48 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



argument was unanswerable the Bessemer process had 

 won, the ironmasters took out licenses under it, and the 

 age of steel began. 



The revolution spread over Europe and America; the 

 process was especially popular in Sweden, where the Crown 

 Prince superintended its first trial. In Prussia Herr 

 Krupp, the great cannon maker, agreed to pay Bessemer 

 5,000 for a license. With Bessemer 's papers Krupp ap- 

 plied to the Government for a patent, the patent was 

 refused, and no royalty was ever paid to the inventor. 

 Belgium and France appropriated the new process, and 

 declined to recognize Bessemer. 



Bessemer had attacked the problem of making steel for 

 the purpose of having a better gun-metal than any then 

 existing. Accordingly he returned to his experiments with 

 ordnance. Steel cannon were cast with a tensile strength 

 of thirty tons to the square inch, figures much greater than 

 had been reached before. A number of tests were ordered 

 at Woolwich, but through rank favoritism the matter was 

 submitted to Sir William Armstrong, a rival cannon maker, 

 and very naturally an adverse decision was rendered. The 

 Government would not touch the new metals, and Bessemer, 

 for the time being, let the matter pass, concentrating his 

 attention upon the industrial uses of steel, a field large 

 enough for the ambition of any man. In 1861 he induced 

 the London and Northwestern Railroad to put down some 

 steel rails as an experiment. In 1881 these rails were still 

 in good condition iron rails had to be turned once in nine 

 months. The next step was the substitution of steel for 

 iron in ship-building; the next, an invention of steel pro- 

 jectiles, which were found to penetrate the iron armor of 

 ships as easily as the old iron balls went through wooden 

 vessels. At this time Bessemer was receiving 100,000 a 

 year from his business, but his inventive faculty did not 

 lie dormant. The best known of his later devices was a 

 ship built with an automatically balanced cabin in order 

 to do away with sea-sickness. This was a theoretical sue- 



