Improves the Drying of Oils.
Bessemer one day paid a visit to the works of his friends, Hayward and Company, London, manufacturers of paints and varnishes. He was struck with the wastefulness and imperfection of the time-honored process of drying oils in an iron pot over an open fire; a crude method always attended with danger, and not seldom with a complete loss of the heated oil. As he walked through the works there occurred to him a much better plan which he at once embodied in a sketch. His ideas were put into practice by his friends, to their lasting profit. Instead of a small charge of two or three gallons heated over an open fire, he suggested that fifty or sixty gallons should be run into a tank, in the bottom of which was a pipe terminating in a large rose-head. Connected with this pipe was a coil that could be heated to any desired temperature, and air could be forced through this coil, escaping through the rose-head into the oil. The exact degree of heat required could be thus maintained, and the process completed with certainty and safety, without waste, and, above all, with no discoloration of the oil. This method, carried to a further degree of oxidation, is the foundation of the vast linoleum industry throughout the world.