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A TREATISE
ON TrE
METALLURGY OF IRON
CONTAINING OUTLINES OF
THE HISTORY OF IRON MIANUFACTURE
METHODS OF ASSAY, AND ANALYSES OF IRON ORES
PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE OF IRON AND STEEL
ETC., ETC.
BY H. BAUERMAN, F.G.S.
Associate of the Royal School of Mines.
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.
ON THE MARTIN PROCESS FOR MAKING STEEL
FROM THE REPORT OF
ABRAM S. HEWITT
United States Commissioner to the Universal Exposition at Paris, 1867.' $OTaa d High uumung W0,04 On gravitn.gg.
NEW YORK
VIRTUE & YORSTON, 12 DEY  STREET
D. VAN NOSTRAND, 192 BROADWAY.








THE
T H A  E
BESSEMER PROCESS
A1N D WOIRKS
IN
THE UNITED STATES.
iFrom thre " Troy Daily Times," July 27, 1868.
NEW YORK:
D. VAN NOSTRAND, No. 192 BROADWAY.
1. 86 S.








THI-E BESSEMM'ER PROCESS.
THE PRODUCTION OF CHEAP STEEL IN AMERICA.-THE COMPLETION OF THE PARENT WORKS AT TROY. —DESCRIPTION OF
THE VARIOUS BESSEMER WORKS IN THIS COUNTRY. —THE
NATURE AND VALUE OF THE IMPROVEMENT.
THE changes beheld by Rip Van Winkle when he last
descended the Kattskills, are hardly remarkable when compared with the chemical and engineering wonders to which
we have awakened after twenty years of comparative lethargy.
All on a sudden fresh fountains of force and new veins of
precious material seem to have burst out of the earth;
already they have possessed every artificial motion and
structure, and are embodied in the organization of every-day
life. Among the more remarkable of these changes-ocean
telegraphy, steam transportation, and engineering construction-the most wonderful and far reaching-the realization of
the alchemists' dreams, is Chemical Transformation. All
the world is the stage upon which its wonders are the glittering spectacle, and we turn rather to the Arabian Nights
than to sober history for an index to the coming acts. Yet
the powers behind the scenes are neither furies nor fairies,
but brains and brawn. It is neither magic nor alchemy,
but straightforward, inductive reasoning and downright,
patient, organized, costly work that lays open the great
unknown and utilizes its treasures.
The modern revolution in metallurgy is, perhaps, less
striking, but more wonderful than all the others.  The
wonder of ocean telegraphy is new every morning, while the
furnace smokes silently and unobserved. But the smoke of




4
the furnace will tell you tales of nature's secrets unlocked,
of startling transformation, of fathomless search, of baflling
experiment, of patient endeavor, of endlesss obstacles, of intellects gone mad, of money burned up, of a forlorn hope
fighting against the Powers of the Air, but fighting to win.
Of all the agencies in the material progress of the times,
iron, in its various forms and combinations, holds the first
place. Its loss would be a calamity only surpassed by the
loss of bread; while its cheaper, wider, and better production
would electrify every human enterprise.  But cheap iron is
not to be had for the asking. Nature has surrounded it with
every poison and subjected it to every malady.  Sulphur,
phosphorus, silicium, and endless impurities hang about it
from the ore-mine to the market, and its medicines-Manganese, Chromium, Aluminium, and its various healthful
alloys, are subtle and intractable.  Too little carbon is as
injurious as too much; combinations helpful for one use are
hurtful for another.
And the production of cheap iron draws not only upon
chemistry but on engineering for constant and vital aid. The
production and maintenance of uniform and excessive heat,
the quality and structure of vessels to resist it; the multiform
and powerful enginery to handle and fashion the incandescent masses, the strength and quality of materials and
proportions to resist the strain and wear; the toilsome and
hazardous searches for knowledge, the education of labor;
the liberal risks of money, the conservation of capital-these
are some of the clashing and difficult problems that beset
the production of iron in the form of cheap and useful
alloys.
We have thus briefly referred to the grandeur and the
difficulty of the great material problem of the age, not to
account for failure, but to celebrate success. Among the
many workers who have steadily advanced the art, a few
strong men have revolutionized it; and the names of Cort,
Neilson, Siemens, and foremost of all BESSEMER, will be landmarks in its history wherever and as long as iron is used.
We purpose to allude briefly to the composition and pro



duction of iron and steel, and to the nature, conduct, value,
and history of the BEssEMER PROCESS, and to describe in
some detail the Bessemer works and manufacture in this
country, and more especially as established in this place by
our distinguished citizen, the Hon. John A. Griswold, upon
the occasion of the first production of steel rails at his
works.
THE OLD PROCESSES.
The ore of the mines is iron combined with an excess of
oxygen and mixed with numerous impurities.  The great
body of white hot coal in the blast furnace not only melts
the ore, but sublimates its volatile parts, liquefies others, and
gives to others still the power to combine with the fluxes put
in with the ore and to run away in slag. But in clearing one
obstacle the iron thus set afloat grounds on another. The
carbon of the coal only turns out the oxygen from the ore to
sit down in its place; so that the crude or pig iron of commerce is a compound of iron with say five per centumr of
carbon and two or three of silicium and other metals and
minerals, helpful or hurtful as the case may be, which the
blast furnace process either put in or failed to remove.
Cast-iron is comparatively weak, fatally brittle, and utterly
incapable of being wrought. To render it strong, ductile,
and malleable, the carbon, silicium, and other impurities
must be removed; but the poison of yesterday is the medicine of to-day, and we now put it into the bed of a reverberatory furnace and doctor it with oxygen, externally
applied in draughts of air, and taken internally in powders
of ore and forge scale. The patient is meanwhile kept very
warm, about 3,000~ Fahrenheit, which so relaxes the hold of
the disease that the oxygen easily spirits it away in the form
of gases, and the squeezers and rolls bleed it off in the form
of slag. This is puddling, and the rejuvenated product is
wrought-iron, which is the nearest approach to pure iron
that we have in the engineering arts.
Wrought-iron, however, is not cast into solid homogeneous




6
masses of any dimensions like steel, it is only produced in
small masses which must be welded together; but the high
plastic heat necessary to squeeze the particles into contact,
is also the temperature of spontaneous chemical change; so
that the ever-lurking oxygen of the air again seizes the iron
and reconverts its surface into a kind of ore, and therefore
welds are uncertain. Wrought-iron is soft, it is not sound
and homogeneous, and compared with steel, it is weak. To
produce steel, then, we again retrace our steps and put in
carbon, of which we just now had too much.  The wroughtiron is broken up, mixed with carbon and manganese in a
crucible, melted, and cast into ingots of steel-the highest
refinement?-no, pure iron would be utterly unfit for the
engineering arts; but the highest combination of natural
substances known in the arts-steel, an alloy of iron, and
from a quarter to a whole per centum of carbon, according to
the hardness required, and traces of other metals.
You will thus observe that to make steel, you take a little
iron and a little carbon and a few condiments, apply a hot
fire, and there you have it-steel-as simple as the cookery
book. But oh! the years of conflict with elements all too
subtle and poisons all too willing, before the little niceties
that make the difference between success and dead failure
were found out at all-and the labor, the care, the skill, the
fuel, the machinery, the power-not in a little laboratory
upon which you can turn the key, but throughout acres of
bricks and mortar, boilers and engines, rolls and hammers,
furnaces and crucibles, all surging with pent-up energy and
fervent heat, day and night, year after year. So that the
receipt for making steel would rather be, take great perseverance and equal portions of the knowledge of books and
the knowledge of practice-mix them well with no end of
money, and then if you know how and have good luck, you
can make a grand success of it.




