popular treatise on metallurgy, published at the time when Bessemer was
in the midst of his experiments. "Wrought iron," it says, "or soft
iron, may contain no carbon; and if perfectly pure, would contain none,
nor indeed any other impurity. This is a state to be desired and aimed
at, but it has never yet been perfectly attained in practice. The best
as well as the commonest foreign irons always contain more or less
carbon.... Carbon may exist in iron in the ratio of 65 parts to 10,000
without assuming the properties of steel. If the proportion be greater
than that, and anywhere between the limits of 65 parts of carbon to
10,000 parts of iron and 2 parts of carbon to 100 of iron, the alloy
assumes the properties of steel. In cast iron the carbon exceeds 2 per
cent, but in appearance and properties it differs widely from the
hardest steel. These properties, although we quote them, are somewhat
doubtful; and the chemical constitution of these three substances may,
perhaps, be regarded as still undetermined." Now, in the Bessemer
converter the carbon was almost entirely consumed. In the small gun just
described,[25] there were only 14 parts of carbon for 1,000,000 parts of
iron. Bessemer's next difficulty was to carburize his pure iron, and
thus to make it into steel. "The wrought iron," says Mr. I. L. Bell, "as
well as the steel made according to Sir Henry Bessemer's original plan,
though a purer specimen of metal was never heard of except in the
laboratory, was simply worthless. In this difficulty, a ray of
scientific truth, brought to light one hundred years before, came to the
rescue. Bergmann was one of the earliest philosophers who discarded all
theory, and introduced into chemistry that process of analysis which is
the indispensable antecedent of scientific system. This Swedish
experimenter had ascertained the existence of manganese in the iron of
that country, and connected its presence with suitability for steel
purposes." Manganese is a kind of iron exceptionally rich in carbon, and
also exceptionally free from other impurities. Berzelius, Rinman,
Karsten, Berthier, and other metallurgists had before now discussed its
effect when combined with ordinary iron; and the French were so well
aware that ferro-manganese ores were superior for steel-making purposes
that they gave them the name of _mines d'acier_. So Bessemer, after many
experiments, discovered a method whereby, with the use of
ferro-manganese, he could make what is known as mild steel. The process
of manufacture, when described by Sir Henry Bessemer at Cheltenham in
1856,[26] was so nearly complete, that only two important additions were
made afterwards. One was the introduction of the ferro-manganese for the
purpose of imparting to his pure liquid iron the properties of "mild
steel." The other was an improvement in the mechanical apparatus. He
found that when the air had been blown into the iron till all the carbon
was expelled, the continuance of "the blow" afterward consumed the iron
at a very rapid rate, and a great loss of iron thus took place. It was
therefore necessary to cease blowing at a particular moment. At first he
saw no practical way by which he could prevent the metal going into the
air-holes in the bottom of the vessel below the level of the liquid
mass, so as to stop them up immediately on ceasing to force the air
through them; for if he withdrew the pressure of air, the whole
apparatus would be destroyed for a time. Here, again, his inventive
genius found a remedy. He had the converter holding the molten iron
mounted on an axis, which enabled him at any moment he liked to turn it
round and to bring the holes above the level of the metal; whenever this
was done the process of conversion or combustion ceased of itself, and
the apparatus had only to be turned back again in order to resume the
operation. This turning on an axis of a furnace weighing eleven tons,
and containing five tons of liquid metal, at a temperature scarcely
approachable, was a system entirely different from anything that had
preceded it; for it he took out what he considered one of his most
important patents, "and," he says, "I am vain enough to believe that so
long as my process lasts, the motion of the vessel containing the fluid
on its axis will be retained as an absolute necessity for any form which
the process may take at any future time." The patent for this invention
was taken out about four years after his original patent for the
converter.
Uncle Fritz showed them a picture of this gigantic kettle, which holds
this mass of molten metal and yet turns so easily.
"But," said Helen, "you have a model of it here, Uncle Fritz." And she
pointed to her Uncle Fritz's inkstand, which is something the shape of a
fat beet-root, with the point turned up to receive the ink. Uncle Fritz
nodded his approval. These inkstands, which turn over on a little brazen
axis, were probably first made by some one who had seen the great
eleven-ton converters.
Uncle Fritz showed the children the picture in the "Practical Magazine,"
and they spent some time together in looking over the pages of the
volume for 1876.
The Bessemer process was now perfect. Nearly four years had elapsed
since its conception and first application; and in addition to the
necessary labor and anxiety he had experienced, no less than £20,000
had been expended in making experiments that were necessary to complete
its success. It only remained to bring the process into general use.
