222 [Assembly 



IMPROVED MANUFACTURE OF IRON. 



BT JOSEPH DIXON, of Jersey City, N. J. 



Jersey CiTi , February 8, 1848. 



T. B. Wakeman, Esq., 



Corresponding Secretary of the American Institute. 



Dear Sir — In compliance with your request, that I should give 

 you some account of the new article of iron which I have succeeded 

 after several experiments in making, I would say that next to 

 inventing a useful improvement in the arts, it is my greatest pleasure 

 to make its merits known. I will cheerfully give you as good a 

 description of its properties and uses as my present time will allow. 



The plate which I had the pleasure of showing to the officers of 

 the Institute, was the largest specimen of pure iron, except another 

 mass of forty pounds of my own manufacture, ever made. You are 

 probably aware that some few hundred grains have been shown as 

 the result of laboratory experiments in Scotland, by David Mushet, 

 and published in 1840, before which malleable iron was always 

 considered impossible, and consequently all hopes of making perfect 

 iron must have been abandoned. Mr. Mushet does not even admit of 

 the possibility of fusing it in any quantity which could be made 

 available for any practical purposes. His experiments only prove its 

 fusibility, without any result which would indicate the refining of 

 the iron while in that state. My success is in the practicability of 

 making masses of any magnitude, and then in purifying them while 

 liquid. 



Iron is found in the market, of various qualities, and known to 

 workmen as " hot short," or " red short," and " cold short," from 

 the properties it possesses of bearing greater or less degrees of heat, 

 the one being very brittle when hot, and the other when cold. Mr. 

 Mushet says: 



" I have met with no manufactured iron entirely free from carbon," 

 but the carbon is not the cause of the imperfection of all iron hitherto 



