506 REPORT— 1881. 



of tlie British Association ; the heating of the blast was coming veiy 

 slowly into use, and the temperature attained when heatiug was 

 employed was only some 600 degrees. The ordinary blast furnace of 

 those days was 35 to 40 feet high, and about 12 feet diameter at the 

 boshes, and turned out about 60 tons a week. It used about 2^ tons of 

 coal per ton of iron, and no attempt was made to utilise the waste gases, 

 whether escaping in the form of gas or in the form of flame, the country 

 being illuminated for miles around at night by these fires. The furnaces 

 were also open at the hearth, and continuous fire poured out along 

 with the slag. In 1881 blast furnaces are from 90 to 100 feet high and 

 25 feet in diameter at the boshes ; and they turn out from 500 to 800 

 tons a week. The tops and also the hearths are closed, and the blast, 

 thanks to the use of Mr. E. A. Cowper's stoves, is at 1,200 degrees. The 

 manufacture of iron has also now enlisted in its service the chemist as 

 well as the engineer, and amongst those who have done much for the 

 improvement of the blast furnace, to no one is greater praise due than 

 to Mr. Isaac Lowthian Bell, who has brought the manufacture of iron 

 to the position of a highly scientific operation. In the production 

 of wrought iron by the puddling process, and in the subsequent mill 

 operations, there is no very considerable change except in the magnitude 

 of the machines employed and in the greater rapidity with which they 

 now run. In saying this I am not forgetting the various mechanical 

 puddlers which have been put to work, nor the attempts which have 

 been made by the use of some of them to make wrought-iron direct 

 from the ore ; but neither the mechanical puddler nor the direct processes 

 have yet come into general use, and I desire to be taken as speaking of 

 that which is the ordinary method pursued at the present in puddled 

 iron manufacture. In 1831 a few hundredweights was the limit of 

 weight of a plate, while in 1881 there may readily be obtained for 

 boiler-making purposes plates of at least four times the weight of those 

 that were the limit of weight in 1831. I may, perhaps, be allowed to say 

 that there is an extremely interesting Blue Book of the year 1818, con- 

 taining the report of a Parliamentary Committee which was appointed to 

 investigate a boiler explosion, and I recommend any mechanical engineer 

 who is interested in the history of the subject to read that book. He will 

 find it there stated that in the North of England there was a species of 

 engines called locomotives, the boilers of which were made of wrought- 

 iron beaten, not rolled, because the rolled plate was not considered fit ; 

 it was added that if made of beaten iron the boiler would last at least 

 a year. 



In 1831, thirteen years later, the dimensions of rolled plates were, 

 no doubt, raised ; but few then would have supposed it possible there 

 should be rolled such plates as are now produced for boiler purposes, 

 and still fewer would have believed that in the year 1881 we should make 

 for warlike purposes rolled plates 22 inches in thickness and 30 tons in 

 weight. I have said there is very little alteration in the process of 

 making wrought iron by puddling, and I do not think there is likely 

 to be much further, if any, improvement in this process, because I 

 believe that, with certain exceptions, the manufacture of iron by puddling 

 is a doomed industry. I ventured to say, in a lecture I delivered at the 

 Royal Institution three years ago, on ' The Future of Steel,' that I 

 believed puddled iron, except for the mere hand- wrought forge purposes 

 of the country blacksmith, and for such-like purposes, would soon 



