All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

32 Ail About Inventions his energies entirely upon its solution. At that time all steel was produced by what is known as the “ con- verting ” method, and it was an extremely prolonged operation, while naturally the product was expensive, ranging up to £70 per ton. Hand-labour entered very extensively into the manufacture of the metal, and the output was relatively small. Bessemer, animated by the French Emperor’s interest in the subject, sought to improve the com- mercial cast iron then in vogue by adding thereto a small quantity of steel. He prepared some of this metal from which he cast a small model gun. He went to France and exhibited it to the Emperor Napoleon III. It was examined, and the metal being observed to be harder than that from which cannon were then being made, he was given permission to erect a furnace of sufficient size to,enable a io-ton gun to be cast at the Government works at Ruelle. He returned to England to complete the pre- liminary preparations. Suddenly, as he was turning the subject over in his mind, he conceived an idea for making an improved wrought iron upon an ex- tensive scale by the simple process of driving a current of air through the molten mass. In one respect this inspiration was to be regretted; it turned him from the original line of thought for ever. Had he con- tinued his first line of experiment it is certain that he would have anticipated the Martins-Siemens open- hearth process, which has now a greater vogue than the Bessemer method owing to the greater proportion of ores being more suited to the former than to the latter treatment. Naturally, the first experiments were carried out