the steam to enter or escape from the cylinder, any required number or
any intensity of blows could be delivered. Their succession might be
modified in an instant; the hammer might be arrested and suspended
according to the requirements of the work. The workman might thus, as it
were, _think in blows_. He might deal them out on to the ponderous
glowing mass, and mould or knead it into the desired form as if it were
a lump of clay, or pat it with gentle taps, according to his will or at
the desire of the forgeman.
Rude and rapidly sketched out as it was, this my first delineation of
the steam-hammer will be found to comprise all the essential elements of
the invention. There was no want of orders when the valuable qualities
of the steam-hammer came to be seen and experienced; soon after I had
the opportunity of securing a patent for it in the United States, where
it soon found its way into the principal iron-works of the country. As
time passed by, I had furnished steam-hammers to the principal foundries
in England, and had sent them abroad even to Russia.
* * * * *
But the English Government is proverbially slow in recognizing such
improvements. It was not till years had passed by, that Mr. Nasmyth was
asked to furnish hammers to government works. Then he was invited to
apply them to pile-driving. He says:--
My first order for my pile-driver was a source of great pleasure to me.
It was for the construction of some great royal docks at Devonport. An
immense portion of the shore of the Hamoaze had to be walled in so as to
exclude the tide.
When I arrived on the spot with my steam pile-driver, there was a great
deal of curiosity in the dockyard as to the action of the new machine.
The pile-driving machine-men gave me a good-natured challenge to vie
with them in driving down a pile. They adopted the old method, while I
adopted the new one. The resident managers sought out two great pile
logs of equal size and length,-seventy feet long and eighteen inches
square. At a given signal we started together. I let in the steam, and
the hammer at once began to work. The four-ton block showered down blows
at the rate of eighty a minute, and in the course of _four and a half
minutes_ my pile was driven down to its required depth. The men working
at the ordinary machine had only begun to drive. It took them upward of
_twelve hours_ to complete the driving of their pile!
Such a saving of time in the performance of similar work--by steam
_versus_ manual labor--had never before been witnessed. The energetic
action of the steam-hammer, sitting on the shoulders of the pile high up
aloft, and following it suddenly down, the rapidly hammered blows
keeping time with the flashing out of the waste steam at the end of each
stroke, was indeed a remarkable sight. When my pile was driven the
hammer-block and guide-case were speedily re-hoisted by the small engine
that did all the laboring and locomotive work of the machine, the
steam-hammer portion of which was then lowered on to the shoulders of
the next pile in succession. Again it set to work. At this the
spectators, crowding about in boats, pronounced their approval in the
usual British style of "Three cheers!" My new pile-driver was thus
acknowledged as another triumphant proof of the power of steam.
* * * * *
In the course of the year 1843 it was necessary for me to make a journey
to St. Petersburg. My object was to endeavor to obtain an order for a
portion of the locomotives required for working the line between that
city and Moscow. The railway had been constructed under the engineership
of Major Whistler, and it was shortly about to be opened.
The Major gave me a frank and cordial reception, and informed me of the
position of affairs. The Emperor, he said, was desirous of training a
class of Russian mechanics to supply not only the locomotives, but to
keep them constantly in repair. The locomotives must be made in Russia.
I received, however, a very large order for boilers and other detail
parts of the Moscow machines.
I enjoyed greatly my visit to St. Petersburg, and my return home through
Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Travelling one day in Sweden, the post-house where I was set down was an
inn, although without a sign-board. The landlady was a bright, cheery,
jolly woman. She could not speak a word of English, nor I a word of
Dannemora Swedish. I was very thirsty and hungry, and wanted something
to eat. How was I to communicate my wishes to the landlady? I resorted,
as I often did, to the universal language of the pencil. I took out my
sketch-book, and in a few minutes I made a drawing of a table with a
dish of smoking meat upon it, a bottle and a glass, a knife and fork, a
loaf, a salt-cellar, and a corkscrew. She looked at the drawing and gave
a hearty laugh. She nodded pleasantly, showing that she clearly
understood what I wanted. She asked me for the sketch, and went into the
back garden to show it to her husband, who inspected it with great
delight. I went out and looked about the place, which was very
picturesque. After a short time the landlady came to the door and
beckoned me in, and I found spread out on the table everything that I
desired,--a broiled chicken, smoking hot from the gridiron, a bottle of
capital home-brewed ale, and all the _et ceteras_ of an excellent
repast. I made use of my pencil in many other ways. I always found that
a sketch was as useful as a sentence. Besides, it generally created a
sympathy between me and my entertainers.
