IRON AND STEEL. 65 



expelled the air with considerable force, were invented by Hans Lob- 

 singer in Germany, in 1550. From that time the furnace grew 

 higher and wider, and the blast stronger. At first a portion of the 

 ore was reduced to a bloom of malleable iron, or mixed iron and 

 steel, and a portion flowed to the bottom of the hearth as cast iron. 

 As the furnace grew still larger the ore absorbed more carbon from 

 the fuel till the whole of it was melted. The old furnace was then 

 known in Germany as a stuckofen and the high furnace a blauofen 

 or flussofen, that is a blast furnace, because of the strong blast from 

 the improved bellows, or a flowing furnace because the product was 

 withdrawn in the shape of a stream of molten iron. In England, 

 however, bellows of wood on the old pattern were made of great size 

 and operated by water power, and these supplied a blast strong 

 enough for the conversion of the ore into cast iron. 



In Elizabeth's time the iron industry had so reduced the forests 

 by the great consumption of charcoal, that repressive laws were 

 passed ; the production of iron was greatly lessened, and the 

 industry continued in a low state till the use of mineral coal was 

 introduced. 



Still, during that very period, nearly all the improvements in 

 connection with the iron industry were made in Britain, and it was 

 the ingenuity and originality of her inventors, no less than the enter- 

 prise of her business men, which gave to England the preeminence 

 in iron manufacture which she enjoys to-day. A highly important 

 invention was that of rollers for converting blooms into rods, bars, 

 or plates instead of performing that work by the slow and laborious 

 manipulation of the hammer. It is customary to say that Cort in- 

 vented rolls in 1782 ; but I found in the library of the Franklin In- 

 stitute at Philadelphia a copy of a patent granted to John Payne 

 nearly half a century earlier. This patent is dated Nov. 21, 1728. 

 The first part is for the conversion of cast into malleable iron by the 

 application of ashes, salt, etc., to pig or sow iron while in the refinery 

 fire, "which," the patent says, " will render the same into a state of 

 malleability as to bear the stroke of the hammer, to draw it into 

 barrs, or other forms at the pleasure of the workman, and those or 

 other barrs being treated in the said melted ingredients in a long hot 

 arch or cavern, as hereafter described ; and those or other barrs are 

 to pass between two large mettall rowlers (which have proper 



