Chapter II: Part 2

[74] _The Engineer_, 1859, vol. 8, p. 13 (italics supplied). It
is noted that Mushet's American patent (17389, of May 26, 1857)
prefers the use of iron "as free as possible from Sulphur and
Phosphorous."

The succeeding years were enlivened, one by one, by some controversy in which Mushet invoked the shadow of his late father as support for some pronouncement, or "edict," as some said, on the subject of making iron and steel. In 1860, on the question of suitable metal for artillery, later to be the subject of high controversy among the leading experts of the day, Mushet found a ready solution in his own gun metal. This he had developed fifteen years before. It was of a tensile strength better even than that of Krupp of Essen who was then specializing in the making of large blocks of cast steel for heavy forgings, and particularly for guns. Indeed, he was able publicly to challenge Krupp to produce a cast gun metal or cast steel to stand test against his.[75] A year later his attack on the distinguished French metallurgist Fremy, whom he describes as an "ass" for his interest in the so-called cyanogen process of steel making, did little to enhance his reputation, whatever the scientific justification for his attack. His attitude toward the use of New Zealand (Taranaki) metalliferous sand, which he had previously favored and then condemned in such a way as to "injure a project he can no longer control,"[76] was another example of a public behavior evidently resented.

[75] _The Engineer_, 1860, vol. 9, pp. 366, 416, and _passim_.

[76] _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 11, pp. 189, 202, 290, 304.

By mid-1861, on the other hand, Bessemer was beginning to meet with increasing respect from the trade. The Society of Engineers received a dispassionate account of the achievement at the Sheffield Works from E. Riley, whose firm (Dowlais) was among the earlier and disappointed licensees of the process.[77] In August 1861, five years after the ill-fated address before the British Association, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, meeting in Sheffield, the center of the British steel trade, heard papers from Bessemer and from John Brown, a famous ironmaster. The latter described the making of Bessemer rails, the product which above all was to absorb the Bessemer plants in America after 1865. After the meeting, the engineers visited Bessemer's works; and later it was reported,[78] "at Messrs. John Brown and Company's works, the Bessemer process was repeated on a still larger scale and a heavy armor plate rolled in the presence of some 250 visitors...."

[77] _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 12, p. 10.

[78] _Ibid._, p. 63.

These proceedings invited Robert Mushet's intervention. Still under the impression that his patent was still alive and, with Martien's, in the "able hands" of the Ebbw Vale Iron Company, he condemned Bessemer for his "lack of grace" to do him justice, and took the occasion to indict the patent system which denied him and Martien the fruits of their labors.[79]

[79] _Ibid._, pp. 78 and 177.

_The Engineer_ found Mushet's position untenable on the very grounds he was pleading--that patents should not be issued to different men at different times for the same thing; and showed that Bessemer in his patents of January 4, 1856, and later, had clearly anticipated Mushet. In a subsequent article, _The Engineer_ disposed of Martien's and Mushet's claims with a certain finality. The Ebbw Vale Iron Works had spent £7,000 trying to carry out the Martien process and it was unlikely that they would have allowed Bessemer to infringe upon that patent if they had any grounds for a case. Bessemer was not imitating Mushet. The latter's "triple compound" required manganese pig-iron (with a content of 2 to 5 percent of manganese) at £13 per ton while Bessemer used an oxide of manganese (at a 50 percent concentration): at £7 per ton.

The alloy of manganese and other materials now used in the
atmospheric process contains 50 percent of manganese a proportion
which could never be obtained from the blast furnace, owing to the
highly oxidisable nature of that metal. And it is absolutely
necessary, in order to apply any useful alloy of iron, carbon and
manganese, in the manufacture of malleable iron and very soft steel
that the manganese should be largely in excess of the carbon
present.[80]

[80] _Ibid._, p. 208. There is an intriguing reference in this
editorial to an interference on behalf of Martien against a
Bessemer application for a U.S. patent. No dates are given and
the case has not been located in the record of U.S. Patent
Commissioner's decision.