THE BESSEMER PROCESS.
In the year 1855, Mr. Henry Bessemer of London, aware,
indeed, of certain attempts at a cross-cut from pig iron to
steel, but rather discouraged than stimulated by previous
failure, determined to avoid the roundabout and costly processes heretofore pursued. He said crude pig iron is iron
and much carbon —steel is iron and little carbon. I will burn
out the excess of carbon, and with it the other impurities;
and the carbon itself shall be the fuel to burn them out. I
will blow air into the liquid iron; the oxygen of the air at
that temperature has greater affinity for the silicium and the
carbon than it has for the iron, and so will take them away,
and leave either pure iron, or iron carburized to any degree
required, in proportion to the extent of the blowing, which is
steel-steel of every quality, from hard and white for tools,
to soft and gray for the ten thousand purposes of machinery.
To the hearing of practical iron workers, a man never told
a more splendid nor a wilder dream  than this. But he
fought it out on that line. He spent a large fortune of his
own, and the fortunes of his sanguine friends. He struggled
with every variety of failure and embarrassment.  He
smarted under jeers and opposition. He saw rivals toiling
on every hand to mend the weak places in his system, and
call it their own. He has not, indeed, realized quite all he
set out for, in its perfection, nor has he avoided nor ignored
the help of other men. But although the Bessemer process
to-day cannot turn every variety of pig iron into steel, it is
applicable to three-quarters of the good irons of commerce;
it is, with fair materials, less liable to uncertainty, and less
dependent upon skill than the processes it avoids; it produces, at a slightly increased cost, a material twice as strong
as wrought-iron, and what is of vastly greater importance,
perfectly solid and homogeneous-a material singularly well
adapted to rails, axles, shafting, boiler and ship plates, and
heavy machinery. Already the product in various countries
is some two hundred and fifty thousand tons per year.




EARLY DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME.
Before considering the conduct of the Bessemer process,
it is necessary to bear in mind, 1st, that the grand value of
Bessemer metal over puddled metal, is due to its being produced in a fluid state; 2d, that while cast-iron is easily liquefied, at a temperature of 3,000~, wrought-iron or soft steel
can only be kept liquid at a temperature of at least 5,000~,
which is quite beyond the convenient and practicable capacities of fuel and furnace material as ordinarily employed.
For nearly a century, the partial decarburization of pig
iron has been accomplished by blowing air upon (and in
some cases into) a melted mass of it. But the liquidity of
the mass was only maintained by contact with an intense
coal fire. The combustion of the carbon by the air was so
slow and so limited in extent, that the iron was rather chilled
than heated by it. This was the " finery " process, and was
merely preparatory to puddling; the product was still castiron.
Some years before Bessemer began his experiments, Mr.
William Kelly, of Kentucky, advanced the finery process by
a great stride, but left it still far short of practical steel making. He blew air into the iron just smelted from the ore,
and lying in the hearth of a blast furnace, and partially decarburized it, but not without the liquefying agency of the
mass of fuel above. He afterwards blew streams of air into
melted iron contained in a covered brick vessel or chamber,
without fuel. The almost invariable chilling of the iron,
after repeated experiments with various forms of apparatus,
and extending over several years, led to the suspension
of further trial in this direction. The subsequent success
of the Bessemer process, however, revived the claims of Mr.
Kelly. The precise legal status of the two inventors has
not, fortunately for the public as well as for the parties immediately interested, been brought to test, the various interests having been combined.
At this point we are prepared for the inquiry — What is the
Bessemer process? If the old finery did not fulfil the theo



retical specification, Kelly's certainly did. Here were carbon and silicium in the iron, but all ready to leave it upon
the heated appeal of oxygen; here was plentiful oxygen
spread over and bubbling through it, and here was the ample
heat of 3,0000. Still the reactions were irregular, and impracticable.
Just here Mr. Bessemer introduced a radically new element, that made all the difference between failure and success. To describe his process as the introduction of oxygen
into melted iron, is to play Hamlet without the prince. Bessemer's is not strictly a chemical process. The chemical reactions will look out for themselves, but they must have an
adequate chance, and this is what Bessemer for the first time
gave them, by mechanical means, viz.: the mechanical. force
of numerous blasts -not sluggish drafts, but roaring blasts of
air, blowing the melted iron all into spray, so as to give the
oxygen and the carbon hundreds of square feet of surface
contact, so that every drop of iron should be enveloped with
air. Thus, and thus only, the combustion is so perfect and
rapid, and so diffused throughout the whole mass, that the
two grand desiderata are attained-lst, the decarburization
is effected without the use of other fuel; and 2d, the product
is liquid and can be cast into homogeneous masses.
To accomplish these results, Mr. Bessemer developed the
radically new machinery and apparatus which, with various
extensions and modifications, is everywhere used. It consists, principally, of the converting vessel mounted on trunnions, and so shaped that the liquid metal can lie quietly in it
while the tuyeres (air admission) and the entrance or mouth
of the vessel lie above the metal line, and so that the mouth
becomes a chimney and the tuyeres are brought beneath the
metal, when the converter is turned upright. He also, after
great trouble, developed a refractory material (chiefly silicious
stone), and a mode of lining the converter adequate to the
great heat and wear. The general arrangement of casting
pit, ladle, ladle and ingot cranes, regulator, and other plant
to be hereinafter described, were rapidly developed by Mr.
Bessemer. During ten years of his first practice, he ad2




10
vanced the machinery of the new art to a much higher
degree of perfection than has yet been attained to in the old
processes.
But Mr. Bessemer had no sooner conquered this difficulty
than he encountered another and equally serious one. Except when a few of the choicer irons were employed, entire
decarburization left the product "red-short," or incapable of
malleability at a red heat, and therefore utterly useless. To
stop the blowing at such a point as should leave in sufficient
carbon to cure the red-shortedness and constitute a mild
steel, was on the whole impracticable, because there is no
adequate indication of degrees in decarburization, and the
accuracy of blowing through a fixed time, would be impaired
by varying heat and other circumstances. Here, then, were
the impossibility of definite degrees of decarburization on the
one hand, and the spoiling of the product by complete decarburization on the other hand.
In studying Mr. Bessemer's numerous patents and writings, we observe that he clearly understood this difficulty,
and approached very near to its solution. Indeed, he rather
vaguely described, in several patents, perhaps without seeing
the end from the beginning, substantially the remedy afterwards patented by VIMr. Robert Mushet.
The indications of complete decarburization by blowing
air into melted iron, are as distinct as the time of day on a
clock. The flame at the converter mouth suddenly decreases
in volume, and loses-not its own brightness, but its power
of illuminating other things. But the product is valueless.
Mr. Bessemer vaguely conceived, and Mr. Mushet definitely
specified the finishing touch in the great art-recarbur&z a atwon.
A definite weight (three to seven per centum) of a pig iron,
containing not only carbon but manganese (either Franklinite
or Spiegeleisen), is melted and run into the decarburized
iron.  At this excessive temperature-not less than five
thousand degrees-the oxygen and other impurities that
make the iron red-short, come out of it with great commotion, and enter into the carbon and manganese thus added,
forming an intense flame and copious slag. A part of the




11
carbon combines with the iron, thus producing steel. All
this is the work of a moment, and the thorough reaction is
due to the excessive temperature. The oxygen which is removed by the carbon (or chiefly by the manganese), was produced by the oxydation of some of the iron, by the blast of
air. This, and the sulphur, and some other impurities, now
removed by the manganese, were what made the product
red-short before recarburization. The steel is now cast into
ingots, which are malleable at a high heat.
But Mr. Bessemer's troubles did not end here. The product was still uncertain, though often uniform and excellent.
Some subtle impurity was still lurking in some obscure
corner-now appearing and now retiring. To find it, Mr.
Bessemer put every iron and material employed, through a
costly and thorough course of chemical analysis, and so discovered phosphorus to be the arch-enemy. And to this day,
irons containing above two hundredths of one percentum of
phosphorus cannot be employed to advantage. Experiments
to remove or neutralize it are in progress, and greater obstacles than this have been overcome. Mr. Bessemer also determined the amounts of other materials-silicium, sulphur, etc.
-that affected his process, and with Mr. Mushet's assistance
(satisfactorily acknowledged) has presented to the world, not
merely a theory, but a perfected process and adequate machinery for carrying it out. It will thus be observed, that
however greatly the public is indebted to Mr. Bessemer's inventive powers, it owes still more to his indomitable pluck.
PATENTS AND WORKS.
The Bessemer patents in England are some twenty in number, and embrace not only the process, but the essential machinery, and many collateral subjects and defensive claims.
In European countries the more important features have been
secured by letters patent. Complete protection has been obtained in the United States, not only for all the essential
parts of the Bessemer plant and process, in ten separate




