 

 past. It would he impossible lor us, in a brief notice of this 

 kind, to give an abstract of these two papers ; indeed they are 

 only complementary to papers already read by the authors at 

 former meetings. Calcium chloride is the purifying material 

 in admixture with lime, and the process is adapted, either for 

 purifying fluid iron or pig iron direct from the blast fur- 

 nace. The process is effected by running the fluid metal 

 into a ladle having a layer of the purifying materials on 

 the bottom, and afterwards running the metal into pigs or 

 plate metal for subsequent use in the puddling process ; or the 

 crude sulphury pig may be treated in the basic Siemens 

 furnace or Bessemer converter, with the desulphurising mixture. 

 About i cwt. of crude calcium chloride is used per ton of steel, 

 n conjunction with an excess of lime above that which is usually 

 employed; the cost of the calcium chloride is about 35.?. per 

 ton. About 70 per cent of sulphur can be removed from the 

 charge of metalinanopen hearth furnace by this process. It may 

 be added that the process is in practical working at Wigan. What 

 we have already said with regard todephosphorisationof ore in 

 its bearing on tbe use of our native ores also applies, to a great 

 extent, to desulphurisation, and although Mr. Saniter does not 

 stand alone in the introduction ofa desulphurising process, there 

 is no doubt that he has rendered this country considerable 

 service by his efforts in this direction. The reading of these 

 twopaper.s, together with the introductory business and the presi- 

 dential address, occupied the whole of the Wednesday sitting, 

 and the discussion on both papers was taken jointly on Thursday 

 morning. The chief point raised was whether the process was 

 one requiring such delicacy in manipulation that ordinary work- 

 men could not be trusted to carry it out so as to produce uniform 

 results. Whether this objection will be fatal time will show, 

 but the general opinion appeared to be that by employing fairly 



