The Beginnings of Cheap Steel Part 3

Action took the form of continued experiments and, by the end of 1857, a decision to build his own plant at Sheffield.[64] An important collateral development resulted from the visit to London in May 1857 of G. F. Goransson of Gefle, Sweden. Using Bessemer equipment, Goransson began trials of the process in November 1857 and by October 1858 was able to report: "Our firm has now entirely given up the manufacture of bar iron, and our blast furnaces and tilt mills are now wholly employed in making steel by the Bessemer process, which may, therefore, be now considered an accomplished commercial fact."[65]

[64] This enterprise, started in conjunction with Galloway's of Manchester, one of the firms licensed by Bessemer to make his equipment, was under way by April 1858 (see _Mining Journal_, 1858, vol. 28, p. 259).

[65] _Mining Journal_, 1858, vol. 28, p. 696. Mushet commented (p. 713) that he had done the same thing "eighteen months ago."

Goransson was later to claim considerable improvements on the method of introducing the blast, and, in consequence, the first effective demonstration of the Bessemer method[66]--this at a time when Bessemer was still remelting the product of his converter in crucibles, after granulating the steel in water. If Mushet is to be believed, this success of Goransson's was wholly due to his ore being "totally free from phosphorous and sulphur."[67] However, Bessemer's own progress was substantial, for his Sheffield works were reported as being in active operation in April 1859, and a price for his engineers' tool and spindle steel was included in the _Mining Journal_ "Mining Market"

weekly quotations for the first time[68] on June 4, 1859.

[66] Sw.a.n.k, _op. cit._ (footnote 42), p. 405.

[67] _The Engineer_, 1859, vol. 7, p. 350.

[68] _Mining Journal_, 1859, vol. 29, pp. 396 and 401. The price quotation was continued until April 1865.

In May 1859 Bessemer gave a paper, his first public p.r.o.nouncement since August 1856, before the Inst.i.tution of Civil Engineers.[69] The early process, he admitted, had led to failure because the process had not reduced the quant.i.ty of sulphur and phosphorous, but his account is vague as to the manner in which he dealt with this problem:

Steam and pure hydrogen gas were tried, with more or less success in the removal of sulphur, and various flues, composed chiefly of silicates of the oxide of iron and manganese were brought in contact with the fluid metal, during the process and the quant.i.ty of phosphorous was thereby reduced.

[69] _The Engineer_, 1859, vol. 7, p. 437.

But the clear implication is that the commercial operation at Sheffield was based on the use of the best Swedish pig iron and the hemat.i.te pig from Workington. The use of manganese as standard practice at this time is not referred to,[70] but the rotary converter and the use of ganister linings are mentioned for the first time.

[70] Jeans, _op. cit._ (footnote 5), p. 349 refers to the hemat.i.te ores of Lancas.h.i.+re and c.u.mberland as "the ores. .h.i.therto almost exclusively used in the Bessemer process."

A definitive account of the Swedish development of the Bessemer process, leading to a well-doc.u.mented claim that the first practical realization of the process was achieved in Sweden in July 1858, was recently published (Per Carlberg, "Early Production of Bessemer Steel at Edsken," _Journal of the Iron and Steel Inst.i.tute, Great Britain_, July 1958, vol. 189, p. 201).

Mushet had, with some intuition, found opportunity to rea.s.sert his contributions to Bessemer a few days before this address, describing his process as perhaps lacking "the extraordinary merit of Mr.

Bessemer," being "merely a vigorous offshoot proceeding from that great discovery; but, combined with Mr. Bessemer's process, it places within the reach of every iron manufacturer to produce cast steel at the same cost for which he can now make his best iron."[71]

[71] _The Engineer_, 1859, vol. 7, p. 314. Bessemer's intention to present his paper had been announced in April.

One of Mushet's replies to the paper itself took the form of the announcement of his provisional patent for the use of his triple compound which, in the opinion of _The Mining Journal_ appeared to be "but a very slight modification of several of Mr. Bessemer's inventions." Another half dozen patents appeared within two months, "so that it is apparent that Mr. Mushet's failure to make the public appreciate his theories has not injured his inventive faculties."[72]

These patents include, besides variations on his "triple compound"

theme, his important patent on the use of tungsten for cutting tools, later to be known as Mushet steel.[73]

[72] _Mining Journal_, 1859, vol. 29, p. 539 and 640. Another Mushet patent is described as so much like Uchatius' process that it would seem to be almost unpatentable.

