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[Illustration: The Rush for the Gold-fields.]
THE ROMANCE OF INDUSTRY AND INVENTION
Selected by
ROBERT COCHRANE
Editor of
'Great Thinkers and Workers,' 'Beneficent and Useful Lives,'
'Adventure and Adventurers,' 'Recent Travel and Adventure,'
'Good and Great Women,' 'Heroic Lives,' &c.
Philadelphia
J. B. Lippincott Company
1897
Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
PREFACE.
Our national industries lie at the root of national progress. The first
Napoleon taunted us with being a nation of shopkeepers; that, however,
is now less true than that we are a nation of manufacturers--coal, iron,
and steel, and our textile industries, taken along with our enormous
carrying-trade, forming the backbone of the wealth of the country.
A romantic interest belongs to the rise and progress of most of our
industries. Very often this lies in the career of the inventor, who
struggled towards the perfection and recognition of his invention
against heavy difficulties and discouragements; or it may lie in the
interesting processes of manufacture. Every fresh labourer in the field
adds some link to the chain of progress, and brings it nearer
perfection. Some of the small beginnings have increased in a marvellous
way. Such are chronicled under Bessemer and Siemens, who have vastly
increased the possibilities of the steel industry; in the sections
devoted to Krupp, of Essen; Sir W.G. Armstrong, of the Elswick Works,
where 18,000 men are now employed alone in the arsenal; Maxim, of Maxim
Gun fame; the rise and progress of the cycle industry; that of the gold
and diamond mining industry; and the carrying-trade of the world.
Many of the chapters in this book have been selected from a wealth of
such material contributed from time to time to the pages of _Chambers's
Journal_, but additions and fresh material have been added where
necessary.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
The Rush for the Gold-fields _Frontispiece_
Nasmyth's Steam-hammer 19
Bessemer Converting Vessel 28
Bessemer Process 30
Krupp's 15.6 Breech-loading Gun (breech open) 47
Josiah Wedgwood 52
Wedgwood at Work 56
Portland Vase 62
The Worcester Porcelain Works 64
Chinese Porcelain Vase 71
Wool-sorters at Work 82
Cotton Plant 101
The Hand-cradle Method of extracting Gold 103
Welcome Nugget 106
Hydraulic Gold-mining 115
Prospecting for Gold 125
Square-cut Brilliant, Round-cut Brilliant, Rose-cut Diamond 136
Kimberley Diamond-mine 139
Some of the Principal Diamonds of the World 145
The _Great Harry_ 153
Gatling Gun on Field Carriage 163
Nordenfelt-Palmcrantz Gun mounted on Ship's Bulwark 164
Lord Armstrong 166
Rifle-calibre Maxim Gun 178
One of the 'Wooden Walls of Old England' 184
The _Majestic_ 186
Section of the Goubet Submarine Boat 190
The Dandy-horse 204
The _Great Eastern_ and the _Persia_ 232
The _Campania_ 237
Clipper Sailing-ship of 1850-60 241
_La France_ 246
The _Great Eastern_ paying out the Atlantic Cable 281
Edison with his Phonograph 291
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
IRON AND STEEL.
PAGE
Pioneers of the Iron and Steel Industry--Sir Henry Bessemer--
Sir William Siemens--Werner von Siemens--The Krupps of Essen 9
CHAPTER II.
POTTERY AND PORCELAIN.
Josiah Wedgwood and the Wedgwood Ware--Worcester Porcelain 51
CHAPTER III.
THE SEWING MACHINE.
Thomas Saint--Thimonnier--Hunt--Elias Howe--Wilson--Morey--
Singer 72
CHAPTER IV.
WOOL AND COTTON.
WOOL.--What is Wool?--Chemical Composition--Fibre--Antiquity
of Shepherd Life--Varieties of Sheep--Introduction into
Australia--Spanish Merino--Wool Wealth of Australia--Imports
and Exports of Wool and Woollen Produce--Woollen Manufacture 81
COTTON.--Cotton Plant in the East--Mandeville's Fables about
Cotton--Cotton in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt--Columbus finds
Cotton-yarn and Thread in 1492--In Africa--Manufacture of
Cloth in England--The American Cotton Plant 91
CHAPTER V.
GOLD AND DIAMONDS.
GOLD.--How widely distributed--Alluvial Gold-mining--Vein
Gold-mining--Nuggets--Treatment of Ore and Gold in the
Transvaal--Story of South African Gold-fields--Gold-production
of the World--Johannesburg the Golden City--Coolgardie
Gold-fields--Bayley's discovery of Gold there 102
DIAMONDS.--Composition--Diamond-cutting--Diamond-mining--
Famous Diamonds--Cecil J. Rhodes and the Kimberley Mines 135
CHAPTER VI.
BIG GUNS, SMALL-ARMS, AND AMMUNITION.
Woolwich Arsenal--Enfield Small-arms Factory--Lord Armstrong
and the Elswick Works--Testing Guns at Shoeburyness--Hiram
S. Maxim and the Maxim Machine Gun--The Colt Automatic Gun--
Ironclads--Submarine Boats 152
CHAPTER VII.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE CYCLE.
In praise of Cycling--Number of Cycles in Use--Medical
Opinions--Pioneers in the Invention--James Starley--Cycling
Tours 192
CHAPTER VIII.
STEAMERS AND SAILING-SHIPS.
Early Shipping--Mediterranean Trade--Rise of the P. and O. and
other Lines--Transatlantic Lines--India and the East--Early
Steamships--First Steamer to cross the Atlantic--Rise of
Atlantic Shipping Lines--The _Great Eastern_ and the New
Cunarders _Campania_ and _Lucania_ compared--Sailing-ships 205
CHAPTER IX.
POST-OFFICE--TELEGRAPH--TELEPHONE--PHONOGRAPH.
Rowland Hill and Penny Postage--A Visit to the Post-office--
The Post-office on Wheels--Early Telegraphs--Wheatstone and
Morse--The State and the Telegraphs--Atlantic Cables--
Telephones--Edison and the Phonograph 247
[Illustration]
ROMANCE OF INDUSTRY
AND
INVENTION.
CHAPTER I.
IRON AND STEEL.
Pioneers of the Iron and Steel Industry--Sir Henry Bessemer--Sir
William Siemens--Werner von Siemens--The Krupps of Essen.
Francis Horner, writing early in this century, said that 'Iron is not
only the soul of every other manufacture, but the mainspring perhaps of
civilised society.' Cobden has said that 'our wealth, commerce, and
manufactures grew out of the skilled labour of men working in metals.'
According to Carlyle, the epic of the future is not to be Arms and the
Man, but Tools and the Man. We all know that iron was mined and smelted
in considerable quantities in this island as far back as the time of the
Romans; and we cherish a vague notion that iron must have been mined and
smelted here ever since on a progressively increasing scale. We are so
accustomed to think and speak of ourselves as first among all nations,
at the smelting-furnace, in the smithy, and amid the Titanic labours of
the mechanical workshop, that we open large eyes when we are told what
a recent conquest all this superiority is!
There was, indeed, some centuries later than the Roman occupation, a
period coming down to quite modern times, during which English
iron-mines were left almost unworked. In Edward III.'s reign, the pots,
spits, and frying-pans of the royal kitchen were classed among his
majesty's jewels. For the planners of the Armada the greater abundance
and excellence of Spanish iron compared with English was an important
element in their calculations of success. In the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, the home market looked to Spain and Germany for its
supply both of iron and steel. After that, Sweden came prominently
forward; and from her, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century,
no less than four-fifths of the iron used in this country was imported!