patents, but of the Kelly and Mushet inventions, and of
various improvements by Holley and others. All these patents
have been combined by purchase and compromise, and are
held by Messrs. Winslow, Griswold, and Morrell, trustees for
the parties interested.  Under them, licenses have been
granted to the various establishments to be hereinafter described, viz.:
The Bessemer Steel Works, Troy, New York; Messrs. John
A. Griswold & Co. Z. S. Durfee, Manager.
The Pennsylvania Steel Works, Harrisburg, Penn.; S. M.
Felton, Prest. A. L. Holley, Chief Engineer.
The Freedom Iron and Steel Works, Lewistown, Penn.;
John A. Wright, Prest. R. H. Lee, Superintendent.
The Cleveland Rolling Mill Co., Cleveland, Ohio; A. B.
Stone, Prest. John C. Thompson, Superintendent.
The Wyandotte Steel Works, Wyandotte, Michigan; E. B.
Ward, President.
The National Iron Armor Co., Chester, Penn.; William B.
Reaney, President.
The Cambria Iron Works, Johnstown, Pa.; Chas. S. Wood,
President. Geo. Fritz, Chief Engineer.
The foreign Bessemer works are as follows: In Great
Britain, Henry Bessemer & Co., Sheffield; John Brown &
Co., Sheffield; Charles Cammell & Co., Sheffield and Penistone; Weardale Iron Co., Tow Law, Durham; Thomson &
Armstrong, Normanton; J. M. Rowan, Glasgow; Samuel
Fox & Co., Deepcar; Lloyds Forster & Co., Wednesbury;
Bolton Steel Works, Bolton le Moors; London and North
Western Railway Works, Crewe; Lancashire Steel Co., Gorton; Mersey Steel and Iron Works, Liverpool; Manchester
Steel and Railway Plant Co., Ashbury; Barrow Hernatite
Steel Co., Barrow; Guest & Co., Dowlais; Ebbw Vale Co.,
Ebbw Vale; Bessemer & Sons, Greenwich. In France there
are 5 works; in Belgium 1; in Prussia 7, including the celebrated establishments of Krupp and of the Bocchum Co.; in
Austria 10; in Sweden 12; in Russia 1; in India 1. The
whole number of converters in use is from one hundred and
thirty to one hundred and fifty, of various sizes, from one ton




13
to ten tons, and the total annual capacity of them all is not
less than half a million of tons.
THE TROY WORKS.
HISTORY AND ORGANIZATION.-The Bessemer patents were
purchased in England for Messrs. Winslow & Griswold, by
Mr. A. L. Holley, and the Mushet patents for other parties
(now represented by the Trustees), by Mr. Z. S. IDurfee, at
about the same time. Mr. Holley built the experimental
works at Troy, started them in February, 1865, and coinpleted the new works, or " five-ton plant," early in 1867, Mr.
John C. Thompson then being superintendent of manufacture. Mr. Holley then took charge of the Pennsylvania Steel
Works, and Mr. Thompson soon after, of the Cleveland
works. Mr. Durfee having previously built an experimental
works at Wyandotte (afterward run with success by Mr. R.
W. Hunt, now of the Cambria works), then took the management of the Troy works, built the forge and introduced
various improvements to be farther referred to.
SITUATION. —The location of the Troy works upon tidewater and the Erie and Champlain canals, and, therefore,
accessible to coal and the general market by means of the
cheapest transportation; in the centre of a remarkable and
varied iron supply, from the Hudson and Housatonic valleys,
from Vermont and Lake Champlain, from the promising
Adirondack region, and from the markets of the South and
West; this general location is not more eligible than the
immediate sites of the works controlled by Mr. Griswold.
The Bessemer Works are situated on a level plot, some fifteen
acres in extent, with a rock bottom for foundations, well
above high water, and bounded on one side by one thousand
feet of tide-water, and on the other by the same length of
Hudson River Railway. The more remarkable feature of
such a site, is a constant water-power of one hundred horse,
with thirty-four feet fall, supplied by an underground, four




14
and a half feet trunk, from a line of ponds and reservoirs
extending for miles above, and conducted from the wheel-pit
to the river by a covered brick race-way.
BUILDINGS.-The Bessemer building is of brick, one hundred and seventy-eight feet long by sixty-five feet wide, and
twenty-two and a half feet high in the clear. A pair of fiveton converters and their appurtenances occupy one hundred
and ten feet of its length. The remainder contains the experimental two-ton converter and its apparatus, and is of
sufficient size for a pair of two and a half or three-ton converters, soon to be erected. The cupola building, joined to
the east or railroad side of the Bessemer building, is a brick
structure forty-four by twenty-four feet, and thirty-feet high
in the clear. At one end of the Bessemer building, and forming a continuation of it, is a wooden building one hundred and
sixty feet long by seventy-five feet wide, and twenty-two and
a half feet high, designed for hammers and other machinery for
working up ingots. The converting building and forge are
roofed' with slate, and mounted by a continuous lantern three
hundred and thirty-eight feet long and twenty-one feet wide.
At the other end of the converting building is a four-story
brick structure sixty-five by thirty-six feet, and thirty-nine
feet high from the ground in the clear, covered with a hipped
slate roof and a lantern twelve and a half by forty-one feet.
The basement contains a fifty-horse Collins turbine, employed to drive the machinery and blowers above; also, a
machine for grinding stone for converter linings (a nine foot
pan and two six-feet rolls), and a seventy-pound tilt hammer for testing ingots. The second or ground floor is a machine shop fitted with the necessary lathes, planers, and tools
for the maintenance of the works. The third and fourth
floors are for the storage of tuyeres and the miscellaneous
materials employed in the manufacture. A power lift operates from  cellar to attic.  A No. 6 Root pressure blower
and a five-foot Dimpfel fan and their driving machinery for
supplying blast to the cupolas and furnaces, and a No. 2 Bo



15
gardus mill for grinding the finer fire materials, are placed
upon the third floor.
The above-described buildings form a continuous structure of eighty-nine feet maximum width, and four hundred
and seventy-four feet length. Upon the west, or river-side
of these buildings (a sixty feet street lying between), stands
a wooden building sixty by sixty-five feet, and sixteen feet
high in the clear, with a high attic for storage, and a continuous lantern above. Here are the boilers and the blowing
and hydraulic engines. These buildings, with the offices,
store-bins, and railways, form a complete establishment,
capable at present of producing forty tons of ingots per day,
or sixty to seventy tons per day of ingots, and a considerable
amount of forgings and finished work, when the two-ton
experimental converter is replaced by a larger plant and the
forge is fully occupied.
MA/HINERY.-The blowing engine consists of two fortyeight inch air cylinders, four-feet stroke, lying at the two
ends of a heavy bed-plate, forty-three feet long, five and
three-quarter feet wide, and one and three-quarter feet high,
and connected to a common crank upon one end of the
steam-engine shaft. The steam cylinder lies by the side of
one of the air cylinders, upon a framing of its own, and is
thirty inches in diameter. Its piston, of four-feet stroke, is
connected to a crank on the other end of the main shaft.
The air cylinders, being connected to one crank, operate
like a single cylinder, and cause a pulsation in the blast,
which is in other engines avoided by cranks at right angles.
But the large air receiver, eight feet in diameter, by eighteen
feet high, so equalizes these pulsations that the pressure
gauge shows less than a pound variation, and does not at all
embarrass the indications at the converter mouth by which
the decarburization is determined. The tendency to irregular
motion, due to a single steam cylinder, is also corrected by
a fly-wheel of twenty-one feet diameter and twenty and a
half tons weight. These are valuable results, as they will
lead to economy in construction. The steam  engine was