Sufficient answer to Mushet was at any rate available in the fact that many hundreds of tons of excellent "Bessemer metal" made without any mixture of manganese or spiegeleisen in any form were in successful use. And, moreover, spiegeleisen was not a discovery of Robert Mushet or an exclusive product of Germany since it had been made for twenty years at least from Tow Law (Durham) ores. If Bessemer had refused Mushet a license (and this was an admitted fact), Bessemer's refusal must have been made in self-defense:

Mr. Mushet having set up a number of claims for "improvements" upon
which claims, we have a right to suppose, he was preparing to take
toll from Mr. Bessemer, but which claims, the latter gentleman
discovered, in time, were worthless and accordingly declined any
negotiations with the individual making them.[81]

[81] _Ibid._, p. 254.

Mushet's claims were by this time rarely supported in the periodicals. One interesting article in his favor came in 1864 from a source of special interest to the American situation. Mushet's American patent[82] had been bought by an American group interested in the Kelly process at about this time,[83] and Bessemer's American rights had also been sold to an American group that included Alexander Lyman Holley,[84] who had long been associated with Zerah Colburn, another American engineer. Colburn, who subsequently (1866) established the London periodical _Engineering_ and is regarded as one of the founders of engineering journalism, was from 1862 onward a frequent contributor to other trade papers in London. Colburn's article of 1864[85] seems to have been of some importance to Mushet, who, in the prospectus of the Titanic Steel and Iron Company, Ltd., issued soon after, brazenly asserted[86] that, "by the process of Mr. Mushet _especially when in combination with the Bessemer process_, steel as good as Swedish steel" would be produced at £6 per ton. Mushet may have intended to invite a patent action, but evidently Bessemer could now more than ever afford to ignore the "sage of Coleford."

[82] U.S. patent 17389, dated May 26, 1857. The patent was not
renewed when application was made in 1870, on the grounds that
the original patent had been made co-terminal with the British
patent. The latter had been abandoned "by Mushet's own fault" so
that no right existed to an American renewal (U.S. Patent Office,
Decision of Commissioner of Patents, dated September 19, 1870).

[83] See below, p. 45. The exact date of the purchase of Mushet's
patent is not known.

[84] _Engineering_, 1882, vol. 33, p. 114. The deal was completed
in 1863.

[85] _The Engineer_, 1864, vol. 18, pp. 405, 406.

[86] _Mining Journal_, 1864, vol. 34, pp. 77 and 94 (italics
supplied). It has not yet been possible to ascertain if this
company was successful. Mushet writes from this time on from
Cheltenham, where the company had its offices. Research continues
in this interesting aspect of his career.

The year 1865 saw Mushet less provocative and more appealing; as for instance: "It was no fault of Mr. Bessemer's that my patent was lost, but he ought to acknowledge his obligations to me in a manly, straightforward manner and this would stamp him as a great man as well as a great inventor."[87]

[87] _Mining Engineer_, 1865, vol. 35, p. 86.

But Bessemer evidently remained convinced of the security of his own patent position. In an address before the British Association at Birmingham in September 1865 he made his first public reply to Mushet.[88] In his long series of patents Mushet had attempted to secure--

almost every conceivable mode of introducing manganese into the
metal.... Manganese and its compounds were so claimed under all
imaginable conditions that if this series of patents could have
been sustained in law, it would have been utterly impossible for
[me] to have employed manganese with steel made by his process,
although it was considered by the trade to be impossible to make
steel from coke-made iron without it.

[88] _The Engineer_, 1865, vol. 20, p. 174.

The failure of those who controlled Mushet's batch of patents to renew them at the end of three years, Bessemer ascribed to the low public estimation to which Mushet's process had sunk in 1859, and he had therefore, "used without scruple any of these numerous patents for manganese without feeling an overwhelming sense of obligation to the patentee." He was now using ferromanganese made in Glasgow. Another alloy, consisting of 60 to 80 percent of metallic manganese was also available to him from Germany.

