44 



NATURE 



[May 14 190^ 



science was the best friend any worker could call to his 

 aid, whatsoever might be his particular part and calling 

 in labour. Sir Alfred Jones submitted the toast of 

 " Commerce and Scientific Research," replied to by Sir 

 Michael Foster and Prof. Armstrong. To the toast of " Our 

 Foreign Guests," Prof. Ravanel (Philadelphia), Prof. 

 Nocard (Paris), Prof. Weigert (Frankfort), and Prof. 

 Perroncito (Turin) replied. 



THE IRON AND STEEL INSTITUTE, 

 'T'HE annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute was 

 -*■ held at the Institution of Civil Engineers on May 7 

 and 8, and was very largely attended. 



The report of the council, read by Mr. Bennett H. 

 Brough, the secretary, showed that in 1902 the Institute 

 had made very satisfactory progress. The membership 

 amounted to 1692, and it was announced that the Institute 

 had subscribed loooZ., payable in five yearly instalments, 

 to the funds of the National Physical Laboratory. 



After the usual routine business, the retiring president, 

 Mr. William Whitwell, inducted into the chair the presi- 

 dent-elect, Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The first duty of the 

 new president was to present the Bessemer gold medal to 

 Sir James Kitson, which he did in felicitous terms. He 

 then handed the Andrew Carnegie gold medal to Mr. A. 

 Campion for his research on the heat treatment of steel, and 

 a special silver medal to Dr. O. Boudouard, of Paris, for his 

 research on the determination of the points of allotropic 

 change of iron and its alloy. The research submitted by 

 Mr. P. Longmuir, of Sheffield, on the influence of varying 

 casting temperature on the properties of alloys was com- 

 mended, and a further grant of 50^. was made to him to 

 complete the work. Mr. Campion also received a further 

 grant of a like amount to enable him to carry his researches 

 further. 



For the scholarships for the current year a large number 

 of applications was received, and after very careful in- 

 vestigation of the claims, the council decided to award four 

 scholarships of lool., each tenable for one year, to C. O. 

 Bannister (London), to P. Breuil (Paris), to K. A. Gunnar 

 Dillner in conjunction with A. F. Enstrom (Stockholm), 

 and to J. C. Gardner (Middlesbrough), respectively. 



Mr. Carnegie then delivered his inaugural address. It 

 differed widely from all that have preceded it in that it 

 dealt not with metallurgical technology, but with a con- 

 sideration of the best and most economical methods of 

 obtaining harmonious working between the mechanical 

 and business departments of a concern, and of securing 

 hearty cooperation between the employers and the employed. 

 Ihe address was much appreciated, and the thanks of the 

 Institute were eloquently expressed by Sir Bernhard 

 Samuelson and Sir David Dale. 



The first paper read was by Mr. B. Talbot, of Leeds, who 

 described the development of the continuous open-hearth 

 process. Since this new departure in metallurgy was first 

 described in 1900, considerable progress has been made, and 

 a furnace of 200 tons has been in successful operation for 

 some months at Pittsburg. Other furnaces of nearly the 

 same capacity are being erected in Great Britain, in France, 

 and in the United States. In the lengthy discussion that 

 followed, Mr. E. H. Martin, of Pittsburg, adversely criti- 

 cised the paper, whilst Mr. P. C. Gilchrist, Mr. E. Riley, 

 Mr. Saniter, Mr. F. W. Paul, Mr. G. Ainsworth, Mr. 

 Harbord, and Mr. T. H. Colley spoke in favourable terms : 

 of the process. j 



The meeting then adjourned until May 8, when Mr. I 

 Camille Mercader gave an account of the development 

 in the manufacture of railway axles on a large scale 

 accomplished at the works of the Carnegie Steel Company ' 

 at Pittsburg. With the aid of numerous illustrations, he 

 described a method of producing, by pressing, hollow axles 

 having varying diameters. An animated discussion followed, | 

 in which Mr. R. M. Daelen and Prof. Bauerman expressed 

 the opinion that the invention had been, anticipated by j 

 Ehrhard, of Diisseldorf. Sir James Kitson, Mr. E. ' 

 Windsor Richards, Mr. S. Lloyd, and Mr. Vaughan Hughes 

 also took part in the discussion. 