16
constructed upon the plans of Mr. Geo. H. Reynolds, and
embraces some novel features, among others, a framing
peculiarly strong in the line of strain, and a condenser and
air-pump below the cylinder, formed between the frames;
the air-pump is double-acting, and is driven by an arm from
the cross-head. The injection water comes from the reservoirs before referred to. The valve motion is the long slide,
with fixed independent slide cut-off. The boilers, four in
number, are fifteen feet long by five feet in diameter, having
forty-two four and a half inch return flues, five by five and a
half feet grate, and three by four feet domes, and form a
battery, inclosed in brick, with cast-iron fire-fronts of novel
and good construction. The smoke stack is of sheet iron.
The blowing machinery was constructed at the Delamater
Iron Works in New York.
The pumping engine for working the cranes and hydraulic
machinery in the Bessemer Building is a Worthington
"Duplex," with fifteen-inch stroke, two twenty-inch steam
cylinders, and two seven and a quarter inch water cylinders,
working at three hundred and fifty pounds pressure per
square inch.  The feed pump for the boilers is also a
Duplex. This is probably the most trustworthy and economical class of hydraulic machinery known.
THE EXPERIMENTAL BESSEMER PLANT has been variously
changed, and has developed a vast amount of useful knowledge concerning irons, materials, and processes, besides producing some thousands of tons of marketable steel. It consists of a two-ton vessel, or converter, five feet in diameter,
rotated by hand-gearing, and supplied with melted iron by a
No. 2 Mackenzie cupola, having a movable bottom, and thus
being the equivalent of two cupolas. The main crane is worked either by hand or by a hydraulic cylinder attached to the
crane chain, and lifts the ladle crane as well as the ingots
and moulds. The recarburizing material is melted in crucibles instead of air furnaces. This change, developed by Mr.
Durfee, promotes the uniformity of the product, and does not
greatly, if at all, increase its cost.
THE "FIVE-ToN PLANT" consists, firstly, of two cast-iron con



verters, fourteen and a half feet high by eight feet ten inches
diameter, standing side by side. In their rear is the wall of the
converting house, pierced with arches leading to the melting
house, and supported by heavy buttresses, upon which stand
the hoods and chimneys to conduct the flame from the converters. In their front is a circular casting pit, thirty-four
feet in diameter and thirty inches deep (having deeper covered pits for large ingots), with a ladle crane in the centre
and three ingot cranes at its sides, upon the general level.
The ladle crane, of fifteen tons capacity, is a hollow cast-iron
post or ram, standing in a fifteen-inch cylinder (six-feet stroke),
and reaching to a support in the roof.. It carries a fifteen and
a half feet jib, consisting of two wrought-iron arms held up
by diagonal tie rods, and forming a railway upon which the'
carriages supporting the ladle are moved, radially, by a rack
and pinion. The ladle is removable by one of the ingot
cranes (for repairs of lining after each heat), and is about
four feet high and of the same diameter for a five-ton charge,
or double this size when it is to receive the product of both
converters. It is mounted on trunnions, and rotated by a
worm attached to the carriage. It is lined with loam, dried
in an oven standing in one corner of the building, and heated
by being turned over a small furnace in the pit. The steel
is let out of a hole in the bottom of the ladle, into the ingot,
moulds, by means of a fire-clay nozzle, two inches in diameter, and a fire-clay stopper, operated by a slide and lever
fastened to the outside of the ladle. The ladle crane is rotated by hand gearing, and is moved very easily, as it rests
upon frictionless water.
The two side ingot cranes are constructed like the ladle crane,
except that they have a single carriage on the horizontal jib,
with a chain depending. The ram is of twelve inches diameter, the stroke nine feet, the length of jib twenty-two feet,
and the capacity eight tons. These cranes swing over the
respective converters and over one-third of the pit each, and
over a considerable floor space, and are chiefly used for lifting ingots and moulds. The central ingot crane has an
eighteen feet jib, a nine-inch ram, and lifts three tons.
3




All the cranes are operated from a raised platform or " pulpit," by means of geared hand-wheels, opening brass threeway and four-way cocks, like gas cocks, only seven inches in
diameter, and thus admitting or exhausting water at the
350 lbs. pressure of the pumping engine before mentioned.
From the same " pulpit" are operated the valves of two hydraulic lifts of twelve inches diameter, fifteen inches stroke,
and eight tons capacity, standing under the converters for
taking them apart, and also the two eight-inch screw valves
for admitting air to the converters, and also the valves of the
seventeen-inch (six-feet stroke) hydraulic cylinders for revolving the converters on their trunnions by means of racks, and
pinions of three feet diameter, twelve-inch face, and five and
one-eighth inches pitch. The air and water are conveyed
from  their respective engines to the regulator under the
" pulpit," and from the regulator to the cranes, etc., by underground pipes. A boy working the regulator handles can thus
not only perform the work of some fifty men, but he can do
it with perfect precision and promptness. In fact, men enough
could not be got into position to do the work, or stand the
heat. The hydraulic cylinders are arranged to be "blown
out" in freezing weather, by admitting air instead of water.
A railway with sidings, in the building and yard, joins the
Hudson River Railway track.
The melting-house contains a No. 6 Mackenzie cupola with
three revolving bottoms, and is the equivalent of three
cupolas. An eight-ton crane built like the ingot cranes, but
having eleven and a half feet lift, raises a platform with barrows of iron and coal from the ground level (which on this
side of the works is four and a half feet higher than the converting floor) to the level of the cupola and air-furnace
charging floor. The melted iron is tapped out into one of
two ladles standing on eight-ton scales. When a ladle is
filled, it is weighed, so that the exact percentage of the recarburizer may be ascertained, and then raised by the same
crane that lifts the materials to the cupola. The ladle
hanging by its trunnions in a frame is then turned over by a
worm attached to the frame and emptied into a spout that




19
conducts the melted iron to the mouth of the converter.
The air furnaces for melting the recarburizer are placed over
the oven, at one end of the converting building, in a line
with the converters, and at the level of the cupola charging
floor. The recariburizer (melted manganesian pig iron) is
tapped into a ladle which runs upon an overhead railway
from the furnace to the converters.
"A BLow."-However interesting the foregoing facts may
be to steel makers, or however dull to general readers, a
" blow "-the thing itself-is remarkable alike to the scientific
and the unprofessional observer, especially at night when the
splendor of this intense and concentrated combustion is not
rivalled by sunshine, and when the imagination invests each
ponderous machine with mysterious life and awful energy.
The cavernous room is dark, the air sulphurous, the sounds
of suppressed power melancholy and deep; half-revealed
monsters with piercing eyes crouch in the corners, spectral
shapes ever flit about the walls, and lurid beams of light
anon flash in your face as some remorseless beast opens its
red-hot jaws for its iron ration. Then the melter thrusts a
spear between the joints of its armor, and a glistening
yellow stream spirts out for a moment, and then all is dark
once more. Again and again he stabs it till six tons of its
hot and smoking blood fill a great cauldron to the brim.
Then the foreman shouts to a thirty-foot giant in the corner
who straightway stretches out his iron arm and gently lifts
the cauldron away up into the air and turns out the yellow
blood in a hissing, sparkling stream which dives into the
white-hot jaws of another monster-a monster as big as an
elephant with a head like a frog and scaly hide. The foreman shouts again, at which up rises the monster on its
haunches, growling and snorting sparks and flame.
What a conflict of the elements is going on in that vast
laboratory! A million balls of melted iron, tearing away
from the liquid mass, surging from side to side, and plunging
down again only to be blown out more hot and angry than
before-column upon column of air, squeezed solid like rods




20
of glass by the power of five hundred horses, piercing and
shattering the iron at every point, chasing it up and down,
robbing it of its treasures only to be itself decomposed and
hurled out into the night in roaring blaze.
As the combustion progresses, the surging mass within the
converter grows hotter, throwing out splashes of liquid slag
-and the discharge from its mouth changes from sparks and
streaks of red and yellow gas, to thick, full, white, howling,
dazzling flame. But such battles cannot last long. In a
quarter of an hour the iron is stripped of every combustible
alloy, and hangs out the white flag. The converter is then
turned upon its side, the blast shut off, and the recarburizer
run in. Then for a moment the war of the elements rages
again; the mass boils and flames with higher intensity, and
with a rapidity of chemical reaction sometimes throwing it
violently out of the converter mouth; then all is quiet, and
the product is steel-liquid, milky steel, that pours out into
the ladle from under its roof of slag, smooth, shining, and
almost transparent.
THE ARRANGEMENT of all the Bessemer works in this country,
excepting the works at Lewistown, and the experimental
works at Wyandotte, is substantially in accordance with the
plans of Mr. Holley. These plans preserve all the old features and proportions affecting the process, but especially as
carried out in the second works built by him at Harrisburg,
they considerably increase the convenience of manufacture
and repairs, and the capacity for product. In the English
works, as designed by Bessemer, and blindly followed there,
the converters stand at opposite sides of the casting-pit, thus
narrowing by half the casting-room as compared with the
Troy works, where the available space for moulds is over
seventy feet in length. In England, the working space
around the pit and under the converters is sunk below the
general level, which is inconvenient and wasteful of room.
At Troy the converters are set at a height which not only
provides a continous working space upon the general level,
buL allows another new feature-a second floor extending
around the converters, standing upon which, workmen get