This renewed publicity brought forth no immediate reply from Mushet, but a year later he was invited to read a paper before the British Association. A report on the meeting stated that in his paper he repeated his oft-told story, and that "he still thought that the accident (of the non-payment of the patent stamp duties) ought not to debar him from receiving the reward to which he was justly entitled." Bessemer, who was present, reiterated his constant willingness to submit the matter to the courts of law, but pointed out that Mushet had not accepted the challenge.[89]

[89] _Mechanics' Magazine_, 1866, vol. 16, p. 147.

Three months later, in December 1866, Mushet's daughter called on Bessemer and asked his help to prevent the loss of their home: "They tell me you use my father's inventions and are indebted to him for your success." Bessemer replied characteristically:

I use what your father has no right to claim; and if he had the
legal position you seem to suppose, he could stop my business by an
injunction tomorrow and get many thousands of pounds compensation
for my infringement of his rights. The only result which followed
from your father taking out his patents was that they pointed out
to me some rights which I already possessed, but of which I was not
availing myself. Thus he did me some service and even for this
unintentional service, I cannot live in a state of indebtedness....

With that he gave Miss Mushet money to cover a debt for which distraint was threatened.[90] Soon after this action, Bessemer made Mushet a "small allowance" of £300 a year. Bessemer's reasons for making this payment, he describes as follows: "There was a strong desire on my part to make him (Mushet) my debtor rather than the reverse, and the payment had other advantages: the press at that time was violently attacking my patent and there was the chance that if any of my licensees were thus induced to resist my claims, all the rest might follow the example."[91]

[90] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 294.

[91] _Ibid._

Mushet's Titanic Steel and Iron Company was liquidated in 1871 and its principal asset, "R. Mushet's special steel," that is, his tungsten alloy tool metal, was taken over by the Sheffield firm of Samuel Osborn and Company. The royalties from this, with Bessemer's pension seem to have left Mushet in a reasonably comfortable condition until his death in 1891;[92] but even the award of the Bessemer medal by the Iron and Steel Institute in 1876 failed to remove the conviction that he had been badly treated. One would like to know more about the politics which preceded the award of the trade's highest honor. Bessemer at any rate was persuaded to approve of the presentation and attended the meeting. Mushet himself did not accept the invitation, "as I may probably not be then alive."[93] The President of the Institute emphasized the present good relations between Mushet and Bessemer and the latter recorded that the hatchet had "long since" been buried. Yet Mushet continued to brood over the injustice done to him and eventually recorded his story of the rise and progress of the "Bessemer-Mushet" process in a pamphlet[94] written apparently without reference to his earlier statements and so committing himself to many inconsistencies.

[92] See Fred M. Osborn, _The story of the Mushets_, London,
1852.

[93] _Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute_, 1876, p. 3.

[94] Robert Mushet, _The Bessemer-Mushet process_, Cheltenham,
1883.

William Kelly's "Air-boiling" Process

An account of Bessemer's address to the British Association was published in the _Scientific American_ on September 13, 1856.[95] On September 16, 1856, Martien filed application for a U.S. patent on his furnace and Mushet for one on the application of his triple compound to cast iron "purified or decarbonized by the action of air blown or forced into ... its particles while it is in a molten ... state."[96] Mushet, by this time, had apparently decided to generalize the application of his compound instead of citing its use in conjunction with Martien's process, or, as he put it, he had been obliged to do for his English specification by the Ebbw Vale Iron Works.

[95] _Scientific American_, 1856, vol. 12, p. 6.

[96] U.S. patent 17389, dated May 26, 1857. Martien's U.S. patent
was granted as 16690, dated February 24, 1857.

The discussion in the _Scientific American_, which was mostly concerned with Martien's claim to priority, soon evoked a letter from William Kelly. Writing under date of September 30, 1856, from the Suwanee Iron Works, Eddyville, Kentucky, he claimed to have started "a series of experiments" in November 1851 which had been witnessed by hundreds of persons and "discussed amongst the ironmasters, etc., of this section, all of whom are perfectly familiar with the whole principle ... as discovered by me nearly five years ago." A number of English puddlers had visited him to see his new process. "Several of them have since returned to England and may have spoken of my invention there." Kelly expected "shortly to have the invention perfected and bring it before the public."[97]

[97] _Scientific American_, 1856, vol. 12, p. 43, Kelly's
suggestion of piracy of his ideas was later enlarged upon by his
biographer John Newton Boucher, _William Kelly: A true history
of the so-called Bessemer process_, Greensburg, Pennsylvania,
1924.

