Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1901 — UTILITY OF STEEL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UTILITY OF STEEL

A Fascinating Story of a Wonderful Discovery. \ —— v - ' MADE FROM CAST IRON How a Bit of Carbon Brought About an Industrial Revolution. Arabian Night* Tale of Enchantment— The Stupid World of Science Ehughed When the Wonderfnl Secret Was Made Known—Some *f the Marvels Wrought —The Debt Mankind Owes to Twd Men—This a Steel Age. Steel is king. To it in a large measure America owes her industrial and commercial supremacy. Yet only a few years ago steel entered very little into the world's manufactured products outside cutlery and numerous small articles. In the making of steel, America’s primacy is recognized, and, so rapid has been her progress in this field of activity, she is likely soon to put Great Britain out of business as an important source of the world’s supply. *Yet it was an Englishman, Henry Bessemer, afterward knighted by Queen Victoria, who discovered the process of converting cast-iron into steel at a nominal cost, and thereby revolutionized the world’s industries; and it was to England that America had to go to learn the process and secure the right to use it. The process is simple, but its discovery has aptly been characterized as the most wonderful single incident in the nineteenth century. It is an Interesting story; its narration is timely, too, In view of the prominence steel has been brought into by its commercial triumph, the organization of the steel trust, and the industrial war in which the steel trust and organized labor engaged. The Bessemer process of ready steelmaking consists of mixing diamonds with cast-iron. That is a startling statement, but it is practically true. At least It is true in. this sense: A diamond is composed of carbon. Carbon is mixed

with cast-iron to make steel. Now, metallurgical!}' speaking, there is nothing in common between iron and steel. They are more individual than gold and copper; yet the addition of one part of carbon to 99 parts of cast iron converts the mass into steel fit for the manufacture of the best cutlery, and it is worth about S3OO a ton made up. It is not like the steel that .is used for bridges and ships, which cannot be made to take an edge suitable for cutting. Yet there is not much difference. The steel from which ships', rails, etc., are made costs only from $35 to SSO a ton, yet It has only a little less .carbon, from one-fifth to one-tenth of that in cutlery steel. Without the small bit'of carbon, iron would be nearly as useless as gjold as an element of construction, for castiron also contains it, only in different proportions from steel. There are many steels besides those In which carbon is the principal agent, including manganese steel, chrome steel. Harveyized steel, nickel, Krupped, etc. But these are manufactured for special functions only, and nearly all the steel made in the world to which civilization owes so much is Insignificant in itself, turning up in various aliases. In the uninviting form of soot and coke, in the fldsiiing* diamond, in charcoal, in the black lead pencil, in plumbago, it is the same essential element. We do not know in. what way so slight a trace of this element works so tremendous a change in common iron, transforming it into most aristocratic steel. It is believed that iron holds carbon in solution, as sea water holds its salts. Revolution of 1855. It was not until 18(55 that the age of steel began to dawn. But it. dawned slowly, and the world was reluctant to Welcome It. hi the year mentioned, “Bessemer read a paper before the British Association at Cheltenham, •which, though the most important technical contribution of the nineteenth century, provoked only merriment among the members. Og the morning of that day Mr. Bessemer, when at breakafst at his hotel, overheard an Ironmaster, to whom he was unknown, say laughingly to a friend: ‘Do you know that there Is somebody come down from London to read us a paper on making steel from cast Iron without fuel? Did you ever bear. of. such nonMnae?* To these ironmasters the thing was a huge joke. It 1 is useless to search tor that paper In the report of the year

—lt was not deemed worth' printing. ‘And yet,’ says an English writer, ‘in the year 1899, by that outrageously nonsensical process of Bessemer’s, this country made over 4,000,000 tons of steel, while the United States produced a trifle of 9.500,000 tons—made from over 12,000,000 tons of cast-iron without fuel.’ ” Continuing, the same writer says: “In 1865, ten years after his invention, Bessemer and his partners, for he was not a wealthy man at that period, were receiving royalties in Britain to the amount of $1,000,000 per annum. Enormous profits were also made in those years by the steel manufacturers who secured the right to manufacture under royalties. They obtained from S2OO to $250 a ton for steel, which cost them only about SSO a ton to produce. Trade rolled in in huge volumes, until in 1872, when the first fourteen years’ partnership into which Bessemer had entered expired, it was found that his firm—Henry Bessemer & Co.—had divided in profits fifty-seven times the capital invested in the business, or 100 per cent for every two months for twelve years, while the works, which had been largely extended out of revenue, were sold for twenty-four times the amount of the whole subscribed capital. In all, the fortunate partners received eighty-one times their original capital in fourteen years.” Great Britain, until the United States

