Septembee 13, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



331 



ture in America, American Institute of 

 Mining Engineers, Vol. V., 1876-1877) : 

 "While at the Wyandotte Works steel was 

 made at an earlier date, the Troy estab- 

 lishment was the first to bring the process 

 to a commercial success." 



A great chemist once said that the meas- 

 ure of a nation's civilization is its con- 

 sumption of soap. While this has in the 

 passing years lost none of its truth, the 

 more modern expression becomes — the meas- 

 ure of a nation's civilization is its con- 

 sumption of fuel and its production and 

 utilization of steel. .This is a measure of 

 the supremacy of the United States and 

 we may be proud to-day that we stand in 

 the cradle of the industry which makes 

 this declaration efifective. For history tells 

 us that Holley, returning from a trip 

 abroad, where he had made a study of 

 the new and recent discovery of Sir Henry 

 Bessemer and Mushet, associated with him 

 the two enterprising and farsighted gentle- 

 men already mentioned, Griswold and 

 Winslow, in the establishment of the new, 

 process on American soil at Troy. As 

 Bessemer had worked out the physical and 

 engineering part of the work, Mushet had 

 seen and worked out the chemical part of 

 the process, and thus made perfection pos- 

 sible. Chemistry and engineering working 

 together, moving forward hand in hand, 

 had brought forth this realization of the 

 greatest step in the world's progress. 



What a splendid illustration of the sug- 

 gestion of the great Tyndall, "the scien- 

 tific use of the imagination." The imagi- 

 nation of Bessemer saw the possibilities of 

 the new process and the means whereby it 

 could be carried out mechanically; the 

 imagination of Mushet saw the chemical 

 difficulties in the way of ultimate success- 

 ful operation and how they should be re- 

 moved. Holley, after the installation of 

 the process on the soil of the United States, 



saw in imagination the changes necessary 

 to the more perfect realization of the 

 dreams of Bessemer and gave to the in- 

 dustry an impetus which carried it with 

 a terrific rush throughout the length and 

 breadth of our land. For the knowledge 

 and experience of Bessemer were limited 

 to mechanics and engineering. He had 

 noticed that a blast of air across a bath of 

 molten iron changed the physical proper- 

 ties of the product to those of wrought iron 

 and steel. He saw in the old puddling 

 process the importance of access of air to 

 the molten metal to effect the necessary 

 change in its physical properties to change 

 it to wrought iron and steel. His imagina- 

 tion showed him the possibility of im- 

 proved meclianical means for effecting 

 these necessary changes by a blast of air 

 through the hot metal, but his imagination 

 was limited by his knowledge and it was 

 not possible for him to determine when his 

 treatment should be stopped. The knowl- 

 edge of chemistry of Mushet told him that 

 oxidation of the carbon was the cause of 

 the change in physical properties already 

 noted and his imagination led him to the 

 thought that the practical end of Besse- 

 mer 's process, to get exact results, would be 

 to burn away all the carbon of the iron and 

 add afterward to the bath a definite quan- 

 tity of carbon, dependent upon the quality 

 of steel desired. So he devised the addi- 

 tion of spiegeleisen at the end of the blow, 

 when the flame of carbon had disappeared 

 from the mouth of the converter, the addi- 

 tion of a substance rich in carbon to sup- 

 ply this essential element, accompanied by 

 manganese capable of reducing the iron 

 oxidized in the converter after oxidation of 

 the carbon of the original iron, and so 

 to relieve the steel of the "shortness" so 

 fatal to its future use. The Bessemer steel 

 process must have, therefore, chemical 

 control as well as engineering direction. 