Bessemer's application for an American patent was granted during the week ending November 18, 1856, and Kelly began his interference proceedings sometime before January 1857.[98]

[98] _Ibid._, p. 82. Kelly's notice of his intention to take
testimony was addressed to Bessemer on January 12, 1857. See
papers on "Interference, William Kelly vs. Henry Bessemer
Decision April 13, 1857." U.S. Patent Office Records. Quotations
below are from this file, which is now permanently preserved in
the library of the U.S. Patent Office.

Kelly's witnesses were almost wholly from the ranks of employees or former employees. The only exception was Dr. Alfred H. Champion, a physician of Eddyville. Dr. Champion describes a meeting in the fall of 1851 with "two or three practical Ironmasters and others" at which Kelly described his process and invited all present to see it in operation. He stated:

The company present all differed in opinion from Mr. Kelly and
appealed to me as a chemist in confirmation of their doubts. I at
once decided that Mr. Kelly was correct in his Theory and then went
on to explain the received opinion of chemists a century ago on
this subject, and the present received opinion which was in direct
confirmation of the novel theory of Mr. Kelly. I also mentioned the
analogy of said Kelly's process in decarbonising iron to the
process of decarbonising blood in the human lungs.

The Doctor does not say, specifically, if he or any of the "company" went to see the process in operation.

Kelly obtained affidavits from another seventeen witnesses. Ten of these recorded their recollections of experiments conducted in 1847. Five described the 1851 work. Two knew of or had seen both. One of the last group was John B. Evans who became forge manager of Kelly's Union Forge, a few miles from Suwanee. This evidence is of interest since a man in his position should have been in a position to tell something about the results of Kelly's operations in terms of usable metal. Unfortunately, he limits himself to a comment on the metal which had chilled around a tuyère which had been sent back to the Forge ("it was partly malleable and partly refined pig-iron") and to an account of a conversation with others who had worked some of Kelly's "good wrought iron" made by the new process.

Only one of the witnesses (William Soden) makes a reference to the phenomenon which is an accompaniment of the blowing of a converter: the prolonged and violent emission of sparks and flames which startled Bessemer in his first use of the process[99] and which still provides an exciting, if not awe-inspiring, interlude in a visit to a steel mill. Soden refers, without much excitement, to a boiling commotion, but the results of Kelly's "air-boiling" were, evidently, not such as to impress the rest of those who claimed to have seen his furnace in operation. Only five of the total of eighteen of the witnesses say that they witnessed the operations. Soden, incidentally, knew of seven different "air-boiling" furnaces, some with four and some with eight tuyères, but he also neglected to report on the use of the metal.

[99] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 144.

As is well known, Kelly satisfied the Acting Commissioner that he had "made this invention and showed it by drawings and experiment as early as 1847," and he was awarded priority by the Acting Commissioner's decision of April 13, 1857, and U.S. Patent 17628 was granted him as of June 23, 1857. The _Scientific American_ sympathized with Bessemer's realization that his American patent was "of no more value to him than so much waste paper" but took the opportunity of chastising Kelly for his negligence in not securing a patent at a much earlier date and complained of a patent system which did not require an inventor to make known his discovery promptly. The journal advocated a "certain fixed time" after which such an inventor "should not be allowed to subvert a patent granted to another who has taken proper measures to put the public in possession of the invention."[100]

[100] _Scientific American_, 1857, vol. 12, p. 341.

Little authentic is known about Kelly's activities following the grant of his patent. His biographer[101] does not document his statements, many of which appear to be based on the recollections of members of Kelly's family, and it is difficult to reconcile some of them with what few facts are available. Kelly's own account of his invention,[102] itself undated, asserts that he could "refine fifteen hundredweight of metal in from five to ten minutes," his furnace "supplying a cheap method of making run-out metal" so that "after trying it a few days we entirely dispensed with the old and troublesome run-out fires."[103] This statement suggests that Kelly's method was intended to do just this; and it is not without interest to note that several of his witnesses in the Interference proceedings, refer to bringing the metal "to nature," a term often used in connection with the finery furnace. If this is so, his assumption that he had anticipated Bessemer was based on a misapprehension of what the latter was intending to do, that is, to make steel.