As the Bridgewater Foundry had been so fortunate as to earn for itself a
considerable reputation for mechanical contrivances, the workshops were
always busy. They were crowded with machine tools in full action, and
exhibited to all comers their effectiveness in the most satisfactory
manner. Every facility was afforded to those who desired to see them at
work; and every machine and machine tool that was turned out became in
the hands of its employers the progenitor of a numerous family.
Indeed, on many occasions I had the gratification of seeing my
mechanical notions adopted by rival or competitive machine constructors,
often without acknowledgment; though, notwithstanding this point of
honor, there was room enough for all. Though the parent features were
easily recognizable, I esteemed such plagiarisms as a sort of
left-handed compliment to their author. I also regarded them as a proof
that I had hit the mark in so arranging my mechanical combinations as to
cause their general adoption; and many of them remain unaltered to this
day.
My favorite pursuit, after my daily excursions at the foundry, was
astronomy. I constructed for myself a telescope of considerable power,
and, mounting my ten-inch instrument, I began my survey of the heavens.
I began as a learner, and my learning grew with experience. There were
the prominent stars, the planets, the Milky Way,--with thousands of
far-off suns,--to be seen. My observations were at first merely
general; by degrees they became particular. I was not satisfied with
enjoying these sights myself. I made my friends and neighbors sharers in
my pleasure, and some of them enjoyed the wonders of the heavens as much
as I did.
In my early use of the telescope I had fitted the speculum into a light
square tube of deal, to which the eyepiece was attached, so as to have
all the essential parts of the telescope combined together in the most
simple and portable form. I had often to move it from place to place in
my small garden at the side of the Bridgewater Canal, in order to get it
clear of the trees and branches which intercepted some object in the
heavens which I wished to see. How eager and enthusiastic I was in those
days! Sometimes I got out of bed in the clear small hours of the
morning, and went down to the garden in my night-shirt. I would take the
telescope in my arms and plant it in some suitable spot, where I might
take a peep at some special planet or star then above the horizon.
It became bruited about that a ghost was seen at Patricroft! A barge was
silently gliding along the canal near midnight, when the boatman
suddenly saw a figure in white. "It moved among the trees, with a coffin
in its arms!" The apparition was so sudden and strange that he
immediately concluded that it was a ghost. The weird sight was reported
all along the canal, and also at Wolverhampton, which was the boatman's
headquarters. He told the people at Patricroft, on his return journey,
what he had seen; and great was the excitement produced. The place was
haunted; there was no doubt about it! After all, the rumor was founded
on fact; for the ghost was merely myself in my night-shirt, and the
coffin was my telescope, which I was quietly shifting from one place to
another, in order to get a clearer sight of the heavens at midnight.
I had been for some time contemplating the possibility of retiring
altogether from business. I had got enough of the world's goods, and was
willing to make way for younger men.
Many long years of pleasant toil and exertion had done their work. A
full momentum of prosperity had been given to my engineering business at
Patricroft. My share in the financial results accumulated, with
accelerated rapidity, to an amount far beyond my most sanguine hopes.
But finding, from long-continued and incessant mental efforts, that my
nervous system was beginning to become shaken, especially in regard to
an affection of the eyes, which in some respects damaged my sight, I
thought the time had arrived for me to retire from commercial life.
