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

The Discovery of Cheap Steel 33 with primitive facilities to determine the substance of his idea. Air was injected into a crucible of molten iron. But the experiment was a startling success, because the investigator discovered that he had transformed cast iron into a far tougher metal within half an hour, and by a very simple agency. This preliminary investigation proving so pro- mising, he then prosecuted further researches upon a more comprehensive scale within the sanctuary of his bronze-powder works, where he was secure from interruption and prying eyes. Successive con- verters were built, each embodying some improvement upon its predecessor, until finally he built a stationary vessel, some 3 feet in diameter and approximately the same in height, out of firebrick. This “ converter,” as it was described, was enclosed in a box known as the blast-box, from which pipes or tuyeres, as they are technically called, entered the sides of the con- verter near the bottom. From the blast-box a feed- pipe extended to the blowing engine, whence the blast of air was supplied as required. Near the top of the converter was a hole to act as a vent for the flame produced during the blowing operation. When Bessemer set his first converter going he was completely astonished at the commotion which took place in the molten iron. The oxidation of the carbon and the silicon, he related, presented “ a miniature volcano in a state of violent eruption. All this was a veritable revelation to me, as I had in no way anticipated such violent results.” Fortune played a certain part in Bessemer’s in- vestigations. At that time but little was known con- cerning the chemistry of iron, and nothing about the D