* * * * *
The young people asked quite eagerly whether they could see the
processes of "conversion" anywhere, and were glad to be told that
Bessemer steel is made in many parts of America. One of their young
friends, who was educated at the "Technology," is in charge of a
department at Steelton, in Pennsylvania, and they have all written
letters to him.
The American steel-makers have a great variety of ores to choose from,
and they have found it possible, by using different ores, to avoid the
difficulties which Mr. Bessemer first met in using the ores of England.
And so far are the processes now simplified, that in many American
establishments the molten iron is received liquid from the blast
furnaces, and does not have to be reduced a second time in a cupola
furnace, as was the iron used by Mr. Bessemer. There is no cooling, in
such establishments, between the ore and the finished steel.
XIV.
THE LAST MEETING.
GOODYEAR.
When the day for the next meeting came, Uncle Fritz had a large
collection of books and magazines in the little rolling racks and tables
where such things are kept. But no one of them was opened.
No. The young people appeared in great strength, all at the same moment,
and notified him that he was to put on his hat and his light overcoat,
and go with them on what they called the first "Alp" of the season. For
there is a pretence in the little company that they are an Alpine Club,
and that for eight months of the year it is their duty to climb the
highest mountains near Boston.
Now, the very highest of these peaks is the summit hill of the Blue
Hills, to which indeed Massachusetts owes its name. For "Matta" in the
Algonquin tongue meant "great," and "Chuset" meant "a hill." And a woman
who was living on a little hummock near Squantum, just before Winthrop
and the rest landed, was the sacred Sachem of the Massachusetts Indians.
Hence the name of Mattachusetts Bay; and then, by euphony or bad
spelling, or both, Massachusetts.
Uncle Fritz obeyed the rabble rout, as he is apt to do. He retired for a
minute to put on heavier shoes, and, when he reappeared, he took the
seat of honor in the leading omnibus. And a very merry expedition they
had to the summit, where, as the accurate Fergus told them, they were
six hundred feet above the level of the sea. There was but little wood,
and they were able to lie and sit in a large group on the ground just on
the lee side of the hill, where they could look off on the endless sea.
"Whom should you have told us about, had it rained?" said Mabel Fordyce.
"Oh! you were to have had your choice. There are still left many
inventors. I had looked at Mr. Parton's Life of Goodyear, and the very
curious brief prepared for the court about his patents. Half of you
would not be here to-day but for that ingenious and long-suffering man."
"Should not I have come?" said Gertrude, incredulously.
"Surely not," said Uncle Fritz, laughing. "I saw your water-proof in
your shawl-strap. I know your mamma well enough to know that you would
never have been permitted to come so far from home without that ægis, or
without those trig, pretty overshoes. You owe waterproof and overshoes
both to the steady perseverance of Goodyear and to the loyal help of his
wife and daughters. Some day you must read Mr. Webster's eulogy on him
and them. Indeed, he is the American Palissy. You hear a good deal of
woman's rights; but, really, modern women had no rights worth speaking
of till Mr. Goodyear enabled them to go out-doors in all weathers.
"I meant we should have an afternoon with the Goodyears. Then I meant
that you should know, Gertrude, where that slice of bread came from."
"Well," said she, "I do not know much, but I do know that. It came out
of the bread-box."
"Very good," said the Colonel, laughing. "But somebody put it into the
bread-box. And it is quite as well that you should know who put it in.
American girls and American boys ought to know that men's prayer for
'Daily Bread' is answered more and more largely every year. They ought
to know why. Well, the great reason is that reaping and binding after
the reapers, nay, that sowing the corn, and every process between sowing
and harvest, has been wellnigh perfected by the American inventors. So I
had wanted to give a day or two to reapers and binders, and the other
machinery of harvesting. Indeed, if our winter had been as long as poor
Captain Greely's was, and if you had met me every week, we should have
had a new invention for each one. Here are the telephone and the
telegraph. Here is the use of the electric light. Here is the
sewing-machine, with all its nice details, like the button-hole maker.
Nay, every button is made by its own machinery. Here are carpets one
quarter cheaper than they were only four years ago; cotton cloths made
more by machinery and less by hand labor; nay, they tell us that the
cotton is to be picked by a machine before long.
"But these are things you must work up for yourselves. You are on a good
track now, and have learned some of the principles of such study.
"Go to the originals whenever you can. Read what you understand, and
fall back on what you did not understand at first, so as to try it
again."
"Do you not think that all the great things have been invented, Uncle
Fritz?"
This was John Angier's rather melancholy question.