Behold us, then, settled down at Hammerfield for life. We had plenty to
do. My workshop was fully equipped. My hobbies were there, and I could
work them to my heart's content. The walls of our various rooms were
soon hung with pictures and other works of art, suggestive of many
pleasant associations of former days. Our library bookcase was crowded
with old friends in the shape of books that had been read and re-read
many times, until they had almost become part of ourselves. Old
Lancashire friends made their way to us when "up in town," and expressed
themselves delighted with our pleasant house and its beautiful
surroundings.
I was only forty-eight years old, which may be considered the prime of
life. But I had plenty of hobbies, perhaps the chief of which was
astronomy. No sooner had I settled at Hammerfield than I had my
telescopes brought out and mounted. The fine, clear skies with which we
were favored furnished me with abundant opportunities for the use of my
instruments. I began again my investigations on the sun and the moon,
and made some original discoveries.
It is time to come to an end of my recollections. I have endeavored to
give a brief _résumé_ of my life and labors. I hope they may prove
interesting as well as useful to others. Thanks to a good constitution
and a frame invigorated by work, I continue to lead, with my dear wife,
a happy life.
XIII.
SIR HENRY BESSEMER.
THE AGE OF STEEL.
In intervals of the reading meetings so many of the children's
afternoons with Uncle Fritz had been taken up with excursions to see
machinery at work, that their next meeting at the Oliver House was, as
it proved, the last for the winter.
They had gone to the pumping-station of the waterworks, and had seen the
noiseless work of the great steam-engine there. They had gone to the
Ætna Mills at Watertown, and with the eye of the flesh had seen "rovers"
and shuttles, and had been taught what "slobbers" are. They had gone to
Waltham, and had been taught something of the marvellous skill and
delicacy expended on the manufacture of watches. They had gone to Rand
and Avery's printing-house; and here they not only saw the processes of
printing, but they saw steam power "converted" into electricity. They
had gone to the Locomotive Factory in Albany Street, and understood,
much better than before, the inventions of George Stephenson, under the
lead of the foremen in the shops, who had been very kind to them.
On their last meeting Uncle Fritz reminded them of something which one
of these gentlemen had taught them about the qualities of steel and
iron; and again of what they had seen of steel-springs at Waltham, when
they saw how the balances of watches are arranged.
"Some bright person has called our time 'the Age of Steel,'" he said.
"You know Ovid's division was 'the Age of Gold, the Age of Silver, the
Age of Brass, the Age of Iron.' And Ovid, who was in low spirits,
thought the Age of Iron was the worst of all. Now, we begin to improve
if we have entered the Age of Steel; for steel is, poetically speaking,
glorified iron.
"Now the person to whom we owe it, that, in practice, we can build steel
ships to-day where we once built iron ships, and lay steel rails to-day
where even Stephenson was satisfied with iron, is Sir Henry Bessemer.
The Queen knighted him in recognition of the service he had rendered to
the world by his improvements in the processes of turning iron into
steel.
"It is impossible to estimate the addition which these improvements have
made to the physical power of the world. I have not the most recent
figures, but look at this," said Uncle Fritz. And he gave to John to
read from a Life of Sir Henry Bessemer:--
"Prior to this invention the entire production of cast steel in Great
Britain was only about fifty thousand tons annually; and its average
price, which ranged from £50 to £600, prohibited its use for many of the
purposes to which it is now universally applied. After the invention, in
the year 1877, the Bessemer steel produced in Great Britain alone
amounted to 750,000 tons, or fifteen times the total of the former
method of manufacture, while the selling price averaged only £10 per
ton, and the coal consumed in producing it was less by 3,500,000 tons
than would have been required in order to make the same quality of
steel by the old, or Sheffield, process. The total reduction of cost is
equal to about £30,000,000 sterling upon the quantity manufactured in
England during the year."
The same book goes on to show that in other nations £20,000,000 worth of
Bessemer steel was produced in the same year.
"You see," said Uncle Fritz, "that here is an addition to the real
wealth of the world such as makes any average fairy story about diamonds
and rubies rather cheap and contemptible.
