

TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 169 



also claimed if put into any furnace . crucible, or vessel that the converted metal 

 might be run or poured into ; in fact manganese and its compounds were so claimed 

 under all imaginable conditions that if this series of patents eoidd have been sus- 

 tained in law it would have been utterly impossible for the author to have employed 

 manganese with steel made by his process, although it was considered by the trade 

 to be impossible to make steel from coke-made iron without it. 



In the ' Mining Journal ' of September 24th, 1853, just four years before the first 

 of Mr. Mushet's series of patents, a letter was published on the subject of Heath's 

 invention. The writer of that letter says, " I am a steel maker, and deny that 

 steel was ever made with the addition of carbon and manganese or carburet of 

 manganese previously to Heath's invention, and I confidently assert that no cast- 

 steel maker can now carry on his business to profit without the aid of carburet of 

 manganese. Tbere are," he says, " a hundred methods of improving steel with 

 manganese, but they all involve the same principle. Put carbon and manganese 

 into the steel pot in any form you please and at any time you like, and if the steel 

 be thoroughly melted, the carburet of manganese melts also and is alloyed, and the 

 improvement is unerringly effected, and by the use in every instance of carburet of 

 manganese." 



This letter clearly shows how well the subject was understood in the steel trade 

 thirteen years ago. 



Very soon after the reading of the Cheltenham paper several rough trials of 

 the Bessemer process were made privately by persons in the iron trade, and defects 

 discovered which were supposed by practical men to be perfectly fatal to the inven- 

 tion. Once more the press teemed with accounts of the process, but this time it 

 spoke only of its utter impracticability, and of regrets that the high expectations 

 originally formed were so fallacious. The storm, however, gradually subsided, and 

 the process and its author were soon entirely forgotten. Imperfections in the pro- 

 cess there certainly were, but the author had had the most irrefragable proofs of 

 the correctness of the theory on which his invention was based, and also that the 

 reasoning on which it was so utterly condemned by the trade was in itself wholly 

 fallacious ; he therefore decided not to argue the question against a hundred pens, 

 but to energetically prosecute his experioients and to remain silent until he could 

 bring the process to a commercial success. When, at the expiration of about three 

 years of incessant labour on the part of himself and his partner, Mr. Longsdon, and 

 an expenditure of more than £10,000, the process was again brought before the 

 public, not the slightest interest was manifested by the trade : it had been for years 

 agreed on all sides that it was a total failure, and was looked upon simply as a 

 brilliant meteor that had suddenly flitted across the scientific horizon, leaving the 

 subject in more palpable darkness than before. This entire want of confidence on 

 the part of the trade was most discouraging ; one of two things became imperative, 

 either the invention must be abandoned, or the writer must become a steel manu- 

 facturer ; the latter alternative was unhesitatingly accepted, and Messrs. Henry 

 Bessemer and Co. determined to erect a steel works at Sheffield, in the veiy heart 

 of that stronghold of steel making. At these works the process has ever since been 

 successfully carried on ; it has become a school where dozens of practical steel 

 makers received their first lessons in the new art, and is the germ from which the 

 process has spread into every state in Europe, as well as to India and America. 



By the time the new works at Sheffield had got into practical operation, the 

 invention had sunk so low in public estimation that it was not thought worth pay- 

 ing the £50 stamp due at the expiration of three years on Mr. Mushet's large batch 

 of manganese patents ; they were consequently allowed to lapse and become pub- 

 lic property. 



The author has therefore used without scruple any of these numerous patents for 

 manganese without feeling an overwhelming sense of obligation to the patentee. 



At the suggestion of the author works for the production of manganese alloys 

 were erected by Mr. Henderson at Glasgow, who now makes a very pure alloy of 

 iron and manganese, containing from twenty-five to thirty per cent, of the latter 

 metal, and possessing many adA'antages over spiegeleisen, which it will doubtless 

 replace. Two bright rods of l£ inch diameter were placed on the table, they 

 were folded up cold under the hammer. This extremely tough metal is made by 



