254 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



erful air-engine and ordered in a quantity of crude iron. This was a Baxter 

 House, a place to be ever memorable in the history of the steel trade. The 

 apparatus was ready, the engine was forcing streams of air into the openings in 

 the fire clay-lined vessel, and the stoker was told to pour in the iron as soon as it 

 was sufficiently melted. 



The metal was turned and a volcanic eruption ensued; such a blaze of daz- 

 zling fire was never seen in a work shop before. Corruscations of fire filled the 

 chamber. The metal flowed down and the air burst through it upward, breaking 

 away in great bubbles of living glory. A pot-lid hanging over the blaze disap- 

 peared in the flame. All this time the air was rushing into the molten mass and 

 no one dared to go near to shut it off. While they were debating the flame died 

 down. Soon the result of this wonderful pyrotechnic could be examined. It 

 was steel ! Seven hundred weight of steel made from the melted pig without cruci- 

 ble, coke dust, or charcoal. Seven hundred weight of steel born simply of fire 

 and air ! 



The British Association met in the following week, and Bessemer read a 

 .paper describing his process, exhibiting at the same time his results. It was on 

 the nth day of August, 1856, that this public announcement was made of the 

 new method. The whole industrial world was aroused by the tidings. Bessem- 

 er's paper was reproduced in the Times, and the iron trade examined the discov- 

 ery with infinite interest. Experiments were made in a great many foundries, 

 and the sole talk of the hour was the new way of making steel. Within three 

 weeks after reading his paper at Cheltenham, Bessemer had sold ^25,000 of 

 licenses to manufacture under his patent. The Dowlais Iron Company was 

 the first to begin the manufacture. Bessemer personally directed the construc- 

 tion of the works. Again the molten iron was poured into the receptacle, again 

 the air blast bubbled through the metal, the gorgeous display of Baxter House 

 was repeated, everything went well, but the result was not steel— it was nothing 

 but a very good cast iron. 



Those who had praised the new process now ridiculed it. The failure was 

 inexplicable, but it was a failure, and exactly six weeks after the publication of 

 the article in the Times a meeting of iron-masters at Dudley condemned the 

 Bessemer process as a practical failure. 



The inventor was not dismayed. Patiently and hopefully he set to work to 

 find the flaw which had spoiled his work. A long series of experiments followed 

 before he found the cause of his failure. By mere chance the iron used on the 

 occasion at Baxter House, when steel was made was Blsenavon pig, which was 

 exceptionally free from phosphorus. The metal used at the Dowlais works con- 

 tained this element. Here he found the cause of his failure. He set to work to 

 giminate the phosphorus by the puddling process, but while doing this there 

 arrived an invoice of Swedish pig iron, clear of the obnoxious substance. Under 

 his original process this yielded steel of such a high quality that he at once aban- 

 doned the effort to dephosphorize ordinary iron and began to manufacture frora 