"You will like Sir Henry Bessemer, Hester, because he was happily
trained and had good chances when he was a boy. And you will be amused
to see how his bright wife was brighter than all the internal-revenue
people. She was so bright that she lost him the appointment which had
enabled him to marry her. But I think he says somewhere, with a good
deal of pride, that but for that misfortune, and the injustice which
accompanied it, he should have probably never made his great inventions.
It is one more piece of 'Partial evil,--universal good.'"
Then the children, with Uncle Fritz's aid, began picking out what they
called the plums from the accounts he showed them of Sir Henry
Bessemer's life.
BESSEMER'S FAMILY.
At the time of the great Revolution of 1792 there was employed in the
French mint a man of great ingenuity, who had become a member of the
French Academy of Sciences at the age of twenty-five. When Robespierre
became Dictator of France, this scientific academician was transferred
from the mint to the management of a public bakery, established for the
purpose of supplying the populace of Paris with bread. In that position
he soon became the object of revolutionary frenzy. One day a rumor was
set afloat that the loaves supplied were light in weight; and, spreading
like wildfire, it was made the occasion of a fearful tumult. The manager
of the bakery was instantly seized and cast into prison. He succeeded in
escaping, but it was at the peril of his life. Knowing the peril he was
in, he lost no time in making his way to England; and he only succeeded
in doing so by adroitly using some documents he possessed bearing the
signature of the Dictator. Landing in England a ruined man, his talents
soon proved a passport to success. He was appointed to a position in the
English mint; and by the exercise of his ingenuity in other directions,
he ere long acquired sufficient means to buy a small estate at Charlton,
in Hertfordshire. Such, in brief, were the circumstances that led to the
settlement there of Anthony Bessemer, the father of Sir Henry Bessemer.
The latter may be said to have been born an inventor. His father was an
inventor before him. After settling in England, his inventive ingenuity
was displayed in making improvements in microscopes and in
type-founding, and in the discovery of what his son has happily
described as the true alchemy. The latter discovery, which he made about
the beginning of the present century, was a source of considerable
profit to him. It is generally known that when gold articles are made by
the jewellers, there are various discolorations left on their surface by
the process of manufacture; and in order to clear their surface, they
are put into a solution of alum, salt, and saltpetre, which dissolves a
large quantity of the copper that is used as an alloy. Anthony Bessemer
discovered that this powerful acid not only dissolved the copper, but
also dissolved a quantity of gold. He accordingly began to buy up this
liquor; and as he was the only one who knew that it contained gold in
solution, he had no difficulty in arranging for the purchase of it from
all the manufacturers in London. From that liquor he succeeded in
extracting gold in considerable quantities for many years. By some means
that he kept secret (and the secret died with him), he deposited the
particles of gold on the shavings of another metal, which, being
afterwards melted, left the pure gold in small quantities. Thirty years
afterward the Messrs. Elkington invented the electrotype process, which
had the same effect. Anthony Bessemer was also eminently successful as a
type-founder. When in France, before the Revolution of 1792, he cut a
great many founts of type for Messrs. Firmin Didot, the celebrated
French type-founders; and after his return to England he betook himself,
as a diversion, to type-cutting for Mr. Henry Caslon, the celebrated
English type-founder. He engraved an entire series, from pica to
diamond,--a work which occupied several years. The success of these
types led to the establishment of the firm of Bessemer and Catherwood as
type-founders, carrying on business at Charlton. The great improvement
which Anthony Bessemer introduced into the art of type-making was not so
much in the engraving as in the composition of the metal. He discovered
that an alloy of copper, tin, and bismuth was the most durable metal for
type; and the working of this discovery was very successful in his
hands. The secret of his success, however, he kept unknown to the trade.
He knew that if it were suspected that the superiority of his type
consisted in the composition of the metal, analysis would reveal it,
and others would then be able to compete with him. So, to divert
attention from the real cause, he pointed out to the trade that the
shape of his type was different, as the angle at which all the lines
were produced from the surface was more obtuse in his type than in those
of other manufacturers, at the same time contending that his type would
wear longer. Other manufacturers ridiculed this account of Bessemer's
type, but experience showed that it lasted nearly twice as long as other
type. The business flourished for a dozen years under his direction, and
during that period the real cause of its success was kept a secret. The
process has since been re-discovered and patented. Such were some of the
inventive efforts of the father of one of the greatest inventors of the
present age.