The reason of this marvellous neglect of what has since proved one of
our main sources of wealth lay in the enormous consumption of timber
which the old smelting processes entailed. The charcoal used in
producing a single ton of pig-iron represented four loads of wood, and
that required for a ton of bar-iron represented seven loads. Of course,
the neighbourhood of a forest was an essential condition to the
establishment of ironworks; but wherever such an establishment was
effected, the forest disappeared with portentous rapidity. At
Lamberhurst, on the borders of Kent and Sussex, with so trifling a
produce as five tons per week, the annual consumption of wood was two
hundred thousand cords. The timber wealth of Kent, Surrey, and
Sussex--which counties were then the centres of our iron
industry--seemed menaced with speedy annihilation. In the destruction of
these great forests, that of our maritime power was supposed to be
intimately involved; so that it is easy to understand how, in those
days, the development of the iron manufacture came to be regarded in
the light of a national calamity, and a fitting subject for restrictive
legislation! Various Acts were passed towards the end of the sixteenth
century prohibiting smelting-furnaces within twenty-two miles of London,
and many of the Sussex masters found themselves compelled, in
consequence, to break up their works. During the civil wars of the
seventeenth century, a severe blow was given to the trade by the
destruction of all furnaces belonging to royalists; and after the
Restoration we find the crown itself demolishing its own works in the
Forest of Dean, on the old plea that the supply of shipbuilding timber
was thereby imperilled. Between 1720 and 1730 the ironworks of
Worcestershire and the Forest of Dean consumed 17,350 tons of timber
annually, or five tons for each furnace.
'From this time' (the Restoration), says Mr Smiles, 'the iron
manufacture of Sussex, as of England generally, rapidly declined. In
1740 there were only fifty-nine furnaces in all England, of which ten
were in Sussex; and in 1788 there were only two. A few years later, and
the Sussex iron-furnaces were blown out altogether. Farnhurst in
Western, and Ashburnham in Eastern Sussex, witnessed the total
extinction of the manufacture. The din of the iron hammer was hushed,
the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of the bellows was blown,
and the district returned to its original rural solitude. Some of the
furnace-ponds were drained and planted with hops or willows; others
formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure-grounds; while the remainder
were used to drive flour-mills, as the streams in North Kent, instead of
driving fulling-mills, were employed to work paper-mills.' The
plentifulness of timber in the Scottish Highlands explains the
establishment of smelting-furnaces, in 1753, by an English company at
Bunawe in Argyllshire, whither the iron was brought from Furness in
Lancashire.
Few of our readers can be unacquainted with the fact that iron-smelting
at the present day is performed not with wood but with coal. It will
readily, then, be understood that the substitution of the one
description of fuel for the other must have formed the turning-point in
the history of the British iron manufacture. This substitution, however,
was brought about very slowly. The prejudice against coal was for a long
period extreme; its use for domestic purposes was pronounced detrimental
to health; and, even for purposes of manufacture, it was generally
condemned. Nevertheless, as wood became scarcer and dearer, a closer
examination into the capabilities of coal came naturally to be made; and
here, as in almost every other industrial path, we find a foreigner
acting as our pioneer. The Germans had long been experienced in mining
and metallurgy; and it was a German, Simon Sturtevant, who first took
out a patent for smelting iron with coal. But his process proved a
failure, and the patent was cancelled. Other Germans, naturalised here,
followed in Sturtevant's footsteps, but with no better results; until at
last an Englishman, Dud Dudley (1599-1684), took up the idea, and gave
it practical success. The town of Dudley was even then a centre of the
iron manufacture, and Dud's noble father, Lord Dudley, owned several
furnaces. But here, also, the forest-wealth of the district was fast
melting away, and the trade already languished under the dread of
impending dissolution. In the immediate neighbourhood, meanwhile, coal
was abundant, with ironstone and limestone in close proximity to it.
Dud, who, as a child, had haunted and scrutinised his father's ironworks
with wondering delight, was placed just at this juncture in charge of a
furnace and a couple of forges, and immediately turned his energetic
mind to the question of smelting with coal. Some careful experiments
succeeded so well that he wrote to his father, requesting him to take
out a patent for the process; and this patent, registered in Lord
Dudley's name, and dated the 22d February 1620, properly inaugurated the
great metallurgic revolution which had made the English iron trade what
it now is. Andrew Yarranton was another pioneer in the iron and
tin-plate industry, and wrote a remarkable work on _England's
Improvement by Sea and Land_ (1677-81).
Nevertheless, even with this positive success on record, the inert
insular mind long refused to follow the path cleared for it. Dud's
discovery 'was neither appreciated by the iron-masters nor by the
workmen;' and all schemes for smelting ore with any other fuel than
wood-charcoal were regarded with incredulity. His secret seems to have
been bequeathed to no one, and for many years after his death the old,
much-abused, forest-devouring system went tottering on. Stern necessity,
however, taught its hard lesson at last, and a period insensibly arrived
when the employment of coal in smelting processes became the rule rather
than the exception, and might be seen here and there on an unusually
large scale--especially at the celebrated Coalbrookdale works, in the
valley of the Severn, Shropshire.
The founder of the Coalbrookdale industries was a Quaker--Abraham Darby
(1677-1717). A small furnace had existed on the spot ever since the days
of the Tudors, and this small furnace formed the nucleus of that
industrial activity which the visitor of Coalbrookdale surveys with such
wonder at the present day.
In Darby's time, the principal cooking utensils of the poorer classes
were pots and kettles made of cast-iron. But even this primitive ware
was beyond native skill, and most of the utensils in question were
imported from Holland. Exercising an effort of judgment, which, moderate
as it was, seems to have been hitherto unexampled, Darby resolved to
pay that country a visit, and ascertain in person why it was that Dutch
castings were so good and English so bad. The use of dry sand instead of
clay for the moulds comprised, he found, the whole secret.
On returning to England, Darby took out a patent for the new process,
and his castings soon acquired repute. The use of pit-coal in the
Coalbrookdale furnaces is not supposed, however, to have become general
until the worthy Abraham had been succeeded by his son; but when it once
did become so, the impetus thereby given to the iron trade and to
coal-mining was immense. It is the latter industry which may
pre-eminently claim to have called the steam-engine into existence. The
demand for pumping-power adequate to the drainage of deep mines set
Newcomen's brain to work; and the engine rough-sketched by his
ingenuity, and perfected by the genius of Watt, soon increased
enormously the production of iron by rendering coal more accessible and
the blast-furnace more efficient.
A son-in-law of Abraham Darby's, Richard Reynolds by name, made a great
stride towards the modern railway by substituting iron for wood on the
tramways which connected the different works at Coalbrookdale; and it
was a grandson of the same Abraham who designed and erected the first
iron bridge.
England, we have seen, borrowed the idea of her smelting processes and
iron-castings from Germany and Holland; but the discovery of that
important material, cast-steel, belongs, at least, to one of her own
sons. Yet even here the relationship is a merely conventional one, for
Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776) was the child of German parents who had
settled in Lincolnshire.
Huntsman's original calling was that of a clock-maker; but his
remarkable mechanical skill, his shrewdness, and his practical sense,
soon gave him the repute of the 'wise man' of the district, and brought
neighbours to consult him not only as to the repair of every ordinary
sort of machinery, but also of the human frame--the most complex of all
machines! It was his daily experience of the inferior quality of the
tools at his command that led him to make experiments in the manufacture
of steel. What his experiments were we have no record to show; but that
they must have been conducted with Teutonic patience and thoroughness
there can be no doubt, from the formidable nature of the difficulties
overcome.
England, however, long refused to make use of Huntsman's precious
material, although produced in her very midst. The Sheffield cutlers
would have nothing to do with a substance so much harder than anything
they were accustomed to, and Huntsman was actually compelled to look for
his market abroad! All the cast-steel he could manufacture was sent over
to France, and the merit of employing this material for general purposes
belongs originally to that country. The inventions of Henry Cort
(1740-1800) for refining and rolling iron (1785) were the mainspring of
the malleable iron trade, and made Great Britain independent of Russia
and Sweden for supplies of manufactured iron. One authority has stated
that since 1790, when Cort's improvements were entirely established, the
value of landed property in England had doubled. But he was unfortunate
in business life, and in 1811 upwards of forty iron firms subscribed
towards a fund for the assistance of his widow and nine orphan children.
David Mushet (1772-1847) did much for the expansion of the iron trade in
Scotland by his preparation of steel from bar-iron by a direct process,
combining the iron with carbon, and by his discovery of the effect of
manganese on steel.