"Not a bit of it, my boy. Certainly not for as keen eyes as yours and as
handy hands. Let me tell you what I heard President Dawson say. He is
President of McGill University, and is counted one of the first physical
philosophers in America.
"He said this in substance: 'What will future times say of us, the men
of the end of the nineteenth century? They will say, "What was the ban
on those men, what numbed them or held them still, as if in fear? Why
did they not apply in daily life their own great discoveries of the
central laws of Nature? They were able to work out principles. Why could
they not embody them in useful inventions? They discovered the Ocean of
Truth, but they stood frightened on its shore. They found the great
principles of science, and for their application they seem to have been
satisfied when they had built the steam-engine, had devised the
telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, and when they had set the
electric light a blazing."'
"You see, John, that he thinks there is enough more for you and the rest
to invent and to discover."
Then Uncle Fritz took from his ulster pocket Mr. Parton's volume of
biographical sketches.
"It is all very fine for you, Miss Alice," he said, "to lie there on
your waterproof, and to be sure that even mamma will not scold when you
go home. But take the book, and read, and see who has wept and who has
starved that you might lie there."
And Alice read the passages he had marked for her.
The difficulty of all this may be inferred when we state that at the
present time it takes an intelligent man a year to learn how to conduct
the process with certainty, though he is provided, from the start, with
the best implements and appliances which twenty years' experience has
suggested. And poor Goodyear had now reduced himself, not merely to
poverty, but to isolation. No friend of his could conceal his impatience
when he heard him pronounce the word "India-rubber." Business-men
recoiled from the name of it. He tells us that two entire years passed,
after he had made his discovery, before he had convinced one human being
of its value. Now, too, his experiments could no longer be carried on
with a few pounds of India-rubber, a quart of turpentine, a phial of
aquafortis, and a little lampblack. He wanted the means of producing a
high, uniform, and controllable degree of heat,--a matter of much
greater difficulty than he anticipated. We catch brief glimpses of him
at this time in the volumes of testimony. We see him waiting for his
wife to draw the loaves from her oven, that he might put into it a batch
of India-rubber to bake, and watching it all the evening, far into the
night, to see what effect was produced by one hour's, two hours', three
hours', six hours' baking. We see him boiling it in his wife's
saucepans, suspending it before the nose of her teakettle, and hanging
it from the handle of that vessel to within an inch of the boiling
water. We see him roasting it in the ashes and in hot sand, toasting it
before a slow fire and before a quick fire, cooking it for one hour and
for twenty-four hours, changing the proportions of his compound and
mixing them in different ways. No success rewarded him while he employed
only domestic utensils. Occasionally, it is true, he produced a small
piece of perfectly vulcanized India-rubber; but upon subjecting other
pieces to precisely the same process, they would blister or char.
Then we see him resorting to the shops and factories in the neighborhood
of Woburn, asking the privilege of using an oven after working hours,
or of hanging a piece of India-rubber in the "man-hole" of the boiler.
The foremen testify that he was a great plague to them, and smeared
their works with his sticky compound; but though they regarded him as
little better than a troublesome lunatic, they all appear to have helped
him very willingly. He frankly confesses that he lived at this time on
charity; for although _he_ felt confident of being able to repay the
small sums which pity for his family enabled him to borrow, his
neighbors who lent him the money were as far as possible from expecting
payment. Pretending to lend, they meant to give. One would pay his
butcher's bill or his milk-bill; another would send in a barrel of
flour; another would take in payment some articles of the old stock of
India-rubber; and some of the farmers allowed his children to gather
sticks in their fields to heat his hillocks of sand containing masses of
sulphurized India-rubber. If the people of New England were not the most
"neighborly" people in the world, his family must have starved, or he
must have given up his experiments. But, with all the generosity of his
neighbors, his children were often sick, hungry, and cold, without
medicine, food, or fuel. One witness testifies: "I found, in 1839, that
they had not fuel to burn nor food to eat, and did not know where to get
a morsel of food from one day to another, unless it was sent in to
them." We can neither justify nor condemn their father. Imagine Columbus
within sight of the new world, and his obstinate crew declaring it was
only a mirage, and refusing to row him ashore. Never was mortal man
surer that he had a fortune in his hand, than Charles Goodyear was when
he would take a piece of scorched and dingy India-rubber from his pocket
and expound its marvellous properties to a group of incredulous
villagers. Sure also was he that he was just upon the point of a
practicable success. Give him but an oven and would he not turn you out
fire-proof and cold-proof India-rubber, as fast as a baker can produce
loaves of bread? Nor was it merely the hope of deliverance from his
pecuniary straits that urged him on. In all the records of his career,
we perceive traces of something nobler than this. His health being
always infirm, he was haunted with the dread of dying before he had
reached a point in his discoveries where other men, influenced by
ordinary motives, could render them available.