at all parts of the converter, put materials into it, dress the
spouts for conveying melted iron, and work upon the converter-bottoms when they are run out for repairs.
The tuyeres, or blocks of fire-brick pierced with holes,
through which the air is blown up into the iron, last but six
to eight heats, and their renewal has hitherto caused much
delay. In these works the converter-bottom  is removed by
means of a hydraulic lift and a carriage running out at the
side of the converter, where it can be conveniently got at.
The bottom may be replaced when required, by a duplicate
bottom, previously furnished with new tuyeres, dried and
heated. In the English works the crane capacity is inadequate to rapid working. In the Troy works, the ingot cranes
are three instead of two in number,';ho ladle-crane is arranged for more motions of the ladle, air.i al lie cranes are
lightened and cheapened by means of top supports. Various
novelties and conveniences have been added to the regulating
apparatus, ladle-stopper, and other parts. The cupola furnace has been adapted to melting iron for conversion, by
employing a ladle on a scale to weigh the metal, and has
thus superseded the air furnace, saving cost and facilitating
manufacture.
Mr. Holley introduced at Troy, and perfected at Harrisburg, a method of casting a number of ingots at one pouring,
thus saving scrap and wear of moulds, and producing better
ingots of more definite weight. The moulds are set upon an
iron bottom or flask lined with loam. The steel, let into the
central mould, passes through runners in the flask into the
bottoms of the surrounding moulds, and all the moulds are
filled together. Mr. Durfee has since perfected another apparatus for bottom casting-a substitution of removable runners of cast-iron instead of loam, between the bottoms of the
moulds-and is obtaining excellent results.
The perfection of the Bessemer process in England, left
much to be learned in America. New irons, new refractory
materials, different coals, and unaccustomed labor, had to be
tested and adapted, and various different conditions and requirements of manufacture had to be considered. When the




22
ingots were produced, there was little suitable skill and
machinery in this country to work them properly; and so,
although an excellent quality of steel was produced at Troy,
at the first blow in 1855, all these new labors were vigorously
undertaken, at great expense. As a result, the quality of
American materials is now well understood, the various requirements of machinery and treatment are well developed,
and various improvements and economies in construction
and manufacture are fully established.
If we except a few of the works on the Continent, where
irons are peculiarly adapted to Bessemerizing, it is probable
that no better or more uniform steel is produced anywhere
in the world, than at Troy.
THE RAIL MILL.
The new rail mill of Messrs. John A. Griswold & Co. has
been completed and started upon a large order for steel rails,
during the present week.
This establishment (the Rensselaer Iron Works) is situated
between the Hudson river and the Hudson River Railway,
within the city of Troy, and a mile above the steel works.
The yard, next the river, is two hundred and fifty feet wide,
with a wharf one thousand feet long. The railway yard is
sixty feet wide, and of the same length.
The new mill built by Colonel George Babcock, superintendent- Robert P. Banfield, master mechanic-is a rectangular brick structure, four hundred by one hundred feet in plan,
and twenty-five feet high, with a continuous lantern eighteen
feet wide by six feet high. The walls are sixteen inches
thick, with pilasters thirteen feet apart, upon which the roof
trusses rest. The trusses are of wood; the covering of slate.
The doors slide vertically in heavy iron frames built into the
walls. Gothic windows alternate with the doors, and above
these the walls are pierced with round windows.
The end of the mill next the old rail mill, contains eight
heating furnaces-two pairs at the end, and a pair at each
side. The engine stands at one end of the train, and the




23
saws and hot bed are near the centre of the building. The
northern portion of the mill is devoted to a steel bar train
and an iron merchant train.
The rail train engine, by Starbuck Brothers, Troy, is a
particularly well built and smoothly working machine. It
stands on ten feet depth of brick masonry, resting on six
feet of stone and concrete, which is supported by twenty
feet of solid piling. The engine is of the " steam-hammer"
pattern, vertical, condensing, and directly connected to the
train. A solid bed plate supports two side frames, upon
which there stands a fifty-four inch cylinder, and between
which work the cross-head (thirty-six inch stroke) and the
beam for driving a thirty-inch air pump (eighteen-inch stroke)
situated at the end of the bed plate. The connecting rod
(seven and a half long) and the piston rod, and other parts
are of Bessemer steel. The fourteen-inch shaft (twenty-four
inch length of journals) is cranked, so as to be connected to
trains at either end. The fly-wheel is of twenty-five feet
diameter, with a seventeen by twenty-inch rim, and weighs
sixty tons. The valve is Davis' piston, made double, or, in
fact, two eight-inch valves side by side, to get ample port
area. The packing of these valves is solid, but may be set
out at will; the valve is the equivalent of a slide, and perfectly simple. The steam pressure comes only on the ends
of the two pistons forming the valve, and the exhaust pressure between them, so that there is constant equilibrium, and
the valve is easily worked under steam by the starting bar.
Snow's governor is attached to the cut-off. The engine may
be changed to non-condensing, by opening a valve in the exhaust-pipe. The engine runs at seventy revolutions, for a
twenty-one-inch train.
The fan engine, standing near the other, and of similar
pattern, has a fifteen by twenty-two inch cylinder, and is
belted to a line of shafting above, which drives two overhead
six-feet Sturtevant blowers on either side of the mill, at eight
hundred revolutions. An air pipe runs around over the furnaces, from blower to blower, with branches down to the
ash pits.




24
The rail train is a twenty-one inch three-high train of the
Fritz pattern, standing on a brick foundation, with a heavy
oak cushion between.  Steel rails are bloomed from nineinch ingots, and then roughed down and finished at a reheat.
This is done in three sets of rolls, with twenty-one to twentyfive passes, according to the pattern. At present, a top and
bottom train is attached to the end of the steel rail train, but
it will ultimately be replaced by the ordinary roughing and
finishing rolls for iron rails; and the old rail mill will then be
devoted to all top and bottom, puddle, breaking down, and
preparatory rolling for iron rails.
Instead of the saw carriage running up to the saws, as
usually practised, the saws are hung upon frames, which
swing up to the rails as they lie on a fixed way, and are
driven by belts from an overhead shaft that is supported by
stands movable on a bed-plate. The engine is fixed to the
same bed-plate.
The hot bed is seventy feet long, with a straightening plate
in the middle, and a short raised table at either end. The
rails forming the hot bed lie on rollers working in the tops
of iron posts set upon masonry, and can thus expand without
buckling.
At each end of the hot bed there is a straightening press,
with a bell-crank straightening lever worked by means of an
eccentric and a geared shaft, by a steam engine attached to
the bed-plate. Behind the hot bed are two punching machines of similar construction, driven by separate engines,
and each arranged to make the fish bolt holes and. the spike
slot, by means of a horizontal and a vertical punch. The
rails are taken out of the mill to the wharf or to the railway,
by means of cars running on tracks with suitable turn tables.
The waterworks consist of a fifty-thousand gallon iron
tank, sixteen feet in diameter, forming the top of an octagonal
brick building twenty-four feet high, in which there is a duplex
Worthington pump, taking water from the river, and driven
by a sixty-horse power tubular boiler in a wing of the building. The feed-pipes to the mill boilers are of wrought-iron,
and may be warmed in freezing weather by steam. The