[101] Boucher, _op. cit._ (footnote 97).

[102] U.S. Bureau of the Census, _Report on the manufacturers
of the United States at the tenth census (June 1, 1880) ...,
Manufacture of iron and steel_, report prepared by James M.
Swank, special agent, Washington, 1883, p. 124. Mr. Swank was
secretary of the American Iron and Steel Association. This
material was included in his _History of the manufacture of iron
in all ages_, Philadelphia, 1892, p. 397.

[103] _Ibid._, p. 125. The run-out fire (or "finery" fire) was a
charcoal fire "into which pig-iron, having been melted and
partially refined in one fire, was run and further refined to
convert it to wrought iron by the Lancashire hearth process,"
according to A. K. Osborn, _An encyclopaedia of the iron and
steel industry_, New York, 1956.

This statement leaves the reader under the impression that the process was in successful use. It is to be contrasted with the statement quoted above (page 43), dated September 1856, when the process had, clearly, not been perfected. In this connection, it should be noted that in the report on the Suwanee Iron Works, included in _The iron manufacturer's guide_,[104] it is stated that "It is at this furnace that Mr. Kelly's process for refining iron in the hearth has been most fully experimented upon."

[104] J. P. Lesley, _op. cit._ (footnote 39), p. 129. The preface
is dated April 6, 1859. The data was largely collected by Joseph
Lesley of Philadelphia, brother of the author, during a tour of
several months. Since Suwanee production is given for 44 weeks
only of 1857 (_i.e._, through November 4 or 5, 1857) it is
concluded that Lesley's visit was in the last few weeks of 1857.

A major financial crisis affected United States business in the fall of 1857. It began in the first week of October and by October 31 the _Economist_ (London) reported that the banks of the United States had "almost universally suspended specie payment."[105] Kelly was involved in this crisis and his plant was closed down. According to Swank,[106] some experiments were made to adapt Kelly's process to need of rolling mills at the Cambria Iron Works in 1857 and 1858, Kelly himself being at Johnstown, at least in June 1858. That the experiments were not particularly successful is suggested by the lack of any American contributions to the correspondence in the English technical journals. Kelly was not mentioned as having done more than interfere with Bessemer's first patent application. The success of the latter in obtaining patents[107] in the United States in November 1856, covering "the conversion of molten crude iron ... into steel or malleable iron, without the use of fuel ..." also escaped the attention of both English and American writers.

[105] _Economist_ (London), 1857, vol. 15, pp. 1129, 1209.

[106] Swank, _op. cit._ (footnote 42), p. 125. John Fritz, in his
_Autobiography_ (New York, 1912, p. 162), refers to experiments
during his time at Johnstown, _i.e._, between June 1854 and July
1860. _The iron manufacturer's guide_ (see footnote 104) also
refers to Kelly's process as having "just been tried with great
success" at Cambria.

[107] U.S. patents 16082, dated November 11, 1856, and 16083,
dated November 18, 1856. Bessemer's unsuccessful application
corresponded with his British patent 2321, of 1855 (see footnote
98).

It was not until 1861 that the question arose as to what happened to Kelly's process. The occasion was the publication of an account of Bessemer's paper at the Sheffield meeting of the (British) Society of Mechanical Engineers on August 1, 1861. Accepting the evidence of "the complete industrial success" of Bessemer's process, the _Scientific American_[108] asked: "Would not some of our enterprising manufacturers make a good operation by getting hold of the [Kelly] patent and starting the manufacture of steel in this country?"

[108] _Scientific American_, 1861, new ser., vol. 5, pp. 148-153.