HENRY BESSEMER.
The youngest son of Anthony Bessemer, Henry, was born at Charlton, in
Hertfordshire, in 1813. His boyhood was spent in his native village; and
while receiving the rudiments of an ordinary education in the
neighboring town of Hitchin, the leisure and retirement of rural life
afforded ample time, though perhaps little inducement, for the display
of the natural bent of his mind. Notwithstanding his scanty and
imperfect mechanical appliances, his early years were devoted to the
cultivation of his inventive faculties. His parents encouraged him in
his youthful efforts.
At the age of eighteen he came to London, "knowing no one," he says,
"and myself unknown,--a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise."
Here he worked as a modeller and designer with encouraging success. He
engraved a large number of elegant and original designs on steel, with a
diamond point, for patent-medicine labels. He got plenty of this sort of
work to do, and was well paid for it. In his boyhood his favorite
amusement was the modelling of objects in clay; and even in this
primitive school of genius he worked with so much success that at the
age of nineteen he exhibited one of his beautiful models at the Royal
Academy, then held at Somerset House.
STAMPED PAPER.
Thus he soon began to make his way in the metropolis; and in the course
of the following year he was maturing some plans in connection with the
production of stamps which he sanguinely hoped would lead him on to
fortune. At that time the old forms of stamps were in use that had been
employed since the days of Queen Anne; and as they were easily
transferred from old deeds to new ones, the Government lost a large
amount annually by this surreptitious use of old stamps instead of new
ones. The ordinary impressed or embossed stamps, such as are now
employed on bills of exchange, or impressed directly on skins or
parchment, were liable to be entirely obliterated if exposed for some
months to a damp atmosphere. A deed so exposed would at last appear as
if unstamped, and would therefore become invalid. Special precautions
were therefore observed in order to prevent this occurrence. It was the
practice to gum small pieces of blue paper on the parchment; and, to
render it still more secure, a strip of metal foil was passed through
it, and another small piece of paper with the printed initials of the
sovereign was gummed over the loose end of the foil at the back. The
stamp was then impressed on the blue paper, which, unlike parchment, is
incapable of losing the impression by exposure to a damp atmosphere.
Experience showed, however, that by placing a little piece of moistened
blotting-paper for a few hours over the paper, the gum became so
softened that the two pieces of paper and the slip of foil could be
easily removed from an old deed and then used for a new one. In this way
stamps could be used a second and third time; and by thus utilizing the
expensive stamps on old deeds of partnerships that were dissolved, or
leases that were expired, the public revenue lost thousands of pounds
every year. Sir Charles Persley, of the Stamp Office, told Sir Henry
Bessemer that the Government were probably defrauded of £100,000 per
annum in that way. The young inventor at once set to work, for the
express purpose of devising a stamp that could not be used twice. His
first discovery was a mode by which he could have reproduced easily and
cheaply thousands of stamps of any pattern. "The facility," he says,
"with which I could make a permanent die from a thin paper original,
capable of producing a thousand copies, would have opened a wide door
for successful frauds if my process had been known to unscrupulous
persons; for there is not a government stamp or a paper seal of a
corporate body that every common office clerk could not forge in a few
minutes at the office of his employer or at his own home. The production
of such a die from a common paper stamp is a work of only ten minutes;
the materials cost less than one penny; no sort of technical skill is
necessary, and a common copying-press or a letter stamp yields most
successful copies." To this day a successful forger has to employ a
skilful die-sinker to make a good imitation in steel of the document he
wishes to forge; but if such a method as that discovered and described
by Sir Henry Bessemer were known, what a prospect it would open up!
Appalled at the effect which the communication of such a process would
have had upon the business of the Stamp Office, he carefully kept the
knowledge of it to himself; and to this day it remains a profound
secret.