Steel is the material of which the instruments of labour are
essentially made. Upon the quality of the material, that of the
instrument naturally depends, and upon the quality of the instrument,
that, in great measure, of the work. Watt's marvellous invention ran
great risk, at one time, of being abandoned, for the simple reason that
the mechanical capacities of the age were not 'up' to its embodiment.
Even after Watt had secured the aid of Boulton's best workmen, Smeaton
gave it as his opinion that the steam-engine could never be brought into
general use, because of the difficulty of getting its various parts made
with the requisite precision.
The execution by machinery of work ordinarily executed by hand-tools has
been a gigantic stride in the path of material civilisation. The
earliest phase of the great modern movement in this direction is
represented, probably, by the sawmill. A sawmill was erected near London
as long ago as 1663--by a foreigner--but was shortly abandoned in
consequence of the determined hostility of the sawyers; and more than a
century elapsed before another mill was put up. But the sawmill is
comparatively a rude structure, and the material it operates upon is
easily treated, even by the hand. When we come to deal, however, with
such substances as iron and steel, the benefit of machinery becomes
incalculable. Without our recent machine-tools, indeed, the stupendous
iron creations of the present day would have been impossible at any
cost; for no amount of hand-labour could ever attain that perfect
exactitude of construction without which it would be idle to attempt
fitting the component parts of these colossal structures together.
The first impulse, however, to the improvement of machine-tools for
ironwork was given by a difficulty born not of mass but of minuteness.
Up to the end of the last century, the locks in common use among us
were of the rudest description, and afforded scarcely any security
against thieves. To meet this universal want, Joseph Bramah set his
remarkable inventive faculties to work, and speedily contrived a lock so
perfect, that it held its ground for many a day. But Bramah's locks are
machines of the most delicate kind, depending for their efficiency upon
the precision with which their component parts are finished; and, at
that time, the attainment of this precision, at such a price as to
render the lock an article of extensive commerce, seemed an insuperable
difficulty. In his dilemma, Bramah's attention was directed to a
youngster in the Woolwich Arsenal smithy, named Henry Maudsley, whose
reputation for ingenuity was already great among his fellows. Bramah was
at first almost ashamed to take such a mere lad into his counsels; but a
preliminary conversation convinced him that his confidence would not be
misplaced. He persuaded Maudsley to enter his employment, and the result
was the invention, between them, of the planing-machine, applicable
either to wood or metal, as also of certain improvements in the old
lathe, more particularly of that known as the 'slide-rest.'
In the old-fashioned lathe, the workman guided his cutting-tool by sheer
muscular strength, and the slightest variation in the pressure
necessarily led to an irregularity of surface. The rest for the hand is
in this case fixed, and the tool held by the workman travels along it.
Now, the principle of the slide-rest is the opposite of this. The rest
itself holds the tool firmly fixed in it, and slides along the bench in
a direction parallel with the axis of the work. All that the workman has
to do, therefore, is to turn a screw-handle, by means of which the
cutter is carried along with the smallest possible expenditure of
strength; and even this trifling labour has been since got rid of, by
making the rest self-acting.
Simple and obvious as this improvement seems, its importance cannot be
overrated. The accuracy it insured was precisely the desideratum of the
day! By means of the slide-rest, the most delicate as well as the most
ponderous pieces of machinery can be turned with mathematical precision;
and from this invention must date that extraordinary development of
mechanical power and production which is a characteristic of the age we
live in. 'Without the aid of the vast accession to our power of
producing perfect mechanism which it at once supplied,' says a
first-class judge in matters of the kind, 'we could never have worked
out into practical and profitable forms the conceptions of those
master-minds who, during the past half-century, have so successfully
pioneered the way for mankind. The steam-engine itself, which supplies
us with such unbounded power, owes its present perfection to this most
admirable means of giving to metallic objects the most precise and
perfect geometrical forms. How could we, for instance, have good
steam-engines if we had not the means of boring out a true cylinder, or
turning a true piston-rod, or planing a valve-face?'
It would perhaps be impossible to cite any more authoritative estimate
of Maudsley's invention than the above. The words placed between
inverted commas are the words of James Nasmyth, the inventor of that
wonderful steam-hammer which Professor Tomlinson characterises as 'one
of the most perfect of artificial machines and noblest triumphs of mind
over matter that modern English engineers have yet developed.'
[Illustration: Nasmyth's Steam-hammer.]
This machine enlarged at one bound the whole scale of working in iron,
and permitted Maudsley's lathe to develop its entire range of capacity.
The old 'tilt-hammer' was so constructed that the more voluminous the
material submitted to it, the _less_ was the power attainable; so that
as soon as certain dimensions had been exceeded, the hammer became
utterly useless. When the _Great Western_ steamship was in course of
construction, tenders were invited from the leading mechanical firms for
the supply of the enormous paddle-shaft required for her engines. But a
forging of the size in question had never been executed, and no firm in
England would undertake the contract. In this dilemma, Mr Nasmyth was
applied to, and the result of his study of the problem was this
marvellous steam-hammer--so powerful that it will forge an Armstrong
hundred-pounder as easily as a farrier forges a horse-shoe, and so
delicately manageable that it will crack a nut without bruising its
kernel!
BESSEMER STEEL.
In 1722, Reaumur produced steel by melting three parts of cast-iron with
one part of wrought iron (probably in a crucible) in a common forge; he,
however, failed to produce steel in this manner on a working scale. This
process has many points in common with the Indian Wootz-steel
manufacture.
As we have seen, to Benjamin Huntsman, a Doncaster artisan, belongs the
credit of first producing cast-steel upon a working scale, as he was the
first to accomplish the entire fusion of converted bar-iron (that is,
blister-steel) of the required degree of hardness, in crucibles or clay
pots, placed among the coke of an air-furnace. This process is still
carried on at Sheffield and elsewhere, and is what is generally known as
the crucible or pot-steel process. It was mainly supplementary to the
cementation process, as formerly blister-steel was alone melted in the
crucibles; but latterly, and at the present time, the crucible mode of
manufacture embraces the fusion of other varieties and combinations of
metal, producing accordingly different classes and qualities of steel.
In 1839, Josiah Marshall Heath patented the important application of
carburet of manganese to steel in the crucible, which application
imparted to the resulting product the properties of varying temper and
increased forgeability. He subsequently found out that a separate
operation was not necessary to form the carburet--which is produced by
heating peroxide of manganese and carbon to a high temperature--but that
the same result could be attained by simply in the first instance adding
the carbon and oxide of manganese direct to the metal in the crucible.
He unsuspectingly communicated this after-discovery to his agent--by
name Unwin--who took advantage of the fact that it was not incorporated
in the wording of the patent, and so was unprotected, to make use of it
for his own advantage. The result was one of the most remarkable patent
trials on record, extending over twelve years, and terminating in 1855
against the patentee--a remarkable instance of the triumph of legal
technicalities over the moral sense of right.
A very important development of the manufacture of steel followed the
introduction of the 'Bessemer process,' by means of which a low carbon
or mild cast-steel can be produced at about one-tenth of the cost of
crucible steel. It is used for rails, for the tires of the wheels of
railway carriages, for ship-plates, boiler-plates, for shafting, and a
multitude of constructional and other purposes to which only wrought
iron was formerly applied, besides many for which no metal at all was
used.
Sir Henry Bessemer's process for making steel, which is now so largely
practised in England, on the continent of Europe, and in America, was
patented in 1856. It was first applied to the making of malleable iron,
but this has never been successfully made by the Bessemer method. For
the manufacture of a cheap but highly serviceable steel, however, its
success has been so splendid that no other metallurgical process has
given its inventor so great a renown. Although the apparatus actually
used is somewhat costly and elaborate, yet the principle of the
operation is very simple. A large converting vessel, with openings
called tuyeres in its bottom, is partially filled up with from 5 to 10
tons of molten pig-iron, and a blast of air, at a pressure of from 18 to
20 lb. per square inch, is forced through this metal by a blowing
engine. Pig-iron contains from 3 to 5 per cent. of carbon, and, if it
has been smelted with charcoal from a pure ore, as is the case with
Swedish iron, the blast is continued till only from .25 to 1 per cent.
of the carbon is left in the metal, that is to say, steel is produced.