[73] See Jeans, _op. cit._ (footnote 5), p. 532.

Mushet's formal p.r.o.nouncement on Bessemer's paper, dated June 28, 1859, is perhaps his most intelligible communication on the subject. He alone "from the first consistently advocated the merits and pointed out the defects of the Bessemer process," and within a few days of the British a.s.sociation address he had shown Ebbw Vale "where the defect would be found and what would remedy" it. It was not, in fact, the presence of one-tenth of a percent of sulphur or phosphorous which affected the result if the Bessemer process were combined with his process by adding a triple compound of iron, carbon, and manganese to the pig. "There never was a bar of first-rate cast steel made by the Bessemer process alone"; (and that included Goransson's product) "and there never can be, but a cheap kind of steel applicable to several purposes may be thus produced." After emphasizing the uniqueness of his attempt to make Bessemer's process successful, he a.s.serts:[74]

In short, I merely availed myself of a great metallurgical fact, _which has been for years_ before the eyes of the metallurgical world, namely that the presence of metallic manganese in iron and steel conferred upon both an amount of toughness either when cold or when heated, which the presence at the same time of a notable amount of sulphur and phosphorous could not overcome.

[74] _The Engineer_, 1859, vol. 8, p. 13 (italics supplied). It is noted that Mushet's American patent (17389, of May 26, 1857) prefers the use of iron "as free as possible from Sulphur and Phosphorous."

The succeeding years were enlivened, one by one, by some controversy in which Mushet invoked the shadow of his late father as support for some p.r.o.nouncement, or "edict," as some said, on the subject of making iron and steel. In 1860, on the question of suitable metal for artillery, later to be the subject of high controversy among the leading experts of the day, Mushet found a ready solution in his own gun metal. This he had developed fifteen years before. It was of a tensile strength better even than that of Krupp of Essen who was then specializing in the making of large blocks of cast steel for heavy forgings, and particularly for guns. Indeed, he was able publicly to challenge Krupp to produce a cast gun metal or cast steel to stand test against his.[75] A year later his attack on the distinguished French metallurgist Fremy, whom he describes as an "a.s.s" for his interest in the so-called cyanogen process of steel making, did little to enhance his reputation, whatever the scientific justification for his attack.

His att.i.tude toward the use of New Zealand (Taranaki) metalliferous sand, which he had previously favored and then condemned in such a way as to "injure a project he can no longer control,"[76] was another example of a public behavior evidently resented.

[75] _The Engineer_, 1860, vol. 9, pp. 366, 416, and _pa.s.sim_.

[76] _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 11, pp. 189, 202, 290, 304.

By mid-1861, on the other hand, Bessemer was beginning to meet with increasing respect from the trade. The Society of Engineers received a dispa.s.sionate account of the achievement at the Sheffield Works from E.

Riley, whose firm (Dowlais) was among the earlier and disappointed licensees of the process.[77] In August 1861, five years after the ill-fated address before the British a.s.sociation, the Inst.i.tution of Mechanical Engineers, meeting in Sheffield, the center of the British steel trade, heard papers from Bessemer and from John Brown, a famous ironmaster. The latter described the making of Bessemer rails, the product which above all was to absorb the Bessemer plants in America after 1865. After the meeting, the engineers visited Bessemer's works; and later it was reported,[78] "at Messrs. John Brown and Company's works, the Bessemer process was repeated on a still larger scale and a heavy armor plate rolled in the presence of some 250 visitors...."

[77] _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 12, p. 10.

[78] _Ibid._, p. 63.

These proceedings invited Robert Mushet's intervention. Still under the impression that his patent was still alive and, with Martien's, in the "able hands" of the Ebbw Vale Iron Company, he condemned Bessemer for his "lack of grace" to do him justice, and took the occasion to indict the patent system which denied him and Martien the fruits of their labors.[79]

[79] _Ibid._, pp. 78 and 177.

_The Engineer_ found Mushet's position untenable on the very grounds he was pleading--that patents should not be issued to different men at different times for the same thing; and showed that Bessemer in his patents of January 4, 1856, and later, had clearly antic.i.p.ated Mushet.