dethroned her, was the greatest iron and steel producing country in the world. Yet in 1855, when Bessemer announced his discovery to the incredulous world, Great Britain produced only 50,000 tons of steel. But in 1899 she produced 4,855,000 tons, or over nine-ty-seven times the quantity made for-ty-four years earlier. In the same year the total production of the world was 20,595,000 tons. But it was long years after Bessemer made this output possible before her late gracious majesty

the Queen rewarded him with knighthood. “Steel,” says a trade writer, “is the most precious material which is used by engineers, for it is the greatest triumph of the latter half of the closing century, as steam locomotion was that of the earlier.” Thirty years ago iron took first rank among the metals most useful to man But steel is employed to-day for almost every purpose for which iron was then used, and for many others, and the time is near when, except tor a few special articles, the iron age will have passed away, as those of stone and bronze have departed. And yet, the basis of steel is cast iron, to the extent of more than 99 parts in the 100 in most specimens. Thus, 28,000,000 tons of pig iron were used in 1899 in the manufacture of the'world’s steel. The steel of which your knives are made, though strong, breaks off abruptly when overstrained. The steel with little carbon, though strong, can be bent and tied into knots, and it will stretch one-fourth of its own length before it parts in two. The first is so strong that a bar of an inch square will support a load of sixty or seventy tons, the second will only sustain half as much. The first kind is termed cast, because it is prepared in crucibles; the second is called mild steel, because it is of so accommodating and yielding a nature, enduring almost any amount of ham-

mering and twisting—even doubling close, without breaking. The first kind has been made for more than a century, the second only since Bessemer and Siemens—those modern magicians—showed how to do it In 1866 Halley went from America And purchased the Bessemer rights for this country for $50,000. Immediately previous to that time $125 a ton had been paid.here for imported steel rails, and the duty on them was about SSB a ton. To-day rails are made and sold In the United

States for about S3O a ton, and this country, in which so many gigantic fortunes have been made by the Bessemer process, has honored the inventor by naming seven towns and cities after, him. A few years after the Bessemer converter was introduced William Siemens produced steel of similar quality to Besemer’s, but in an entirely different method, using a large “open hearth” furnace, in which the irqn was first purified previous to the addition of carbon. It is said that Abram S. Hewitt was the first American to use the “open hearth” process. The maker of Bessemer steel, on the other hand, pours pig iron into a converter, and while the iron is in a molten condition drives a hurricane of air through it, and burns out the carbon, sulphur and other impurities, leaving a pure, soft iron. Then a small measured quantity of an alloy of iron with carbon is introduced, which contains the exact amount of carbon and manganese required to convert the iron into steel of the precise quality wanted. And, presto! In five minutes it is ready to pour like a stream of liquid gold into the ingqt. Within twenty minutes of the entry of the pig, the steel is produced. The Age of Steel. Many of us have been born since the advent of the age of steel. We enjoy its advantages quite as a matter of course, and scarce bestow a passing thought upon it But consider how much we should have lost if the inventions of Bessemer and Siemens had not been given to the world. Then your trains would not have been so luxurious, nor so swift—these,are only possible on a track of steel. The heavy fast trains of the present day would have crushed the iron rails of the 60’s out of shape. Steel* moreover, is used for railway wheels and axles, and for the frames which support the cars. To this material, therefore, the democratic passenger owes his seat in a vestlbuled car in the fastest expresses, his dining car, and berth in the sleeper, because steel permits the use of faster, longer and heavier trains than iron ever did. On the ocean the influence of steel is equally apparent. Without cheap steel the ocean ferry between the United States and Europe could not be crossed in six days; nor that to the Antipodes in a month, because iron ships of the same strength and capacity would be heavier, and the cost of propelling the added weight would absorb the profit. At the present time, for one ship built of iron there are more than ninety-nine constructed of steel. A modern linOr appropriates enormous quantities of steel. The Oceanic at the time of launching contained in hdr hull, without any machinery, about 11,000 tons. The fifteen boilers in the Oceanic, each of which is sixteen feet in diameter, weigh 1,100 tons. Without steel we should have no armored navy worthy of the name.

SIR HENRY BESSEMER.

AN AMERICAN STEEL BUILDING.