Sometimes, however, the minimum quantity of carbon is even less than .25
per cent. In England, where a less pure but still expensive
cast-iron--viz. haematite pig--is used for the production of steel in the
ordinary Bessemer converter, the process differs slightly. In this case
the whole of the carbon is oxidised by the blast of air, and the
requisite quantity of this element is afterwards restored to the metal
by pouring into the converter a small quantity of a peculiar kind of
cast-iron, called _spiegeleisen_, which contains a known quantity of
carbon. But small quantities of manganese and silicon are also present
in Bessemer steel. The 'blow' lasts from 20 to 30 minutes. Steel made
from whatever kind of pig-iron, either by this or by the 'basic'
process, is not sufficiently dense, at least for most purposes, and it
is accordingly manipulated under the steam-hammer and rolled into a
variety of forms. Bessemer steel is employed, as we have said, for heavy
objects, as rails, tires, rollers, boiler-plates, ship-plates, and for
many other purposes for which malleable iron was formerly used.
Basic steel is now largely made from inferior pig-iron, such as the
Cleveland, by the Thomas-Gilchrist process patented in 1878. It is,
however, only a modification of the Bessemer process to the extent of
substituting for the siliceous or 'acid' lining generally used, a lime
or 'basic' lining for the converter. Limestone, preferably a magnesian
limestone in some form, is commonly employed for the lining. By the use
of a basic lining, phosphorus is eliminated towards the end of the
'blow.' Phosphorus is a very deleterious substance in steel, and is
present, sometimes to the extent of 2 per cent., in pig-iron smelted
from impure ore.
The four inventions of this century which have given the greatest
impetus to the manufacture of iron and steel were--the introduction of
the hot blast into the blast-furnace for the production of crude iron,
made by J. B. Neilson, of the Glasgow Gas-works, in 1827; the
application of the cold blast in the Bessemer converter which we have
just described; the production of steel direct from the ore, by Siemens,
in the open hearth; and the discovery of a basic lining by which
phosphorus is eliminated and all kinds of iron converted into steel.
This last was the discovery of G. J. Snelus, of London, and it was made
a practical success by the Thomas & Gilchrist process just described. In
1883, Mr Snelus was awarded the Bessemer gold medal of the Iron and
Steel Institute 'as the first man who made pure steel from impure iron
in a Bessemer converter lined with basic materials.'
SIR HENRY BESSEMER.
Sir Henry Bessemer, the inventor of the modern process of making steel
from iron, which has just been described, was the son of Anthony
Bessemer, who escaped from France in 1792, and found employment in the
English Mint. He was born in 1813, at Charlton, Herts, where his father
had an estate, was to a great extent self-taught, and his favourite
amusement was in modelling buildings and other objects in clay. He came
up to London 'knowing no one, and no one knowing me--a mere cipher in
this vast sea of enterprise.' He first earned his living by engraving a
large number of elegant and original designs on steel with a diamond
point, for patent medicine labels. He found work also as designer and
modeller. He has been a prolific inventor, as the volumes issued by the
Patent Office show. It has been said that he has paid in patent stamp
duties alone as much as L10,000. At twenty he invented a mode of taking
copies from antique and modern basso-relievos in such a way that they
might be stamped on card-board, thousands being produced at a small
cost.
His inventive faculty also devised a ready method whereby those who were
defrauding the government by detaching old stamps from leases,
money-bills, and agreements, and by using them over again, could be
defeated in their purpose.
His first pecuniary success was obtained by his invention of machinery
for the manufacture of Bessemer gold and bronze powders, which was not
patented, but the nature of which was long kept secret. Another
successful invention was a machine for making Utrecht velvet. He also
interested himself in the manufacture of paints, oils, and varnishes,
sugar, railway carriages, ordnance, projectiles, and the ventilation of
mines. In the Exhibition of 1851 he exhibited an ingenious machine for
grinding and polishing plate-glass.
Like Lord Armstrong, Bessemer turned his attention to the subject of the
improvement of projectiles when there was a prospect of a European war
in 1853. He invented a mode of firing elongated projectiles from
smooth-bore guns, but received no countenance from the officials at
Woolwich.
Commander Minie, who had charge of the experiments which Bessemer was
making on behalf of the Emperor of the French, said: 'Yes, the shots
rotate properly; but if we cannot get something stronger for our guns,
these heavy projectiles will be of little use.' This started Bessemer
thinking and experimenting further, and led up, as we will see, to the
great industrial revolution with which his name stands identified. He
informed the Emperor that he intended to study the whole subject of
metals suitable for artillery purposes. He built experimental works at
St Pancras, but made many failures, furnace after furnace being pulled
down and rebuilt. His prolonged and expensive experiments in getting a
suitable ordnance metal were meanwhile using up his capital; but he was
on the eve of a great discovery, and began to see that the refinement of
iron might go on until pure malleable iron or steel could be obtained.
His wife aided and encouraged him at this time as only a true wife can.
After a year and a half, in which he patented many improvements in the
existing systems of manufacture, it occurred to him to introduce a blast
of atmospheric air into the fluid metal, whereby the cast-iron might be
made malleable. He found that by blowing air through crude iron in a
fluid state, it could thus be rendered malleable. He next tried the
method of having the air blown from below by means of an air-engine.
Molten iron being poured into the vessel, and air being forced in from
below, resulted in a surprising combustion, and the iron in the vessel
was transformed into steel. The introduction of oxygen through the fluid
iron, induced a higher heat, and burned up the impurities. Feeling that
he had succeeded in his experiment, he acquainted Mr George Rennie with
the result. The latter said to him: 'This must not be hid under a
bushel. The British Association meets next week at Cheltenham; if you
have patented your invention, draw up an account of it in a paper, and
have it read in Section G.' Accordingly Bessemer wrote an account of his
process, and in August 1856, he read his paper before the British
Association 'On the Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without
Fuel,' which startled the iron trade of the country.
On the morning of the day on which his paper was to be read, Bessemer
was sitting at breakfast in his hotel, when an iron-master to whom he
was unknown, laughingly said 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 hear of such nonsense?'
Amongst those who spoke generously and enthusiastically of Bessemer's
new process was James Nasmyth, to whom the inventor offered one-third
share of the value of the patent, which would have been another fortune
to him. Nasmyth had made money enough by this time, however, and
declined.
In a communication to Nasmyth, Sir Henry Bessemer thanked him for his
early patronage, and described his discovery: 'I shall ever feel
grateful for the noble way in which you spoke at the meeting at
Cheltenham of my invention. If I remember rightly, you held up a piece
of malleable iron, saying words to this effect: "Here is a true British
nugget! Here is a new process that promises to put an end to all
puddling; and I may mention that at this moment there are
puddling-furnaces in successful operation where my patent hollow
steam-rabbler is at work, producing iron of superior quality by the
introduction of jets of steam in the puddling process. I do not,
however, lay any claim to this invention of Mr Bessemer; but I may
fairly be entitled to say that I have advanced along the roads on which
he has travelled so many miles, and has effected such unexpected
results, that I do not hesitate to say that I may go home from this
meeting and tear up my patent, for my process of puddling is assuredly
superseded."'
After giving an account of his failures, as well as successes, Sir Henry
proceeded to say: 'I prepared to try another experiment, in a crucible
having no hole in the bottom, but which was provided with an iron pipe
put through a hole in the cover, and passing down nearly to the bottom
of the crucible. The small lumps and grains of iron were packed round
it, so as nearly to fill the crucible. A blast of air was to be forced
down the pipe so as to rise up among the pieces of granular iron, and
partly decarburise them. The pipe could then be withdrawn, and the fire
urged until the metal with its coat of oxide was fused, and cast-steel
thereby produced.