Prof. J. O. Arnold arid Mr. G. B. Waterhouse, of 



NO. 1750, VOL 68J 



Sheffield, then read an important paper on the influence of 

 sulphur and manganese on steel. The steels examined were 

 those experimented upon by Mr. Brinell. The results of 

 the authors' investigations show that sulphide of iron is 

 deadly in its effect upon steel, whilst sulphide of manganese 

 is comparatively harmless ; that the above facts are due to 

 the fusibility, the high contraction coefficient, and the 

 tendency of sulphide of iron to form cell walls or envelop- 

 ing membranes surrounding cells of ferrite, whilst sulphide 

 of manganese is much less fusible, segregates whilst the 

 iron is at a high temperature, and so collects into rough 

 globules, and very seldom into meshes ; that manganese 

 retards the segregation of iron and hardenite, and that 

 what is called pearlite in a normally cooled manganese 

 steel is really a mixture of granular pearlite and unsegre- 

 gated ferrite ; and that the complete segregation of the 

 ferrite in a manganiferous steel can be brought about by 

 very slow cooling, but that such annealing injures the 

 mechanical properties of the steel by lowering the maximum 

 stress and the reduction of area per cent, registered by the 

 unannealed steel. An interesting discussion followed, in 

 which Mr. Stead, Mr. F. W. Harbord, Mr. Vaughan 

 Hughes, and Mr. Sidney Houghton took part. 



The next paper read was by Mr. A. Keller, of Paris, who 

 described the application of the electric furnace in metal- 

 lurgy. This furnace, which is apt to be regarded merely 

 as a laboratory appliance, will, the author thinks, find a 

 place in the iron industry on a large scale. He shows that, 

 although the manufacture of alloys which are little used 

 can scarcely entitle it to rank as a metallurgical appliance, 

 the production of ferrosilicon, which is one of the bases 

 of modern metallurgy, and of iron, steel, copper, and 

 nickel, will permit it to be regarded in this light, ihe 

 success is the result of carefully controlled operations on a 

 large scale at Livet, in the department of Is^re. In the 

 discussion, Mr. A. H. Allen, Prof. Arnold, Mr. B. H. 

 Thwaite, Mr. A. Greiner, Mr. Stead, and Mr. Kilburn 

 Scott bore testimony to the value of the invention. 



Mr. C. von Schwarz, of Li6ge, described the best methods 

 for making Portland cement from blast furnace slag, and 

 showed that there is a wide field open to English blast 

 furnace works for carrying on a profitable industry by the 

 utilisation of their principal by-product. In the discussion 

 Mr. Hutchinson described at considerable length the results 

 obtained at Middlesbrough, and Mr. Stead spoke in 

 optimistic terms of the future development of the manu- 

 facture. 



Mr. Axel Sahlin next described an ingenious blast furnace 

 top designed not to admit air or to permit gas to escape. 

 Although the blast furnace top has been greatly modified 

 and improved of late years in order to enable the furnace 

 gases to be utilised, it still possesses certain defects which 

 occasionally lead to explosions and other hindrances to 

 eflicient working. These drawbacks have been remedied 

 in the blast furnace top described. The construction of this 

 furnace top and its adjuncts ensures immunity from ex- 

 plosions, as no air can enter the furnace at the top, whilst 

 it also provides against gas leaks and accumulations of 

 dust. The success of the new tpp is demonstrated by its 

 adoption at the Iroquois Iron W'orks, near Chicago, where 

 the first one was started in 1901, and where fourteen are 

 now working. 



Mr. B. H. Thwaite then read a paper on the detrimental 

 effect of flue dust upon the thermal efficiency of hot-blast 

 stoves. 



Colonel Cubillo, of Trubia, Spain, submitted an elaborate 

 paper on the open-hearth process, in which he gave calcula- 

 tions of the heat balance of the furnace. The experiments 

 on which the paper was based were carried out in a four-ton 

 Siemens furnace of the new form. 



Mr. J. E. Stead submitted a note on the alleged cement- 

 ation of iron by silicon announced by Moissan and Lebeau. 

 Mr. Stead's experiments show that at temperatures between 

 1100° and 1200° C. solid iron and free silicon do not com- 

 bine, and that cementation by silicon is impossible when the 

 iron and steel operated upon are in solid masses. 



Prof. Thomas Turner, of Birmingham, submitted an 

 analysis of a specimen of Sussex iron, some 200 years old. 

 The results were as follows i-^graphitic carbon, 289; com- 

 bined carbon, o-J2 ; silicon, 6-62. ■ sulphur,, o 08 ; phos- 



