CHAPTER VIII
BESSEMER STEEL
The “Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel” was the startling title of a scientific paper read in 1856 before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. This was the announcement to the world of Henry Bessemer’s invention of the process for making iron and steel which led to the greatest commercial development the world has seen.
To those of us who have had little or no experience along manufacturing lines the announcement seems strange enough, but metallurgists, engineers and manufacturers who know how serious is the matter of fuel bills realize at once how revolutionary the claim of Bessemer must have seemed to men of those days.
As occurs with so many new things the idea was scoffed at; Bessemer’s scheme was one purporting to give “something for nothing” and—well, it could not be.
It was ridiculous!
And why should it not have seemed strange when we consider that up to that time fuel had been required in all metallurgical processes. In the old Catalan furnace and the types that preceded it, in the Finery Fire, the Walloon and the several other refining furnaces fuel had to be provided without stint. The lowest proportion that seventy years of experiment and practice had brought about in Cort’s puddling process was one ton of coal per ton of iron, while the blast furnace required at the least four-fifths of a ton of coke for each ton of pig iron produced.
Kelly’s First Tilting Converter
Whether Bessemer, an Englishman of French descent, or William Kelly, an American of Irish descent, of Eddyville, Ky., first conceived the idea of the “pneumatic” process is a moot question. Considerable evidence substantiates the claim that the latter first hit upon the scheme and during the ten years between 1846 and 1856 had considerable success with its development. Perhaps Bessemer had heard of Kelly’s experiments. There is no proof that he did. Whether he did or not, the fact remains that he quite independently and very fully developed the process in England, and with great business sagacity and energy made it the success that it is.
As fortune has withheld from Kelly and from this country credit which was deserved, it is desirable to tell briefly the part which he had in the development of this process that with a single furnace converts pig iron into steel at the rate of a thousand tons in 24 hours and first made mild steel available as a building material.