168 report — 1865. 



quantity of this metal, say from one-half to one per cent., rendered the inferior coke- 

 made irons of this country available for making cast steel ; it removed from these 

 inferior qualities of iron their red-shortness, and conferred on the cast steel so made 

 the property of welding and working soundly under the hammer. This invention 

 was of immense importance to the town of Sheffield, where its value was at once 

 appreciated. Mr. Heath, supposing himself secure in his patent, told his licensees 

 that if they put oxide of manganese and coal tar or other carbonaceous matter 

 into their crucibles along with the blister steel, it would do as well, and be much 

 cheaper than the carburet of manganese he was selling them ; in effect it was the 

 same thing, for before the steel was melted the carbon present reduced the oxide of 

 manganese to the metallic state, so that his patent carburet of manganese was formed 

 in the crucible in readiness to unite with the steel as soon as it became perfectly 

 fused. But the law decided that this was not Heath's patent, and so the good 

 people of Sheffield, after many years of litigation, were allowed to use it without 

 remuneration to the inventor. 



Manganese has now been used for many years in every cast-steel works in 

 Europe. It matters not how cast steel is made, since manganese added to it neces- 

 sarily produces the same beneficial changes ; no one better appreciated this fact 

 than the unfortunate Mr. Heath, as evidenced by his patent of 1839, in which he 

 declares that his invention consists in ' the use of carburet of manganese in any 

 process whereby iron is converted into cast steel.' Had Heath seen in his own day 

 the Bessemer process in operation, he could not have said more ; he well knew the 

 effect produced by manganese on steel, and therefore claimed its employment in any 

 process whereby iron is converted into cast steel. 



With this patent of Heath's expired and become public property, coupled with 

 the universal addition of manganese and carbon to cast steel, it woidd naturally be 

 supposed that the author, in common with the rest of mankind, would have been 

 allowed to share the benefits which Heath's invention had conferred on the whole 

 community ; but it was not so. 



The reading of the author's paper at Cheltenham in 1856 was, by the powerful 

 agency of the press, communicated in a few days to the whole country. Great ex- 

 pectations of the value of the new process were formed, both by scientific and prac- 

 tical men, in proof of which it may be stated that licenses to manufacture malleable 

 iron under the patent were purchased by ironmasters to the extent of £25,000 in 

 less than twenty-five days from the reading of the Cheltenham paper. Great ex- 

 citement existed at that moment in the iron trade, and many persons seemed to 

 covet a share in an invention that promised so much ; there was consequently a 

 general rush to the patent office, each one intent on securing his supposed improve- 

 ment. It was thought scarcely possible that the original inventor should at the 

 very outset have secured in his patents all that was necessary to the success of so 

 entirely novel a system, he must surely have overlooked or forgotten something : 

 perhaps even left out all mention of some ordinary appliance too well understood 

 to need really mentioning : so in the jostle and hurry to secure something, any point 

 on which a future claim could be reared was at once patented. Some of these gen- 

 tlemen even repatented portions of the writer's own patents, while others patented 

 things in daily use, in the hope that they might be considered new when added to 

 the products of the new process. 



Within six weeks of the date of the Cheltenham paper, Mr. Robert Mushet 

 had taken out three patents, which form part of that long series of patents by which 

 he hoped to secure to himself the sole right to employ manganese in combination 

 with iron or steel made from pig iron by forcing atmospheric air through it. In 

 this long series of patents almost every conceivable mode of introducing manganese 

 into the metal is sought to be secured. It was claimed if used in combination with 

 pitch, or other carbonaceous matter ; it was claimed if simply used in the metallic 

 form, or as Mr. Heath calls it, a carburet of manganese ; it was also claimed if 

 combined with iron and carbon — as in spiegeleisen. Manganese, in any of these 

 states of combination, was claimed if put in with the metal prior to the commence- 

 ment of the process ; it was claimed if put in during the continuation of the pro- 

 cess, and claimed if added to the steel after the process had been completed ; it was 