By the time that he had exhausted the patience of the foremen of the
works near Woburn, he had come to the conclusion that an oven was the
proper means of applying heat to his compound. An oven he forthwith
determined to build. Having obtained the use of a corner of a factory
yard, his aged father, two of his brothers, his little son, and himself
sallied forth, with pickaxe and shovels, to begin the work; and when
they had done all that unskilled labor could effect towards it, he
induced a mason to complete it, and paid him in brick-layers' aprons
made of aquafortized India-rubber. This first oven was a tantalizing
failure. The heat was neither uniform nor controllable. Some of the
pieces of India-rubber would come out so perfectly "cured" as to
demonstrate the utility of his discovery; but others, prepared in
precisely the same manner, as far as he could discern, were spoiled,
either by blistering or charring. He was puzzled and distressed beyond
description; and no single voice consoled or encouraged him. Out of the
first piece of cloth which he succeeded in vulcanizing he had a coat
made for himself, which was not an ornamental garment in its best
estate; but, to prove to the unbelievers that it would stand fire, he
brought it so often in contact with hot stoves, that at last it
presented an exceedingly dingy appearance. His coat did not impress the
public favorably, and it served to confirm the opinion that he was
laboring under a mania.
In the midst of his first disheartening experiments with sulphur, he had
an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. A house in Paris
made him an advantageous offer for the use of his aquafortis process.
From the abyss of his misery the honest man promptly replied, that that
process, valuable as it was, was about to be superseded by a new method,
which he was then perfecting, and as soon as he had developed it
sufficiently he should be glad to close with their offers. Can we wonder
that his neighbors thought him mad?
It was just after declining the French proposal that he endured his
worst extremity of want and humiliation. It was in the winter of
1839-40; one of those long and terrible snowstorms for which New England
is noted, had been raging for many hours, and he awoke one morning to
find his little cottage half buried in snow, the storm still continuing,
and in his house not an atom of fuel nor a morsel of food. His children
were very young, and he was himself sick and feeble. The charity of his
neighbors was exhausted, and he had not the courage to face their
reproaches. As he looked out of the window upon the dreary and
tumultuous scene,--"fit emblem of his condition," he remarks,--he called
to mind that a few days before, an acquaintance, a mere acquaintance,
who lived some miles off, had given him upon the road a more friendly
greeting than he was then accustomed to receive. It had cheered his
heart as he trudged sadly by, and it now returned vividly to his mind.
To this gentleman he determined to apply for relief, if he could reach
his house. Terrible was his struggle with the wind and the deep drifts.
Often he was ready to faint with fatigue, sickness, and hunger, and he
would be obliged to sit down upon a bank of snow to rest. He reached the
house and told his story, not omitting the oft-told tale of his new
discovery,--that mine of wealth, if only he could procure the means of
working it. The eager eloquence of the inventor was seconded by the
gaunt and yellow face of the man. His generous acquaintance entertained
him cordially, and lent him a sum of money, which not only carried his
family through the worst of the winter, but enabled him to continue his
experiments on a small scale. O. B. Coolidge, of Woburn, was the name of
this benefactor.
On another occasion, when he was in the most urgent need of materials,
he looked about his house to see if there was left one relic of better
days upon which a little money could be borrowed. There was nothing but
his children's school-books,--the last things from which a New Englander
is willing to part. There was no other resource. He gathered them up,
and sold them for five dollars, with which he laid in a fresh stock of
gum and sulphur, and kept on experimenting.
Alice and Hester looked over the rest of the story while the others
packed up the wrecks of the picnic and prepared to go down the hill.
Then they joined Uncle Fritz in the advance, and thanked him very
seriously for what he had shown them.
"Such a story as that," said Hester, "is worth more than anything about
cut-offs or valves."
"I think so too," said he.
"I should like," said the girl, "to write to those children of his a
letter to thank them for what they have done, and what he did for me,
and a million girls like me."
"It would be a good thing to do," said he, "and I think I can put you in
the way."
"And I do hope," said Alice, eagerly, "that if we are ever tested in
that way we shall bear the test."
"Dear Uncle Fritz, if we cannot invent a flying-machine, and have not
learned how to close up rivets this winter, we have learned at least how
to bear each other's burdens."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These are the quinqueremes, fastened together, of the other account.
[2] The estimates of a talent vary somewhat, but ten talents made about
seven hundred pounds.