'While the blowing apparatus for this experiment was being fitted up, I
was taken with one of those short but painful illnesses to which I was
subject at that time. I was confined to my bed, and it was then that my
mind, dwelling for hours together on the experiment about to be made,
suggested that instead of trying to decarburise the granulated metal by
forcing the air down the vertical pipe among the pieces of iron, the air
would act much more energetically and more rapidly if I first melted the
iron in the crucible, _and forced the air down the pipe below the
surface of the fluid metal_, and thus burnt out the carbon and silicum
which it contained.
'This appeared so feasible, and in every way so great an improvement,
that the experiment on the granular pieces was at once abandoned, and as
soon as I was well enough, I proceeded to try the experiment of forcing
the air under the fluid metal. The result was marvellous. Complete
decarburation was effected in half an hour. The heat produced was
immense, but unfortunately more than half the metal was blown out of the
pot. This led to the use of pots with large, hollow, perforated covers,
which effectually prevented the loss of metal. These experiments
continued from January to October 1855. I have by me on the mantelpiece
at this moment, a small piece of rolled bar-iron which was rolled at
Woolwich Arsenal, and exhibited a year later at Cheltenham.
'I then applied for a patent, but before preparing my provisional
specification (dated October 17, 1855), I searched for other patents to
ascertain whether anything of the sort had been done before. I then
found your patent for puddling with the steam-rabble, and also Martin's
patent for the use of steam in gutters while molten iron was being
conveyed from the blast-furnace to a finery, there to be refined in the
ordinary way prior to puddling.'
[Illustration: BESSEMER CONVERTING VESSEL: _a_, _a_, _a_, tuyeres;
_b_, air-space; _c_, melted metal.]
Several leading men in the iron trade took licenses for the new
manufacture, which brought Bessemer L27,000 within thirty days of the
time of reading his paper. These licenses he afterwards bought back for
L31,000, giving fresh ones in their stead. Some of the early experiments
failed, and it was feared the new method would prove impracticable.
These experiments failed because of the presence of phosphorus in the
iron. But Bessemer worked steadily in order to remove the difficulties
which had arisen, and a chemical laboratory was added to his
establishment, with a professor of chemistry attached. Success awaited
him. The new method of steel-making spread into France and Sweden, and
in 1879 the works for making Bessemer steel were eighty-four in number,
and represented a capital of more than three millions. His process for
the manufacture of steel raised the annual production of steel in
England from 50,000 tons by the older processes to as many as 2,000,000
tons in some years. It was next used for boiler-plates; shipbuilding
with Bessemer steel was begun in 1862, and now it is employed for most
of the purposes for which malleable iron was formerly used. The
production of Europe and America in 1892 was over 10,000,000 tons, of a
probable value of L84,000,000, sufficient, as has been remarked, to make
a solid steel wall round London 40 feet high, and 5 feet thick. It would
take, according to the inventor, two or three years' production of all
the gold-mines in the world to pay in gold for the output of Bessemer
steel for one year. The price of steel previous to Huntsman's process
was about L10,000 per ton; after him, from L50 to L100. Now Bessemer
leaves it at L5 to L6 per ton. And a process which occupied ten days can
be accomplished within half an hour.
[Illustration: Bessemer Process.]
In his sketch of the 'Bessemer Steel Industry, Past and Present' (1894),
Sir Henry Bessemer says: 'It is this new material, so much stronger and
tougher than common iron, that now builds our ships of war and our
mercantile marine. Steel forms their boilers, their propeller shafts,
their hulls, their masts and spars, their standing rigging, their cable
chains and anchors, and also their guns and armour-plating. This new
material has covered with a network of steel rails the surface of every
country in Europe, and in America alone there are no less than 175,000
miles of Bessemer steel rails.' These steel rails last six times longer
than if laid of iron.
Bessemer was knighted in 1879, and has received many gold medals from
scientific institutions. In addition he has, to use his own words,
received in the form of royalties 1,057,748 of the beautiful little gold
medals (sovereigns) issued by her Majesty's Mint. The method chosen by
the Americans to perpetuate his name has been the founding of the
growing centre of industry called Bessemer in Indiana, while Bessemer,
in Pennsylvania, is the seat of the great Edgar Thompson steel-works.
Thus the man who was at first neglected by government has become wealthy
beyond the dreams of avarice, and his name is immortal in the annals of
our manufacturing industry.
SIR CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS AND THE SIEMENS PROCESS.
Another pioneer in the manufacture of steel and iron was CHARLES WILLIAM
SIEMENS, the seventh child of a German landowner, who was born at
Lenthe, near Hanover, 4th April 1823. He showed an affectionate and
sensitive disposition while very young, and a strong faculty of
observation. He received a good plain education at Luebeck, and in
deference to his brother Werner he agreed to become an engineer, and
accordingly was sent to an industrial school at Magdeburg in 1838, where
he also learned languages, including English; mathematics he learned
from his interested brother. He left Magdeburg in 1841 in order to
increase his scientific knowledge at Goettingen, and there he studied
chemistry and physics, with the view of becoming an engineer. Werner,
his elder brother, was still his good genius, and after the death of
their parents counselled and encouraged him, and looked upon him as a
probable future colleague. They corresponded with one another, not only
about family affairs, but also about the scientific and technical
subjects in which both were engrossed. This became a life-long habit
with the brothers Siemens. One early letter from William described a new
kind of valve-gearing which he had invented for Cornish steam-engines.
Then the germ of the idea of what was afterwards known as the
'chronometric governor' for steam-engines was likewise communicated in
this way. Mr Pole says that his early letters were significant of the
talent and capacity of the writer. 'They evince an acuteness of
perception in mechanical matters, a power of close and correct
reasoning, a sound judgment, a fertility of invention, and an ease and
accuracy of expression which, in a youth of nineteen, who had only a few
months' experience in a workshop, are extraordinary, and undoubtedly
shadow forth the brilliant future he attained in the engineering world.'
Werner in 1841 had taken out a patent for his method of electro-gilding,
while William early in 1843 paid his first visit to England, travelling
by way of Hamburg. He took up his abode in a little inn called the 'Ship
and Star,' at Sparrow Corner, near the Minories. In an address as
President of the Midland Institute, Birmingham, on 28th October 1881, he
related his first experiences in England, and how he secured his first
success there.
Mr Siemens said: 'That form of energy known as the electric current was
nothing more than the philosopher's delight forty years ago; its first
application may be traced to this good town of Birmingham, where Mr
George Richards Elkington, utilising the discoveries of Davy, Faraday,
and Jacobi, had established a practical process of electroplating in
1842.... Although I was only a young student of Goettingen, under twenty
years of age, who had just entered upon his practical career with a
mechanical engineer, I joined my brother Werner Siemens, then a young
lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service, in his endeavour to
accomplish electro-gilding.... I tore myself away from the narrow
circumstances surrounding me, and landed at the East End of London, with
only a few pounds in my pocket and without friends, but an ardent
confidence of ultimate success within my breast.
'I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined into,
and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one could direct me to such a
place. In walking along Finsbury Pavement I saw written up in large
letters, "So-and-So"--I forget the name--"undertaker," and the thought
struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of; at any rate, I
thought that a person advertising himself as an "undertaker" would not
refuse to look into my invention, with the view of obtaining for me the
sought for recognition or reward. On entering the place I soon convinced
myself, however, that I came decidedly too soon for the kind of
enterprise there contemplated.' By dint of perseverance, however,
Siemens secured a letter from Messrs Poole and Carpmaell, of the Patent
Office, to Mr Elkington of Birmingham. Elkington and his partner Josiah
Mason both met the young inventor in such a spirit of fairness that, as
he says, he returned to his native country, and to his mechanical
engineering, 'a comparative Croesus.' After the lapse of forty years
his heart still beat quick when thinking of this determining incident in
his career.
The sum which Elkington paid him for his 'thermo-electrical battery' for
depositing solutions of gold, silver, and copper was L1600, less L110
for the cost of the patent. Although quite successful at the time, other
and cheaper processes speedily supplanted it; but the young German had
gained a footing and the money he needed for future experiments. When he
came back to Germany he was looked upon as quite a hero by his admiring
family circle. It was indeed a creditable exploit for a youth of twenty.