boilers may be fed either by the Worthington pump, or by
Giffard injectors, one of which is attached to each boiler, or
by the main engine. The blow-off pipes from the boilers
enter a large brick underground sewer, which also drains the
boshes, the roll-pit, and the air-pump.
The heating furnaces and the boilers over them are well
constructed, and are furnished with every appurtenance for
convenience and safety. The flame from the furnace passes
under and through the boiler to a chimney standing on iron
columns outside the building. The ash pit, opening out of
doors, under the chimney, is covered with a brick arch, shutting it off from the interior of the mill. There is an upper
and a lower ash-pit door. The furnace plates are perforated,
or rather they are heavy cast-iron spiders, securing the brick
work, but leaving it well uncovered. A water door frame,
got up at these works, is employed, and there are cast-iron
boshes by each furnace. The boilers are thirty feet long by
fifty-four inches diameter, with three thirteen-inch flues. The
lower half of the end of the boiler, over the throat of the furnace, is recessed, so as to form a crown sheet for the flame
to strike upon, and a chamber into which the flues open. A
damper under the other end regulates the flow of flame under
and through the boiler. Suitable air admission into the
chamber under the boiler promotes combustion. The steam
domes are three feet diameter by four feet high. A fourteeninch wrought-iron steam pipe, with disc expansion joints,
leads from the domes to the engine, and by a ten-inch branch
to the merchant mill furnaces at the other end of the building. These pipes are thoroughly lagged. Besides. the ordinary safety-valves, there are lock-up safety-valves provided
by law; there are also float water-gauges and gauge-cocks.
The boiler is inclosed in a chamber composed of cast-iron,
bottom plates and brick side walls, supported by trusses
resting on columns. The floor of the mill is well covered
with hexagonal plates. The maximum capacity is one hundred and twenty tons of rails per day.
The merchant end of the mill is furnished with a, double
billet shears and a merchant bar shears, ea-ch driven by
4




separate engines. The condensing beam engine, forty-eight
inches by seven feet, runs at twenty-five revolutions, and
drives on either side a geared train, five rolls long, running
two hundred and eighty revolutions, for small iron, and a
sixteen-inch geared train, three rolls long, running fifty revolutions, for steel. Adjacent to the iron train are two heating
furnaces with boilers, built upon the general plan above described. The steel is heated by a Siemens' furnace, supplied
with gas by two producers. The capacity of these trains is
six and one-half tons of small iron bars and rods, and fifteen
tons of half-inch to five-inch steel bars and shapes per day.
The old rail mill is a brick structure, averaging three hundred and twenty by one hundred and twenty-five feet in
plan.  A condensing beam engine (the engine of the old
steamboat "Swallow") with a sixty-inch by ten feet cylinder drives four two-high geared trains of eighteen-inch rolls,
two for balls, one for breaking down, one top and bottom,
and one (at present) for iron rails. The mill contains fourteen double puddling furnaces, four top and bottom furnaces, and the necessary heating furnaces and apparatus for
one hundred and twenty tons per day of iron rails. The adjoining machine and smith shop is a brick building, thirty by
one hundred and fifty feet, and a building thirty by one hundred feet is employed for storage and miscellaneous purposes.
THE PENNSYLVANIA STEEL WORlKS.
These were the third Bessemer works started in the United
States, and are in present extent of plant, as well as in proposed capacity, the largest in America. They were organized
under the presidency of S. IMI. Felton, Esq., late President of
the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railway, and under the direction and auspices of prominent railway men and engineers,
such as Mr. Thompson, of the Pennsylvania Railway; Nathaniel Thayer, Esq., M. W. Baldwin & Co., Wm. Sellers & Co.,
Bement & Dougherty, R. P. Parrott, Esq., H. R. Worthing



27
ton, Esq., Merrick & Sons, Morris, Tasker & Co., etc. They,
were built upon the plans, and started under the superintendence of Mr. A. L. Holley, now Chief Engineer. Mr. H. S.
Nourse, late Assistant, is Superintendent, and Mr. John B.
Pearse is Manager of the Bessemer Department and Chemist.
The Bessemer Department was started in June, 1867, and
has been in constant operation. The ingots produced were
mostly rolled into rails, at the Cambria Iron Works, Johnstown, Pa., until the starting of the Pennsylvania Steel Company's Rail 3Mill in May, 1868. The annual capacity of the
present Bessemer Plant (two five-ton converters) is about
ten thousand tons, and of the Rail Mill, thirty thousand tons.
Additional converters will be erected from time to time.
The Pennsylvania Steel Works are situated in the heart of
the iron and coal regions of the State, at Baldwin, a suburb
of Harrisburg, which is a junction of canals and railways
running in eight different directions. Upon a rectangular,
high, level plat, one hundred acres in extent, lying upon the
banks of the Susquehanna, between the Pennsylvania Railway and canal, the Company's buildings are arranged with
reference to systematic growth. Room is left for the indefinite enlargement of each department with reference to ample
yard-room and economical inter-communication by railway.
These railways are of standard gauge, and of such curvature
that cars from any of the lines radiating from Harrisburg can
enter any building or yard. With such facilities for transportation, the present considerable distances between some
of the buildings hardly amount to an inconvenience, and the
great inconvenience so generally arising from huddling together the early buildings of growing works will be avoided.
The ground is a deep, solid gravel bank, well adapted to
foundations, and its general level is twenty-five feet above
low water, and three feet above the highest flood on record.
BUILDINGS.-The Bessemer building is probably the largest
of the kind, being one hundred and fourteen feet long by
one hundred feet wide, and twenty-five feet high in the
clear, for one pair of five-ton converters. A lantern twenty



five feet wide and six feet high extends the entire length.
The adjoining melting building is eighty-one by fifty-two and
a half feet, and thirty-nine feet high, with a hipped roof, and
a lantern eighteen by forty-four feet; and the attached engine
and boiler building is one hundred and thirty-three by fiftytwo feet, and fifteen feet high.  They are solidly built of blue
limestone from the adjacent quarries. The walls are eighteen
inches thick, and twenty-four inches through the pilasters.
The windows and doors are arched with brick. The roof trusses
are of wood (for greater convenience of giving a top support
to the cranes), and in the Bessemer building a sheet-iron
sheathing or intlernal roof is suspended beneath them. The
covering of all the roofs is slate.
The rail mill is two hundred and seventy-five feet by
ninety-two and a half feet, wit;h two wings, ninety-two and
a half by forty-nine and a half feet each, and twenty-eight and
a half feet high in the clear. It consists of a hipped wooden
truss roof and a continuous lantern (twenty-six feet wide
by four'feet high), covered with slate and resting on wooden
posts (ten by twelve inches, fourteen by fourteen inches, and
four posts twenty-eight by twenty-eight inches), supported
by stone piers. A permanent siding of wood, b attened and
having a continuous line of fourteen feet, semi-circular windows all around, extends from  the eaves down to within
nine and a half feet of the ground; but below this point the
siding is formed of balanced doors opening upward, so that
the building can be entirely closed in winter, while it may be
turned into a mere shed in summer, and may be opened at
any point for ventilation or for entrance and exit of vehicles.
The machine shop is of wood, battened, seventy-five by seventy-five feet, and twenty and a half feet high, with a lantern
eighteen by seventy-two feet, and six feet high, and slate
roof. One end is temporary, for enlargement. The line
shafting is driven by a ten by eighteen-inch Hoadley portable engine, and the shop is completely furnished with roll
and other lathes, planers, bolt-cutters, drill presses, a fifteenton Bement crane, a Bement end-lathe, etc.
The smith shop is fifty by fifty feet, and eighteen feet high,




with a continuous lantern and slate roof; and is also arranged
for enlargement. It has a central crane swinging over six
double fires (without chimneys), and a Davy seven hundred
weight steam  hammer for forging test ingots and other
work. Extensive store sheds,, for fire materials, etc., are
erected at a convenient distance from the converting works.
Water is carried to the machine and smith shops under the
head of the rail mill tank. All the buildings are drained by
a three-feet brick sewer running to the river.
The Company's boarding house is a brick building seventy
by thirty-three feet, and three stories high, with twenty-six
sleeping rooms. The workmen's houses are built of wood,
on streets one hundred feet wide, with a thirty-foot alley between each pair. Each double tenement, or pair of houses,
is twenty-eight by thirty feet, and two stories high, with two
attached one-story kitchen buildings, and eight rooms with
closet accommodation. The residence for the officers is a
neat and commodious wooden villa, situated on an eminence
overlooking the works and the river valley for many miles.
Plans are in hand, and proper places are left for the
erection of extensive tyre, plate, and merchant mills.
THE BESSEMER PLANT is precisely like that at Troy, as to
sizes and positions of converters and converter lifts, cars
and platform, ingot pit and cranes, except that the central
ingot crane is as large as the others, viz., twenty-two feet
jib, nine feet lift. Two ovens with top entrances are sunk
in the floor under the side ingot cranes. The flues of these
ovens pass under brick bins for fire materials, to prevent
their freezing in winter.  The regulator, from which the
hydraulic machinery and the cranes are worked, is the same
as at Troy, although differently situated. The large converting house affords ample room for the storage of moulds,
and the dressing of ladles and vessel bottoms, and for bins
containing fire materials, charcoal, etc., and for a floor and
a hand crane for moulding flasks, etc. Two ovens, eighteen
feet long each, with end entrances and railways running out
under the side ingot cranes, open into the converting room
from the lower story of the cupola building. From a turn



