STEEL RAILS 150 FEET LONG.
An extract from a letter addressed to me by our colleague, Mr. E.W. Richards, will describe better than any words of mine the perfection at which steel rail mills have arrived. He says, "Our cogging rolls are 48 in. diameter, and the roughing and finishing rolls are 30 in. diameter. We roll rails 150 feet long as easily as they used to roll 21 feet. Our ingots are 15½ inches square, and weigh from 25 to 30 cwts. according to the weight of rail we have to roll. These heavy ingots are all handled by machinery. We convey them by small locomotives from the Bessemer shop to the heating furnaces, and by the same means from the heating furnaces to the cogging rolls.
So quickly are these ingots now handled that we have given up second heating altogether, so that after one heat the ingot is cogged from 15½ inches square down to 8 inches square, then at once passed on to the roughing and finishing rolls, and finished in lengths, as I have said before, of 150 ft., then cut at the hot saws to the lengths given in the specifications, and varying from 38 ft. to about 21 ft. The 38 ft. lengths are used by the Italian 'Meridionali' Railway Company, and found to give very satisfactory results." I need scarcely say that in a mill like this, the expenditure of fuel and labor and the loss by waste caused by crop ends are reduced to a minimum.
BASIC STEEL.
The enormous production of steel has required the importation of large quantities of iron ore of pure quality from Spain, Algeria, and elsewhere, into this country, France, Belgium, Germany, and the United States; and these supplies have contributed greatly to the reduction in the price of steel to which I have referred, and what is, perhaps, of equal importance, they have prevented the great fluctuations of price which formerly prevailed. In 1869 this trade was in its infancy, and almost confined to the importation of the Algerian ores of Mokta el Hadid into France, while in 1882 Bilbao alone exported 3,700,000 tons of hematite ores to various countries to which the exports from the south of Spain, Algeria, Elba, Greece, and other countries have to be added. Great Britain alone imported 3,000,000 tons of high class, including manganiferous iron ores last year.
It is questionable whether the mines of pure iron existing in Europe would long bear a drain so great and still increasing; but happily the question no longer presses for an answer, because the problem of obtaining first-class steel from inferior ores has been solved by the genius of our colleagues, Mr. Snelus and Messrs. Thomas and Gilchrist, and by the practical skill and indomitable resolution of Mr. Windsor Richards. It is no part of the duty of the Institute to assign to each of these gentlemen his precise share in the development of the basic process. Whatever those shares may be, I feel sure you will agree with your council as to the propriety of their having awarded a Bessemer medal to two of these gentlemen—Messrs. Snelus and Thomas—to Mr. Snelus as the first who made pure steel from impure iron in a Bessemer converter lined with basic materials; to Mr. Thomas, who solved the same problem independently, and so clearly demonstrated its practicability to Mr. Richards by the trials at Blaenavon, as to have led that gentleman to devote all his energies and the great resources of the Eston Works to the task of making it what it now is, a great commercial success. All difficulties connected with the lining of the converter and in insuring a durability of the bottom, nearly, if not quite, equal to that in the acid process, appear now to have been successfully surmounted, and I am informed by Mr. Gilchrist that the present production of basic steel in this country and on the Continent is already at the rate of considerably more than 500,000 tons per annum, and that works are now in course of construction which will increase this quantity to more than a million tons.
Our members will have the opportunity of seeing the process at work during their visit to Middlesbrough, at the Eston Works of Messrs. Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., which are now producing 150,000 tons per annum of steel of the highest quality from the phosphoretic Cleveland ores; and also at the North-Eastern Steel Company's Works. I believe it is the intention of the latter company to make a pure, soft steel suitable for plates, for which, according to the testimony of Mons. Delafond, of Creuzot, and others, the basic steel is peculiarly suitable on account of its remarkable regularity. I shall have the pleasure of presenting to Mr. Snelus the medal which he has so well deserved.
HONORS AND REWARDS TO INVENTORS.
The presentation to Mr. Thomas is deferred. His arduous labors having affected his health, he is at present in Australia, after having, I am happy to say, received great advantage from the voyage; and his mother, justly proud of his merits, and appreciating fully the value of their recognition by the award which we have made, has requested us not to present the medal by proxy, but to await the return of her son, in order that it may be handed to him in person. But honors, whether conferred by the Crown, by learned bodies, or, as in this case, by the colleagues of the recipient, though they stimulate invention, are by themselves not always sufficient to encourage inventors to devote their labor to the improvements of manufactures or to induce capitalists to assist inventors in the prosecution of costly experiments; and it is on this account that the protection of inventions by patent is a public advantage. The members of our profession, unlike some others, have not been eager to apply for patents in the case of minor inventions; on the contrary, they have freely communicated to each other the experience as to improvement in detail which have resulted from their daily practice. It has been well said that all the world is wiser than any one man in it, and this free interchange of our various experiences has tended greatly to the advancement of our trade. But new departures, like the great invention of Sir H. Bessemer, and important improvements like the basic process, require the protection of patents for their development.