[3] Quoted in Fabricius's Greek fragments.
[4] Encyclopædia Americana: art. "Roger Bacon."
[5] See "Stories of Adventure."
[6] As St. James says, "The wisdom from above is _first_ pure."
[7] Joseph Droz, born in 1773. His essay was published in 1806, and had
come to its fourth edition in 1825.
[8] The first-steam-engines were devised in order to supply some motor
for the pumps which were necessary, all over England, to keep the mines
free from water. The locomotive engine, as will be seen later, owes its
birth to the efforts of colliery engineers to find some means of drawing
coal better than the horse-power generally in use.
[9] John Robison, at this time a student at Glasgow College, and
afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh. He was at
one time Master of the Marine Cadet Academy at Cronstadt.
[10] The principal men of Glasgow were the importers of tobacco from
Virginia.
[11] Earl Stanhope, among other projects, had conceived "the hope of
being able to apply the steam-engine to navigation by the aid of a
peculiar apparatus modelled after the foot of an aquatic fowl." Fulton,
on being consulted by the Earl, doubted the feasibility, and suggested
the very means which he afterward made successful upon the Hudson.
[12] Symington was an engineer who had been carrying out some
experiments of Miller of Dalswinton in regard to the practicability of
steam navigation.
[13] Who subsequently made charge that Fulton, having seen his steamboat
and made copious notes thereon, had thus been able to make his boat upon
the Hudson.
[14] This was in the course of the War of 1812.
[15] Fulton died Feb. 24, 1815; he was born in 1765.
[16] Killingworth is a town some seven or eight miles north of
Newcastle, in Northumberland. George Stephenson was at this time the
engine-wright of the colliery. It may be said here that the principal
use for which the early locomotive engines and railroads were designed
was to convey coal from the pit to a market. It was not till the success
of the mining and quarrying railways led to the building of the
Liverpool and Manchester Road, between two great cities, that the value
of the railroad for the transfer of passengers was recognized.
[17] It had been generally the opinion that cog-wheels must be used
which should fit into cogs in the rail. Otherwise it was imagined the
wheels would revolve without proceeding.
[18] "The private risk is the public benefit."
[19] It had a sort of resemblance to a grasshopper, caused by the angle
at which the piston and cylinder were placed.
[20] Mr. Henry Booth, secretary to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway,
suggested to Mr. Stephenson the idea of a multitubular boiler.
[21] This letter is dated Nov. 24, 1793.
[22] This was in 1812, twenty years after the invention of the gin. The
saving in 1885 is enormously greater.
[23] Napoleon III., under whose protection Bessemer had been
experimenting in projectiles when his attention was turned to the
manufacture of iron.
[24] In Grüner's text-book on steel, he says: "In its properties, as
well as in its manufacture, steel is comprised between the limits of
cast and wrought iron. It cannot even be said where steel begins or
ends. It is a series which begins with the most impure black pig iron,
and ends with the softest and purest wrought iron. [Karsten stated this
in these words in 1823.] Cast-iron passes into hard steel in becoming
malleable (natural steel for wire-mills, the 'Wildstahl' of the
Germans); and steel, properly so called, passes into iron, giving in
succession mild steel, steel of the nature of iron, steely iron, and
granular iron."
[25] A small cannon cast by Sir Henry, the description of which we have
omitted.
[26] Immediately after his first successful experiment at St. Pancras,
described above.
INDEX.
Abel, Professor, 275, 278
Althorp, Lord, 268
Anderson, 246
Archimedes, 18, 20
Bacon, Roger, 37
Barlow, Joel, 179
Baxter House, 277
Beccaria, 114
Bell, I. L., 280
Benvenuto Cellini, 58
Bernard Palissy, 82
Berthier, 281
Berzelius, 281
Bessemer, Andrew, 262
Bessemer, Sir Henry, 259
Bessemer and Catherwood, 263
Black, Dr., 165
Blue Hills, Mass., 284
Bossuet, 183
Boulton, Matthew, 171, 181
Bourbon, Constable, 63
Braithwaite and Ericsson, 212
Brandreth, 212
Bridgewater Foundry, 249, 255
Brunel, Isambert, 178
Bungy, Friar, 41
Burstall, 212, 216
Carriage, Sailing, 141
Car of Neptune, 189
Caslon, Henry, 263
Cellini, Benvenuto, 58
Chaise, One-wheeled, 144
Charles IX. of France, 96
Cheltenham, 281
Church, Benjamin, 174
Circle, The Square of, 22
Clement VII., 62
Condensation, 159
Conductors of Electricity, 105