In a subsequent article, _The Engineer_ disposed of Martien's and Mushet's claims with a certain finality. The Ebbw Vale Iron Works had spent 7,000 trying to carry out the Martien process and it was unlikely that they would have allowed Bessemer to infringe upon that patent if they had any grounds for a case. Bessemer was not imitating Mushet. The latter's "triple compound" required manganese pig-iron (with a content of 2 to 5 percent of manganese) at 13 per ton while Bessemer used an oxide of manganese (at a 50 percent concentration): at 7 per ton.

The alloy of manganese and other materials now used in the atmospheric process contains 50 percent of manganese a proportion which could never be obtained from the blast furnace, owing to the highly oxidisable nature of that metal. And it is absolutely necessary, in order to apply any useful alloy of iron, carbon and manganese, in the manufacture of malleable iron and very soft steel that the manganese should be largely in excess of the carbon present.[80]

[80] _Ibid._, p. 208. There is an intriguing reference in this editorial to an interference on behalf of Martien against a Bessemer application for a U.S. patent. No dates are given and the case has not been located in the record of U.S. Patent Commissioner's decision.

Sufficient answer to Mushet was at any rate available in the fact that many hundreds of tons of excellent "Bessemer metal" made without any mixture of manganese or spiegeleisen in any form were in successful use. And, moreover, spiegeleisen was not a discovery of Robert Mushet or an exclusive product of Germany since it had been made for twenty years at least from Tow Law (Durham) ores. If Bessemer had refused Mushet a license (and this was an admitted fact), Bessemer's refusal must have been made in self-defense:

Mr. Mushet having set up a number of claims for "improvements" upon which claims, we have a right to suppose, he was preparing to take toll from Mr. Bessemer, but which claims, the latter gentleman discovered, in time, were worthless and accordingly declined any negotiations with the individual making them.[81]

[81] _Ibid._, p. 254.

Mushet's claims were by this time rarely supported in the periodicals.

One interesting article in his favor came in 1864 from a source of special interest to the American situation. Mushet's American patent[82] had been bought by an American group interested in the Kelly process at about this time,[83] and Bessemer's American rights had also been sold to an American group that included Alexander Lyman Holley,[84] who had long been a.s.sociated with Zerah Colburn, another American engineer. Colburn, who subsequently (1866) established the London periodical _Engineering_ and is regarded as one of the founders of engineering journalism, was from 1862 onward a frequent contributor to other trade papers in London. Colburn's article of 1864[85] seems to have been of some importance to Mushet, who, in the prospectus of the t.i.tanic Steel and Iron Company, Ltd., issued soon after, brazenly a.s.serted[86] that, "by the process of Mr. Mushet _especially when in combination with the Bessemer process_, steel as good as Swedish steel"

would be produced at 6 per ton. Mushet may have intended to invite a patent action, but evidently Bessemer could now more than ever afford to ignore the "sage of Coleford."

[82] U.S. patent 17389, dated May 26, 1857. The patent was not renewed when application was made in 1870, on the grounds that the original patent had been made co-terminal with the British patent. The latter had been abandoned "by Mushet's own fault" so that no right existed to an American renewal (U.S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of Patents, dated September 19, 1870).

[83] See below, p. 45. The exact date of the purchase of Mushet's patent is not known.

[84] _Engineering_, 1882, vol. 33, p. 114. The deal was completed in 1863.

[85] _The Engineer_, 1864, vol. 18, pp. 405, 406.

[86] _Mining Journal_, 1864, vol. 34, pp. 77 and 94 (italics supplied). It has not yet been possible to ascertain if this company was successful. Mushet writes from this time on from Cheltenham, where the company had its offices. Research continues in this interesting aspect of his career.

The year 1865 saw Mushet less provocative and more appealing; as for instance: "It was no fault of Mr. Bessemer's that my patent was lost, but he ought to acknowledge his obligations to me in a manly, straightforward manner and this would stamp him as a great man as well as a great inventor."[87]

[87] _Mining Engineer_, 1865, vol. 35, p. 86.

But Bessemer evidently remained convinced of the security of his own patent position. In an address before the British a.s.sociation at Birmingham in September 1865 he made his first public reply to Mushet.[88] In his long series of patents Mushet had attempted to secure--

almost every conceivable mode of introducing manganese into the metal.... Manganese and its compounds were so claimed under all imaginable conditions that if this series of patents could have been sustained in law, it would have been utterly impossible for [me] to have employed manganese with steel made by his process, although it was considered by the trade to be impossible to make steel from c.o.ke-made iron without it.

[88] _The Engineer_, 1865, vol. 20, p. 174.