30
table under the central ingot crane, railways run in five
directions out of the building, and under the other two ingot
cranes. The railway to the rail mill passes over a ten-ton
scale, and a two-ton platform scale is placed under one of
the cranes, so that ingots can be weighed, assorted, and distributed with the greatest convenience and despatch. Upon
the roof-trusses there is a hydraulic cylinder, operated from
the regulator, which raises a one-ton drop (twenty-five feet
fall) outside the building. The chain that raises the drop
also unloads from cars the sculls, etc., to be broken up, and
places them in position under the drop. The hydraulic
machinery was built by H. Rt. Worthington, in New York.
At the front of the cupola building (opposite the converting building) there is a double two-ton vertical lift, operated
by a line of shafting overhead, with openings to the stockshed and yard. Coal wagons for a charge each, and iron
wagons for a ton of pig each, are run upon the stock-house
scale, loaded, run upon the lift, and hoisted to the ample
cupola-charging floor, seventeen by twenty-five feet, and
twenty-nine and a half feet high, or to the air-furnace floor,
eleven and a half feet high. Two gangways, ten and a half
feet wide, run through the cupola building from the front to
the converting-room. Between these gangways are the lift,
a mixing floor for vessel linings, the pit into which the
cupolas are dumped, and an ample space behind the converters. At the sides of these gangways are racks for tuyeres,
weighmaster's office, bins for fire materials (which are ground
on the floor above), a cinder mill convenient to the cupola
dumping pit, a fifty-horse oscillating engine to drive the line
shafting in the top of the building, and the ovens opening to
the converting-room. The next floor is eleven and a half
feet high, formed of iron beams, arched between with brick
and reached by the lifts and by two stairways. Centrally
upon this floor stand three No. 6 Mackenzie cupolas in line
(with space left for a fourth), and two twelve-ton ladles standing on platform scales, and arranged with worm-wheels to
tip out the melted iron from the cupolas into spouts leading
to the converters. This floor is connected with the convert



31
ing-room by wide arches. An ample space is left upon it for
getting at the converter bottoms. In one front corner of
this floor is a building containing a five-feet Dimpfel fan for
blowing the air and Spiegel furnaces, and a No. 6 Root
pressure-blower for driving the cupolas. In the opposite
front corner is a building containing a Blake crusher and a
Bogardus mill for preparing fire materials. The two large
spaces at the sides of the cupolas are occupied, the one by
two reverberatory Spiegel furnaces, worked from behind and
tapped in front, and the other by a large reverberatory melting furnace similarly worked (with room left for another),
capable of melting five-ton charges of iron for conversion.
Wide gangways are left between all the furnaces.
The blowing engine room is sixty-six by fifty feet; the
engine occupies a space of sixty by twenty-two feet, and
consists of a pair of fifty-four-inch air cylinders, water
jacketed, a pair of forty-inch steam cylinders, five feet stroke,
directly connected and horizontal, and a pair of eighteen by
twenty-four-inch vertical air-pumps, worked by bell cranks.
The valve motion is the long slide with adjustable slide cutoff valve.  The foundations are of heavy dressed stone,
leaving a counterarched water-tight pit under and between
the engines. The air receiver is eighteen feet high by eight
feet diameter. These engines were built by Merrick & Sons,
in Philadelphia, and are a strong and excellent job.
The water supply for the whole works is from an unfailing
well, twelve feet in diameter, at one corner of the engineroom. A Worthington duplex pump, capable of throwing
twelve hundred gallons per minute, and arranged to connect
with a ten-inch suction pipe from the river, when required,
delivers the water through a ten-inch main into an iron tank
twenty feet in diameter and ten feet high, standing on an
octagonal brick building twenty-one feet by eighteen and a
half feet high, near the rail mill. The tank is covered, and is
surrounded by a circular brick wall, with an air space between. From the main, water is carried by underground
pipes to the pressure pump and to the feed pumps for the
converting and rail mill boilers, to the machine and smith




shops, and to the office and hotel.  The overflow from the
air-pumps runs to a shallow pond five hundred by two
hundred feet, behind the rail mill, and when it is cooled runs
back into the well. The rail train pit and boshes are drained
to the pond. The pressure pump for driving the cranes is
of the same size and make as that at Troy, and discharges
into an accumulator which also acts as a regulator upon the
steam valve. The feed-pump for the converting boilers is of
the Henderson pattern. These pumps are in the blowing engine-room. The rail mill feed-pump is a Worthington duplex.
By means of an underground connection, the fire hose
(always connected) either in the Bessemer works or rail mill,
and the cranes, and the boilers in either building, can be supplied from either one of the three last-named steam pumps.
The converting boilers, seven in number, are fifty-four
inches by thirty feet, with two seventeen-inch return flues,
and form a battery forty-eight by sixty feet in plan, with an
ample space all around it. They are enclosed in brickwork,
supported by iron staves. The blow-off pipes in the rear lead
to the main sewer. The water supply arrangement, safety
apparatus, etc., are very complete. The flues from the boilers
lead to a brick stack one hundred and ten feet high by five
and a half feet square within.  A nine-inch wrought-iron
steam pipe runs underground, in an enclosed air space, from
these boilers to the main steam pipe of the rail mill.
lRAIL MILL. —The striking feature of this mill is its
ample floor-space, and height.  It is the only mill in this
country built especially for steel, and the arrangement and
strength of machinery are designed accordingly. The furnaces, eight in number (with room for more), are arranged in
pairs, at one end and in one wing, with boilers over them, and
sheet-iron chimneys outside the building. The furnaces do
not front each other, and the smallest space in front of a
furnace is twenty-one feet; the mill is consequently cool. In
the centre of the space between the furnaces and the rolls,
there is ample room for piling ingots, and a hydraulic crane
for unloading them from the converting-roonm cairs. and load



ing them on the furnace buggies. The rail train is near the
centre of the building, with the engine at one end, directly
connected; the saw carriage in the rear of it is arranged to
receive rails from either of two sets of finishing rolls. The
hot bed, laid on posts and rollers, is forty-eight feet long,
with a twenty-four feet table at one end and a straightening
plate at the other. Beyond it is a ten-feet gangway, with a
railway running from a turntable in the main siding to the
other wing of the mill, in which there are two steam hamnmers. Beyond this gangway there is a cold bed seventy-two
feet long, with a straightening press at one end and punching
and drilling machines at the other. Outside of this end of
the mill are tables for finished rails, ample yard room, and
a siding with a twenty-five ton track scale, leading to the
main siding.
The furnaces and boiler setting are of the Fritz pattern,
built by Matthews & Moore, in Philadelphia. The furnaceplates are corrugated, to prevent cracking by expansion.
The boilers are thirty feet long by four and a half feet diameter, with two seventeen-inch flues, twenty-one by twentyfour inch domes, and eighteen by twenty-one inch feedchambers below. The flame passes through the flues and
under the boiler, in the same direction. The boiler-setting
is similar to that in the Troy mill. The feed-pipes are
wrought-iron, the main being five inches in diameter. The
main steam-pipe is fourteen inches diameter, of wrought-iron,
and the branches are five inches diameter, with S expansionjoints. A seven-inch wrought-iron feed-pipe connects the
hammer boilers in the wing, with the others. All the steampipes are thoroughly lagged with paper, hay-rope, and
plaster-a thorough non-conductor, and very inexpensive.
The rail-train engine is of the Fritz pattern, vertical and
non-condensing, and was built by Pusey, Jones & Co., at
Wilmington, Del. The cylinder stands on four piers, bolted
to a solid heavy bed-plate, twenty-four inches high. It is
forty inches diameter by sixty inches stroke, and develops
three hundred to five hundred. horse power at the different
passes. The cross-head is above the cylinder, and a forked




