252 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



and the Man, but Tools and the Man — an indefinitely wider kind of epic. Man 

 is a tool-using animal. Weak in himself and of small stature, he stands on a 

 basis, at most for the flattest solid of some half-square foot, insecurely enough \ he 

 has to straddle out his legs lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds ! 

 Three quintals are a crushing load for him ; the steer of the meadow tosses him 

 aloft like a waste-rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools; with 

 these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing 

 iron as if it were soft paste ; seas are his smooth highway ; winds and fire his un- 

 wearying steeds." 



The conquest of the world man is achieving with steel, and who the men 

 were that have put this weapon in the hands of man, Jeans tells us in the book 

 whose title precedes this article. 



The two first and greatest inventors in the trade reaped no reward. Dudley 

 in 1618 learned a way to smelt iron with coal, and died in obscurity. Henry 

 Cort, in the middle of the eighteenth century, invented the puddling process, 

 and would have starved but for a pension of ^1^200 given him by Pitt. Honors 

 and wealth, however, were showered lavishly on the bright galaxy of men whose 

 names are enrolled in the list of the creators of the age of steel. The story of their 

 triumphs over matter and circumstance makes one of the most interesting chap- 

 ters in the history of industry. 



Sir Henry Bessemer. — Among the French refugees driven to England by 

 the Terror was Anthony Bessemer. A learned and able man, he speedily ac- 

 cumulated a handsome property, the reward of an inventive ingenuity inherited 

 and developed by his illustrious son. Among many other profitable processes 

 the elder Bessemer discovered that an alloy of copper, tin and bismuth was the 

 best for type metal. His process he kept secret, claiming that the superiority 

 of his type came from the angles at which it was cut. It lasted twice as long as 

 the other types, and sold all over England. The youngest son of this gentleman 

 was Henry Bessemer, born at Charlton in 1813. His first attack upon destiny 

 was made in improving the stamps upon public documents. He invented a 

 stamp which could not be duplicated or detached, which was adopted by the 

 Government, and for which not a penny was ever paid the young inventor. His 

 next work was a machine for making patterns of figured velvet, a type-casting 

 machine and a type-composing machine. While working upon this latter ma- 

 chine he was struck by the fact that bronze powder when manufactured sold for 

 12 shillings a pound, while the raw material cost but 11 pence. The difference 

 he knew must come from the process of manufacturing, a process which he at 

 once began to study. The article came altogether from Nuremburg in Germany, 

 and no one in England could tell him how it was made. For nearly two years 

 he studied this problem, earning success in the end by his infinite industry. , He 

 had not learned to have confidence in the patent laws, and he determined to 

 keep his invention a secret. A friend advanced him ;^ro,ooo, works were erected, 

 the machinery being made in different parts of England. Five operatives were 

 employed, at large salaries, under pledge of secrecy, and the bronze was turned 