When he returned to England again in February 1844, he received so much
encouragement from leading engineers and scientific men for his
'chronometric governor,' that he decided to settle permanently there,
and he became a naturalised British subject in 1859. He joined with a
civil engineer, named Joseph Woods, for the promotion and sale of his
patents. 'Anastatic printing' was one of his early inventions, which,
however, never became profitable. Then came schemes in paper-making, new
methods of propelling ships, winged rockets, and locomotives on new
principles, all of which were a continual drain on his own and his
friends' resources without a corresponding return, so that in 1845 he
took a situation and earned some money by railway work, which enabled
him to pay another visit to Germany. In 1846, undaunted by previous
failures, he threw himself heartily into the study of the action of heat
as a power-giving agent, and invented an arrangement known as the
'regenerator' for saving certain portions of this waste. As afterwards
applied to furnaces for iron, steel, zinc, glass, and other works, it
was pronounced by Sir Henry Bessemer a beautiful invention, at once the
most philosophic in principle, the most powerful in action, and the most
economic of all the contrivances for producing heat by the combustion of
coal. He now secured an appointment in 1849 with Fox & Henderson,
Birmingham, at a fixed salary of L400 a year, and his interest in his
patent. Here he profited largely by the experience gained, but the
engagement terminated in 1851, when he afterwards settled as a civil
engineer in 7 John Street, Adelphi, in March 1852.
His next great achievement was the production of steel direct from the
raw ores by means of his regenerative furnace, which the President of
the Board of Trade in 1883 mentioned in the House of Commons as one of
the most valuable inventions ever produced under the protection of the
English patent law, and he said further that it was then being used in
almost every industry in the kingdom. Siemens had spent fourteen years
in perfecting this regenerative furnace, and it took him other fourteen
to utilise it, and perfect it in making steel direct from the raw ores.
Martin of Sireil, who made one or two additions to the Siemens steel
furnace, has been termed its inventor, but this claim has no foundation.
What is known, however, as the 'Siemens-Martin process' is now competing
very effectively with the Bessemer process. It consists essentially in
first obtaining a bath of melted pig-iron of high quality, and then
adding to this pieces of wrought-iron scrap or Bessemer scrap, such as
crop ends of rails, shearings of plates, &c. These, though practically
non-infusible in large quantities by themselves, become dissolved or
fused in such a bath if added gradually. To the bath of molten metal
thus obtained spiegeleisen or ferro-manganese is added to supply the
required carbon and to otherwise act as in the Bessemer converter. The
result is tested by small ladle samples, and when it is of the desired
quality a portion is run off, leaving sufficient bath for the
continuation of the process.
Siemens took out his patent for the 'open hearth' process of
steel-making (the Forth Bridge is built of steel made in this way) in
1861, and four years later erected sample steel works at Birmingham. The
engineer of the London and North-Western Railway adopted his system at
Crewe in 1868, and the Great Western Railway works followed. In 1869
this process was being carried out on a large scale at the works of the
Landore-Siemens Steel Company and elsewhere in England, as well as at
various works on the Continent, including Krupp's, at Essen.
In 1862, Siemens was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1874
was presented with the Royal Albert Medal, and in 1875 with the Bessemer
Medal in recognition of his researches and inventions in heat and
metallurgy. He filled the president's chair in the three principal
engineering and telegraphic societies of Great Britain, and in 1882 was
President of the British Association. As manager in England of the firm
of Siemens Brothers, Sir William Siemens was actively engaged in the
construction of overland and submarine telegraphs. The steamship
_Faraday_ was specially designed by him for cable-laying. In addition to
his labours in connection with electric-lighting, Sir William Siemens
also successfully applied, in the construction of the Portrush Electric
Tramway, which was opened in 1883, electricity to the production of
locomotion. In his regenerative furnace, as we have seen, he utilised in
an ingenious way the heat which would otherwise have escaped with the
products of combustion. The process was subsequently applied in many
industrial processes, but notably by Siemens himself in the manufacture
of steel.
The other inventions and researches of this wonderful man include a
water-meter; a thermometer or pyrometer, which measures by the change
produced in the electric conductivity of metals; the bathometer, for
measuring ocean depths by variations in the attraction exerted on a
delicately suspended body; and the hastening of vegetable growth by use
of the electric light. He was knighted in April 1883, and died on
November 19 of the same year. There is a memorial window to his memory
in Westminster Abbey.
As the elder brother of Sir William Siemens was so closely connected
with him in business life, and may be said to have encouraged and led
him into the walk of life in which he excelled, he also deserves a
notice here. WERNER VON SIEMENS, engineer and electrician, was born
December 13, 1816, at Lenthe in Hanover. In 1834 he entered the Prussian
Artillery; and in 1844 was put in charge of the artillery workshops at
Berlin. He early showed scientific tastes, and in 1841 took out his
first patent for galvanic silver and gold plating. By selling the right
of using his process he made 40 louis d'or, which supplied him with the
means for further experiments. During the Schleswig-Holstein war, he
attracted considerable attention by using electricity for the firing of
the mines which had been laid for the defence of Kiel harbour. He was of
peculiar service in developing the telegraphic service in Prussia, and
discovered in this connection the valuable insulating property of
gutta-percha for underground and submarine cables. In 1849 he left the
army, and shortly after the service of the state altogether, and devoted
his energies to the construction of telegraphic and electrical apparatus
of all kinds. The well-known firm of Siemens and Halske was established
in 1847 in Berlin, and to them the Russian government entrusted the
construction of the telegraph lines in that country. Subsequently
branches were formed, chiefly under the management of the younger
brothers of Werner Siemens, in St Petersburg (1857), in London (1858),
in Vienna (1858), and in Tiflis (1863). In 1857, Siemens accomplished
the remarkable feat of successfully laying a cable in deep water, at a
depth of more than 1000 fathoms. This was between Sardinia and Bona.
Shortly after he superintended the laying of cables in the Red Sea; and
these successful experiments soon led to the greatest undertaking of
all, the connection of America with Europe. Besides devising numerous
useful forms of galvanometers and other electrical instruments of
precision, Werner Siemens was one of the discoverers of the principle of
the self-acting dynamo. He also made valuable determinations of the
electrical resistance of different substances, the resistance of a
column of mercury, one metre long, and one square millimetre cross
section at 0 deg. C., being known as the Siemens Unit. His numerous
scientific and technical papers, written for the various journals, were
republished in collected form in 1881. In 1886 he gave 500,000 marks for
the founding of an imperial institute of technology and physics; and in
1888 he was ennobled. He died at Berlin, 6th December 1892. A
translation of his _Personal Recollections_ by Coupland appeared in
1893.
* * * * *
Space forbids us mentioning other worthy names in the steel and iron
trade, although we cannot pass by Sir John Brown, founder of the Atlas
Steel-works, Sheffield (1857), and one of the first to adopt the
Bessemer process. He was also the pioneer of armour-plate making. The
immense strides he made in business may be judged from the fact that
when he started in 1857 his employees numbered 200, with a turnover of
L3000 a year; in 1867 they numbered 4000, and the turnover was
L1,000,000. The weekly pay roll amounted to L7000 in 1883, and when he
handed over the business to his successors, he was paid L200,000 for the
goodwill.
KRUPP'S IRON AND STEEL WORKS AT ESSEN.
One of the largest iron and steel manufacturing establishments in the
world is that founded by the late Alfred Krupp, the famous German
cannon-founder, whose name is so well known in connection with modern
improvements in artillery. His principal works are situated at Essen, in
Prussia, in the midst of a district productive of both iron and coal.
The town of Essen, which at the beginning of the present century
contained less than four thousand inhabitants, has become an important
industrial centre, with a population of nearly eighty thousand persons,
this increase being chiefly due to the growth of the ironworks, and the
consequent demand for labour. In the vicinity of the town, numerous coal
and iron mines, many of which are owned by the Krupp firm, are in active
working, and furnish employment to the large population of the
surrounding district. Much of the output of iron ore and coal from these
mines is destined for consumption in the vast Krupp works within the
town. Those works had their origin in a small iron forge established at
Essen in the year 1810 by Frederick Krupp, the father of Alfred Krupp.
