ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE MANUFACTUKE OF IRON. 37 



and Company, of Sheffield, who have rolled plates of this kind ■«'eighing nearly 

 twenty-five tons eacli. There arc, it is true, pieces of forged iron in the 

 Exhibition heavier than even this, bnt the difficulty our manufacturers had 

 to encounter in transhipment would offer impediments in carriage not expe- 

 rienced by continental nations in sending objects to Paris, where size alone 

 formed the test of merit. 



Any one having any recollection of the state of metallurgical science at the 

 time of the London Exhibition of 1851, will detect, in the means afforded 

 him at the Champs do Mars, a wonderful change in the manufacture of steel. 

 This is apparent in the number and dimensions of the objects now produced 

 in that material. More recently even than sixteen years ago, the use of 

 steel might almost be said to have been confined to small articles of cutler}' ; 

 today, railway wheels, axles, heavy working parts of steam-engines, nnd 

 even railway bars, absorb immense quantities of this form of iron. The 

 manufacturers of other nations, in this substance as in iron, maintain their 

 superiority as exhibitors, and jirobably at the head of all will be placed the 

 name of Krupp (of Essen), from whose establishment has proceeded, among 

 other admirable specimens of workmanship, the gigantic mass of cast steel in 

 the shape of a piece of ordnance, weighing upwards of fifty tons. 



Wc shall presently endeavour to discover to whose energy and inventive 

 genius tlie credit is most due of having led the way in dealing with iron 

 and steel of such extraordinary dimensions as are to be met with in our own 

 days ; and at the same time seek to establish what is the true position of 

 different nations which have laboiu'cd in raising this remaikabh; branch of 

 industry to its present colossnl proportions. 



In attempting this, the only mode of procedure is by reference to the 

 history of the past, which shall be done in terms as brief as is consistent with 

 clearness ; at tlie same time it is obvious that in a manufacture involving 

 both mechanical and chemical appliances, upon this occasion as well as here- 

 after, we shall be compelled to exceed those limits which ought to be observed 

 in any section set apart for discussing a particiilar science. Some indulgence 

 also must be extended to anj' minor inaccuracies in an endeavour to trace the 

 progress of an art which owes imjjrovemcnts in its details to different indi- 

 viduals, whoso position in questions of priority it is sometimes so difficult to 

 determine. 



It is not so very long ago that the attention of the Government of this 

 country was called to the fact that the iron furnaces of that day threatened 

 to place the kingdom in a position of considerable difficulty, from the rapid 

 manner in which they were consuming the forests of certain districts, and, 

 indeed, for a time, under the pressure of circumstances which arose, the make 

 of iron, insignificant as it was, suffered considerable diminution.. From this 

 state of things the nation was reUeved by the Darbys, in the midland coimties, 

 succeeding during the last century in applying upon a practical scale Dudley's 

 discovery of the capabilities of mineral fuel being cmjiloyed as a substitute 

 for charcoal in the blast furnace. It is quite impossible to overrate the im- 

 l)ortance of this event in the history of the iron trade, because in localities 

 where timber is only of little value, the rapid manner in which even a limited 

 mnke consumes the forests near the smelting establishment, causes charcoal 

 quickly to rise in price, owing to the increasing cost of carriage. This is easily 

 perceived when it is remembered that in Styria and Carinthia something like 

 twenty-five square miles of wood are stated as being required to supply the 

 wants of each furnace, and that in consequence the best charcoal, owing to 

 the distance it has to be conveyed, often costs nearly 50s. to GOi". per ton 