connecting-rod (thus very long) passes down both sides of it
to the crank underneath. The valve-motion is the Fritz revolving cam, with two double steam and two double exhaust
puppet valves. The cut-off is performed by the regulator in
the steam-pipe. The shaft journals are seventeen inches in
diameter and thirty-six inches long.. The fly-wheel is thirty
feet in diameter and weighs fifty-three tons.
The rail-train is the heaviest in this country, and consists
of four sets of three high twenty-three-inch rolls-one set
for blooming ten-inch ingots, one for roughing, one for finishing, and one for either finishing rails of another pattern or
for rolling beams or blooms. All parts of the train are
stronger by some fifty per cent. than similar trains for iron.
Each shoe stands on a foundation of heavy dressed stone,
fourteen feet deep and four and a half feet thick at the bottom. This train has already run some three months on steel
rails, with remarkable smoothness. It was built by Matthews & Moore, in Philadelphia.
The fan engine (fourteen by fifteen inches), fan and feed
pump, stand near the main engine at one side of the main
building.  The fan was built by Morris, Tasker & Co.,
and is eight feet in diameter, by three feet nine inches
face, and delivers to an underground brick air-duct six feet
deep by four feet wide, with sixteen inch branches to each
pair of furnaces. The saw apparatus, and the straightening
and punching machines, are driven by separate engines, and
were built by Matthews & Moore. There is no line-shafting
in the mill.
In the hammer-wing, before referred to, there is a five-ton
Thwaites & Carbutt vertical steam hammer with a forty-ton
block, a fifteen-ton crane, and a heating furnace and boiler
similar to the others described, and adapted to cogging ingots
and to miscellaneous forging. There is also a one-and-a-half
ton Morrison hammer by Sellers, with a two-ton crane and a
similar heating furnace and boiler. This makes a very complete forge, capable of working up all ingots of unsuitable
size for rails, and of producing every class of forging, up to
say ten inches.




The present products of these works are steel rails, hammered and rolled blooms, and forgings.
THE FREEDOM IRON AND STEEL WORKS,
at Lewistown, Pa., were the fourth Bessemer works started
in this country, and are now producing steel forgings and
ingots for rails. The Bessemer plant consists of a pair of
five-ton converters and apparatus, on the English plan, and
mostly built in England. The blowing engine is vertical,
and was built by Messrs. I. P. Morris & Towne, in Philadelphia. The iron is melted in cupolas. The works are equal
in quality to the best in England. A very heavy plate mill,
driven by a IRamsbottom reversing engine, is completed, and
a rail mill and a crucible steel works are in progress. A
tyre mill and eight hammers of different sizes are in operation. The iron tyres and other products of the Freedom
Iron Works are well known. The Company also runs four
charcoal blast furnaces, and owns some forty-five thousand
acres of woodland, and extensive mines of ore, much of which
is suitable for Bessemer pig.
THE CLEVELAND ROLLING MILL COMPANY'S
Bessemer Works, at Newburgh, six miles from Cleveland,
Ohio, are nearly completed, and will be running within a
month. They are connected with the company's present furnaces and rolling mills, and are situated between the lines of
the Atlantic and Great Western and the Cleveland and Pittsburg Railways. On both these lines, within sixty miles, are
large deposits of bituminous coal, of various qualities.
Cleveland is the principal outlet of the iron and ores of
the Lake Superior region, most of which are well adapted to
Bessemerizing. The best raw coal and coke irons in this
country, are made within a circuit of seventy-five miles from
the works. Railway supplies for the West and Northwest,
and lake and manufacturing machinery, are already furnished




largely by the various iron works in tfie region, and there
are few, if any, better points for lhe rmanufilacture and supply
of steel rails aIlnd p roduocts.
The arrangement, of the Bessemer works is substantially
the same as that of the Pennsylvania S(eel Works, but has
been somewhat modfied by Mr. HI. Gmelin, the engineer in
charge of construction. The converting-house is one hundred and twenty-four feet by seventy-five feet; the enginehouse, eighty-three by thirty-four feet; the boiler-house,
eighty by fifty-six feet; and the melting-house, one hundred
Land twenty-four by fifty-eight feet. They are all of brick,
with iron and slate roofs. The converters are wrought-iron,
of five tons capacity. The ingot cranes have no top supports. Two have twenty-two feet jibs, and one has a seventeen foot jib. The ladle crane is turned, and the ladle is
moved radially, and rotated by hand gearing. The blowing
engine, horizontal and non-condensing, has two thirty-sixinch steam cylinders, and two fifty-inch air cylinders, five
feet stroke, and a twenty-feet fly-wheel, of twenty-five tons
weight. The water pressure engine has two fourteen-inch
steam cylinders, and four four-inch water cylinders, and discharges into an accumulator. The boilers, eight in number,
are twenty-six feet long, by four feet in diameter, with two
return flues. The stack is one hundred and twenty feet high,
and twenty-five feet square at the foundation. The machinery foundations are very substantial, being built of large
stone found near the works. All the machinery, except one
converter, was built by the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Company, in Cleveland.
The lower floor of the melting-house is used for dryingrooms for ladles, etc., and the mixture and storage of fire
materials. The second floor is of iron girders and brick
arches, and sustains two six-ton reverberatory melting-furnaces, and two similar small furnaces for the recarburizer,
and has room for two more large furnaces and four cupolas.
The adjoining rail-mill contains a three-high twenty-one
inch train, driven by a forty-inch four feet horizontal engine,
with a twenty-four feet fly-whedl, weighing forty tons. The




two blastsfutrnaces are forty-eight feet high, and twelve feet
at the boshes. They work Lake Superior ore by the celebrated Briar Hill coal, into pig suitable for steel making.
The Bessemer works are under the superintendence of Mr.
John C. Thompson, late Assistant Superintendent of the
Troy works.
THE WYANDOTTE STEEL WORKS,
owned by E. B. Ward, Esq., and connected with his extensive iron works, were the first Bessemer works started in this
country. The experimental machinery has been replaced by
a permanent plant, which is not yet in full operation.
TI'HE NATIONAL lRON ARMOR CO:MPANY,
at Chester, Pa., have built a Bessemer building and rollingmill-well-constructed buildings of brick and iron, and well
located on tide water and railway. Their machinery is being
constructed by Messrs. Reaney; Son & Co., at Chester.
TIlE CAMBRIA IRON COMPANY
are adding a Bessemer plant substantially like that of the
Pennsylvania Steel Company, to their works at Johnstown,
Pa., already the largest iron works in America. The Bessemer department will be under the management of Mr. R.
W. Hunt, and the plant will be built (the machinery mostly
at the Company's works) by Mr. George Fritz, chief engineer
of the Company, which guarantees its success.




CONCLUSIONS.
THE vast importance of the Bessemer manufacture, its success all over the world, the rapidity of its development, and
the revolution it has created in the great practical problem
of the age-cheap iron-render it the most remarkable, if
not the most splendid achievement of modern times. The
capital invested is estimated by tens of millions, and the
saving to railway companies, and to the uses of machinery,
by hundreds of millions-and yet it is but twelve years since
Mr. Bessemer took out his principal patent. Nearly a century had elapsed since any great stride had been made in
the production and alloying of iron, and the time was ripe
for the Bessemer process. But the Bessemer process, the
locomotive, the sewing machine, and all inventions that
ameliorate the condition of the race, have not repressed
cognate enterprises, nor lowered the condition and pay of
labor. Every branch of human industry has been stimulated
by them, and even the " pauper labor of Europe" is beginning to feel their elevating influence.
Now that the Bessemer process is an established success
in this country, its rapid ctevelopment, and, in American
hands, its rapid improvement, are assured. But its first introduction, with all the embarrassments of unused materials
and labor, was not an easy task, nor one likely to be undertaken by men of narrow views. Capital is ready enough to
take hold of an established business, and to stand back when
heavy risks and patient experiment are required. The enterprises that set the world ahead are conducted upon higher
and more human principles than mere greed; and something
more is due from the public to their projectors than the mere




39
pecuniary compensation they sometimes earn. It is a matter
of general satisfaction that Mr. Bessemer's labors have been
nobly rewarded in money and in honor. We believe that
similar recognition awaits, in this country, the pioneers of
the great enterprise we have described, and that it will be
gladly awarded to our distinguished townsman, to whom
more, perhaps, than to any other person, we owe the Monitor
fleet and the establishment here of the Bessemer process.