The elder Krupp was not prosperous; and a lawsuit in which he became
involved, and which lasted for ten years, though finally decided in his
favour, reduced him nearly to bankruptcy. He died in 1826, in
impoverished circumstances, leaving a widow and three sons, the eldest
of whom was Alfred, aged fourteen. The business was continued by the
widow, who managed, though with difficulty, to procure a good education
for her sons. When the eldest, Alfred, took control of the works in
1848, he found there, as he himself has described, 'three workmen, and
more debts than fortune.'
Krupp's subsequent career affords a remarkable instance of success
attained, despite adverse circumstances, by sheer force of ability and
energy, in building up a colossal manufacturing business from a humble
beginning. On his death in 1887 his only son succeeded him. At the
present time, Krupp's works within the town of Essen occupy more than
five hundred acres, half of which area is under cover. In 1895, the
number of persons in his employ was 25,300, and including members of
their families, over 50,000. Of the army of workers, about 17,000 were
employed at the works in Essen, the remainder being occupied in the 550
iron and coal mines belonging to the firm, or at the branch works at
Sayn Neuwied, Magdeburg, Duisburg, and Engers; or in the iron-mines at
Bilbao, in Spain, which produce the best ores. In Krupp's Essen works
there are one hundred and twelve steam-hammers, ranging in weight from
fifty tons down to four hundred pounds. There are 15 Bessemer
converters, 18 Martin-furnaces, 420 steam-engines--representing together
33,150 horse-power--and twenty-one rolling trains; the daily consumption
of coal and coke being 3100 tons by 1648 furnaces. The average daily
consumption of water, which is brought from the river Ruhr by an
aqueduct, is 24,700 cubic metres. The electric light has been
introduced, and the work ceases entirely only on Sunday and two or three
holidays. Connected with the Essen works are fifty miles of railway,
employing thirty-five locomotives and over 1000 wagons. There are two
chemical laboratories; a photographic and lithographic studio; a
printing-office, with steam and hand presses; and a bookbinding room,
besides tile-works, coke-works, gas-works, &c.
Though, in the popular mind, the name of Krupp is usually associated
with the manufacture of instruments of destruction, yet two-thirds of
the work done in his establishment is devoted to the production of
articles intended for peaceful uses. The various parts of steam-engines,
both stationary and locomotive; iron axles, bridges, rails, wheel-tires,
switches, springs, shafts for steamers, mint-dies, rudders, and parts of
all varieties of iron machinery, are prepared here for manufacturers.
The production is, in Dominie Sampson's phrase, 'prodigious.' In one day
the works can turn out 2700 rails, 350 wheel-tires, 150 axles, 180
railway wheels, 1000 railway wedges, 1500 bombshells. In a month they
have produced 250 field-pieces, thirty 5.7-inch cannon, fifteen
9.33-inch cannon, eight 11-inch cannon, one 14-inch gun, the weight of
the last named being over fifty tons, and its length twenty-eight feet
seven inches. Till the end of 1894 the firm has produced 25,000 cannon
for thirty-four different states.
Alfred Krupp devoted much attention to the production of steel of the
finest quality, and was the first German manufacturer who succeeded in
casting steel in large masses. In 1862 he exhibited in London an ingot
of finest crucible steel weighing twenty-one tons. Its dimensions were
nine feet high by forty-four inches diameter. The uniformity of quality
of this mass of metal was proven by the fact that when broken across it
showed no seam or flaw, even when examined with a lens. The firm can now
make such homogeneous blocks of seventy-five tons weight if required.
Such ingots are formed from the contents of a great number of small
crucibles, each containing from fifty to one hundred pounds of the
metal. The recent developments of the manufacture of steel by the
open-hearth process have removed all difficulty in procuring the metal
in masses large enough for all requirements, and of a tensile strength
so high as thirty-three to thirty-seven tons to the square inch.
Crucible steel, however, though more expensive, still holds its place
as the best and most reliable that can be produced; and nothing else is
ever used in the construction of a Krupp gun. By the perfected methods
in use at the Essen works, such steel can be made of a tensile strength
of nearly forty tons to the square inch, and of marvellous uniformity of
quality. The ores used in the Krupp works for making the best steel are
red haematite and spathic ore, with a certain proportion of
ferro-manganese. The crucibles employed are formed of a mixture of
plumbago and fire-clay, shaped by a mould into a cylindrical jar some
eighteen inches in height, and baked in a kiln. When in use, they are
filled with small bars of puddled metal, mixed with fragments of marble
brought from Villmar, on the Lahn. They are then shovelled into large
furnaces, whose floors are elevated three or four feet above the
ground-level. In the earthen floor of the immense room containing the
furnaces are two lines of pits, one set to receive the molten metal, the
other intended for the red-hot crucibles when emptied of their contents.
When the crucibles have undergone sufficient heating, the furnace doors
are opened simultaneously at a given signal, and the attendant workmen
draw out the crucibles with long tongs, and rapidly empty them into the
pits prepared for the reception of the metal. The empty crucibles when
cooled are examined, and if found unbroken, are used again; but if
damaged, as is usually the case, are ground up, to be utilised in making
new ones.
The production of steel by this method furnishes employment for eight or
nine hundred men daily in the Krupp works. The Bessemer process for
converting iron into steel is also largely used there for making steel
for certain purposes. All material used in the different classes of
manufactures is subjected at every stage to extreme and exact tests; the
standards being fixed with reference to the purpose to which the metal
is to be applied, and any material that proves faulty when suitably
tested is rigorously rejected.
The guns originally manufactured by the Krupp firm were formed from
solid ingots of steel, which were bored, turned, and fashioned as in the
case of cast-iron smooth-bore cannon. With the development of the power
of artillery, the greater strain caused by the increased powder-charges
and by the adoption of rifling--involving enhanced friction between the
projectile and the bore--had the result of demonstrating the weakness
inherent in the construction of a gun thus made entirely from one solid
forging, and that plan was eventually discarded. Artillerists have
learnt that the strain produced by an explosive force operating in the
interior of a cannon is not felt equally throughout the thickness of the
metal from the bore to the exterior, but varies inversely as the square
of the distance of each portion of the metal from the seat of effort.
For example, in a gun cast solid, if two points be taken, one at the
distance of one inch from the bore, and the other four inches from the
bore, the metal at the former point will during the explosion be
strained sixteen times as much as that at the distance of four inches.
The greater the thickness of the material, the greater will be the
inequality between the strains acting at the points respectively nearest
to and farthest from the interior. The metal nearest the seat of
explosion may thus be strained beyond its tensile strength, while that
more remote is in imperfect accord with it. In such a case, disruption
of the metal at the inner surface ensues, and extends successively
through the whole thickness to the exterior, thus entailing the
destruction of the gun.
This source of weakness is guarded against by the construction of what
is termed the built-up gun, in which the several parts tend to mutual
support. This gun consists of an inner tube, encircled and compressed
by a long 'jacket' or cylinder, which is shrunk around the breech
portion with the initial tension due to contraction in cooling. Over the
jacket and along the chase, other hoops or cylinders are shrunk on
successively, in layers, with sufficient tension to compress the parts
enclosed. The number and strength of these hoops are proportionate to
the known strain that the bore of the gun will have to sustain. The
tension at which each part is shrunk on is the greater as the part is
farther removed from the inner tube; the jacket, for example, being
shrunk on at less tension than the outer hoops. The inner tube, on
receiving the expansive force of the explosion, is prevented by the
compression of the jacket from being forced up to its elastic limit; and
the jacket in its turn is similarly supported by the outer hoops; and on
the cessation of the internal pressure the several parts resume their
normal position.
