46 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



powerful air engine and ordered in a quantity of crude 

 iron. This was at Baxter House, a place to be ever memo- 

 rable in the history of the steel trade. The apparatus was 

 ready, the engine was forcing streams of air into the open- 

 ings in the fireclay-lined vessel, and the stoker was told to 

 pour in the iron as soon as it was sufficiently melted. 



The metal was turned, and a volcanic eruption ensued; 

 such a blaze of dazzling fire was never seen in a workshop 

 before. Coruscations of fire filled the chamber. The 

 metal flowed down, and the air burst through it upward, 

 breaking away in great bubbles of living glory. A pot-lid 

 hanging over the blaze disappeared in the flame. All this 

 time the air was rushing into the molten mass, and no one 

 dared go near to shut it off. While they were debating 

 the flame died down. Soon the result of this wonderful 

 pyrotechnic could be examined. It was steel! Seven 

 hundred-weight of steel made from melted pig without 

 crucible, coke dust, or v charcoal. Seven hundred-weight of 

 steel born simply of fire and air I 1 



The British Association met in the following week, and 

 Bessemer read a paper describing his process, exhibiting at 

 the same time his results. It was on the eleventh day of 

 August, 1856, that this public announcement was made of 

 the new method. The whole industrial world was aroused 

 by the tidings. Bessemer 's paper was reproduced in the 

 Times, and the iron trade examined the discovery with 

 infinite interest. Experiments were made in a great many 

 foundries, and the sole talk of the hour was the new way 

 of making steel. Within three weeks after reading his 

 paper at Cheltenham, Bessemer had sold 25,000 of licenses 

 to manufacture under his patent. The Dowlais Iron Com- 

 pany was the first to begin the manufacture. Bessemer 

 personally directed the construction of the works. Again 

 the molten iron was poured into the receptacle, again the 

 air blast bubbled through the metal, the gorgeous display 



'See Fig. 2 in the article "The Anatomy of a Steel Kail," which 

 illustrates a modern Bessemer converter in blast. 