This system of construction originated in England, and is now in general
use. The first steel guns on this principle were those designed by
Captain Blakely and Mr J. Vavasseur, of the London Ordnance Works. At
the Exhibition of 1862, a Blakely 8.5-inch gun, on the built-up system,
composed wholly of steel, was a feature of interest in the Ordnance
section. The plan devised by Sir W. Armstrong, and carried into effect
for a series of years at Woolwich and at the Armstrong Works at Elswick,
consisted in enclosing a tube of steel within a jacket of wrought iron,
formed by coiling a red-hot bar round a mandrel. The jacket was shrunk
on with initial tension, and was fortified in a similar manner by outer
hoops of the same metal. The want of homogeneity in this gun was,
however, a serious defect, and ultimately led to its abolition. The
difference in the elastic properties of the two metals caused a
separation, after repeated discharges, between the steel tube and its
jacket, with the result that the tube cracked from want of support. Both
at Woolwich and at Elswick (described on a later page), therefore, the
wrought-iron gun has given place to the homogeneous steel built-up gun,
which is also the form of construction adopted by the chief powers of
Europe and by the United States of America.
The failure of some of his solid-cast guns led Krupp, about 1865, to the
adoption of the built-up principle. With few exceptions, the inner tube
of a Krupp gun is forged out of a single ingot, and in every case
without any weld. The ingot destined to form the tube has first to
undergo a prolonged forging under the steam-hammers, by which the utmost
condensation of its particles is effected. It is then rough-bored and
turned, and subsequently carefully tempered in oil, whereby its
elasticity and tensile strength are much increased. It is afterwards
fine-bored and rifled, and its powder-chamber hollowed out. The latter
has a somewhat larger diameter than the rest of the bore, this having
been found an improvement. The grooves of the rifling are generally
shallow, and they widen towards the breech, so that the leaden coat of
the projectile is compressed gradually and with the least friction. The
jacket and hoops of steel are forged and rolled, without weld, and after
being turned and tempered, are heated and shrunk around the tube in
their several positions, the greatest strength and thickness being of
course given to the breech end, where the force of explosion exerts the
utmost strain. The completed gun is mounted on its appropriate carriage,
and having been thoroughly proved and tested and fitted with the proper
sights, is ready for service. The testing range is at Meppen, where a
level plain several miles in extent affords a suitable site for the
purpose.
For many years all guns of the Krupp manufacture have been on the
breech-loading system, and he has devoted much time and ingenuity to
perfecting the breech arrangements. The subject of recoil has also
largely occupied his attention. In the larger Krupp guns the force of
recoil is absorbed by two cylinders, filled with glycerine and fitted
with pistons perforated at the edges. The pistons are driven by the
shock of the recoil against the glycerine, which is forced through the
perforations. In England a similar arrangement of cylinders, containing
water as the resisting medium, has been found effective; and in America,
petroleum is employed for the same purpose. The advantages of the use of
glycerine are that in case of a leak it would escape too slowly to lose
its effect at once, and it is also more elastic than water, and is less
liable to become frozen.
The resources of Krupp's establishment are equal to the production of
guns of any size that can conceivably be required. He has made guns of
one hundred and nineteen tons weight. The portentous development of the
size and power of modern ordnance is exemplified by these guns and the
Armstrong guns of one hundred and eleven tons made at Elswick. Amongst
the class of modern cannon, one of the most powerful is Krupp's
seventy-one-ton gun. This, like all others of his make, is a
breech-loader. Its dimensions are--length, thirty-two feet nine inches;
diameter at breech end, five feet six inches; length of bore,
twenty-eight feet seven inches; diameter of bore, 15.75 inches; diameter
of powder-chamber, 17.32 inches. The internal tube is of two parts,
exactly joined; and over this are four cylinders, shrunk on, and a ring
round the breech. Its rifling has a uniform twist of one in forty-five.
It cannot possibly be fired until the breech is perfectly closed. Its
maximum charge is four hundred and eighty-five pounds of powder, and a
chilled iron shell of seventeen hundred and eight pounds.
[Illustration: Krupp's 15.6 Breech-loading Gun (breech open).]
Krupp did much to promote the welfare and comfort of his workpeople. For
their accommodation, he erected around Essen nearly four thousand family
dwellings, in which more than sixteen thousand persons reside. The
dwellings are in suites of three or four comfortable rooms, with good
water-arrangements; and attached to each building is a garden, large
enough for the children to play in. There are one hundred and fifty
dwellings of a better kind for officials in the service of the firm.
Boarding-houses have also been built for the use of unmarried labourers,
of whom two thousand are thus accommodated. Several churches, Protestant
and Catholic, have also been erected, for the use of his workmen and
their families. There have likewise been provided two hospitals, bathing
establishments, a gymnasium, an unsectarian free school, and six
industrial schools--one for adults, two for females. In the case of the
industrial schools, the fees are about two shillings monthly, but the
poorest are admitted free. A Sick Relief and Pensions Fund has been
instituted, and every foreman and workman is obliged to be a member. The
entrance fee is half a day's pay, the annual payment being proportioned
to the wages of the individual member; but half of each person's
contribution is paid by the firm. There are three large surgeries; and
skilful physicians and surgeons, one of whom is an oculist, are employed
at fixed salaries. For a small additional fee each member can also
secure free medical aid for his wife and children. The advantages to
members are free medical or surgical treatment in case of need, payment
from the fund of funeral expenses at death, pensions to men who have
been permanently disabled by injuries while engaged in the works,
pensions to widows of members, and temporary support to men who are
certified by two of the physicians as unable to work. The highest
pension to men is five pounds monthly, the average being about two
pounds sixteen shillings monthly. The average pension to widows is
about one pound fourteen shillings monthly.
The firm have made special arrangements with a number of life insurance
companies whereby the workmen can, if they choose, insure their lives at
low rates. They have formed a Life Insurance Union, and endowed it with
a reserve fund of three thousand pounds, from which aid is given to
members needing assistance to pay their premiums. An important
institution in Essen is the great Central Supply Store, established and
owned by the firm, where articles of every description--bread, meat, and
other provisions, clothing, furniture, &c.--are sold on a rigidly cash
system at cost price. Connected with the Central Store are twenty-seven
branch shops, in positions convenient for the workpeople, placing the
advantages of the system within the easy reach of all.
The original name, 'Frederick Krupp,' has been retained through all
vicissitudes of fortune as the business title of the firm. The small
dwelling in which Alfred Krupp was born is still standing, in the midst
of the huge workshops that have grown up around it, and is preserved
with the greatest care. At his expense, photographs of it were
distributed among his workmen, each copy bearing the following
inscription, dated Essen, February 1873: 'Fifty years ago, this
primitive dwelling was the abode of my parents. I hope that no one of
our labourers may ever know such struggles as have been required for the
establishment of these works. Twenty-five years ago that success was
still doubtful which has at length--gradually, yet wonderfully--rewarded
the exertions, fidelity, and perseverance of the past. May this example
encourage others who are in difficulties! May it increase respect for
small houses, and sympathy for the larger sorrows they too often
contain. The object of labour should be the common weal. If work bring
blessing, then is labour prayer. May every one in our community, from
the highest to the lowest, thoughtfully and wisely strive to secure and
build his prosperity on this principle! When this is done, then will my
greatest desire be realised.'
* * * * *
Germany has become a formidable competitor to Great Britain in the iron
and steel trade, and German steel rails, girders, and wire come in
freely to this country. From reports we learn that Great Britain
produced in 1882 8-1/2 million tons of iron and 5 million tons of
finished iron and steel, while the production of Germany was then less
than 3-1/2 and 2-1/2 million tons respectively. English production had
fallen to 7-1/2 million tons of iron and 4 million tons of finished iron
and steel in 1895, while Germany had risen to 5 million tons and 6
million tons respectively.
Contrary to what has been commonly believed, it appears that the
difference all round in wages amongst ironworkers, as between England
and Germany, is not great.
Chicago, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and New York are the chief centres of the
American iron and steel trade, the production of pig-iron in 1895 being
about 9-1/4 million tons, whereas in 1880 it was well under 4 million.
At present over 4 millions of tons are produced of Bessemer pig-iron.
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