There was no response to this rhetorical question, but a further inquiry as to whether the Kelly patent "could be bought"[109] elicited a response from Kelly. Writing from Hammondsville, Ohio, Kelly[110] said, in part:

I would say that the New England states and New York would be sold
at a fair rate.... I removed from Kentucky about three years ago,
and now reside at New Salisbury about three miles from
Hammondsville and sixty miles from Pittsburg. Accept my thanks for
your kind efforts in endeavoring to draw the attention of the
community to the advantages of my process.

[109] _Ibid._, p. 310.

[110] _Ibid._, p. 343.

This letter suggests that the Kelly process had been dormant since 1858. Whether or not as a result of the publication of this letter, interest was resumed in Kelly's experiments. Captain Eber Brock Ward of Detroit and Z. S. Durfee of New Bedford, Massachusetts, obtained control of Kelly's patent. Durfee himself went to England in the fall of 1861 in an attempt to secure a license from Bessemer. He returned to the United States in the early fall of 1862, assuming that he was the only "citizen of the United States" who had even seen the Bessemer apparatus.[111]

[111] His claim is somewhat doubtful. Alexander Lyman Holley, who
was later to be responsible for the design of most of the first
Bessemer plants in the United States had been in England in 1859,
1860, and 1862. In view of his interest in ordnance and armor, it
is unlikely that Bessemer could have escaped his alert
observation. His first visit specifically in connection with the
Bessemer process appears to have been in 1863, but he is said to
have begun to interest financiers and ironmasters in the Bessemer
process after his visit in 1862 (_Engineering_, 1882, vol. 33, p.
115).

In June, 1862, W. F. Durfee, a cousin of Z. S. Durfee, was asked by Ward to report on Kelly's process. The report[112] was unfavorable. "The description of [the apparatus] used by Mr. Kelly at his abandoned works in Kentucky satisfied me that it was not suited for an experiment on so large a scale as was contemplated at Wyandotte [Detroit]." Since it was "confidently expected that Z. S. Durfee would be successful in his efforts to purchase [Bessemer's patents], it was thought only to be anticipating the acquisition of property rights ... to use such of his inventions as best suited the purpose in view."

[112] W. F. Durfee: "An account of the experimental steel works
at Wyandotte, Michigan," _Transactions of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers_, 1884, vol. 6, p. 40 ff.

Thus the first "Bessemer" plant in the United States came into being without benefit of a license and supported only by a patent "not suited" for a large experiment. Kelly seems to have had no part in these developments. They took some time to come to formation. Although the converter was ready by September 1862, the blowing engine was not completed until the spring of 1864 and the first "blow" successfully made in 1864. It may be no more than a coincidence that the start of production seems to have been impossible before the arrival in this country of a young man, L. M. Hart, who had been trained in Bessemer operations at the plant of the Jackson Brothers at St. Seurin (near Bordeaux) France. The Jacksons had become Bessemer's partners in respect of the French rights; and the recruitment of Hart suggests the possibility that it was from this French source that Z. S. Durfee obtained his initial technical data on the operation of the Bessemer process.[113]

[113] Research in the French sources continues. The arrival of L.
M. Hart at Boston is recorded as of April 1, 1864, his ship being
the SS _Africa_ out of Liverpool, England (Archives of the United
States, card index of passenger arrivals 1849-1891 list No. 39).

During the organization of the plant at Wyandotte, Kelly was called back to Cambria, probably by Daniel J. Morrell, who, later, became a partner with Ward and Z. S. Durfee in the formation of the Kelly Pneumatic Process Company.[114] We learn from John E. Fry,[115] the iron moulder who was assigned to help Kelly, that--

in 1862 Mr. Kelly returned to Johnstown for a crucial, and as it
turned out, a final series of experiments by him with a rotative
[Bessemer converter] _made abroad and imported for his purpose_.
This converter embodied in its materials and construction several
of Mr. Bessemer's patented factors, of which, up to the close of
Mr. Kelly's experiments above noted, he seemed to have no knowledge
or conception. And it was as late as on the occasion of his return
in 1862, to operate the experimental Bessemer converter, that he
first recognized, by its adoption, the necessity for or the
importance of any after treatment of, or additions required by the
blown metal to convert it into steel.

[114] Swank, _op. cit._ (footnote 42), p. 409.

[115] _Johnstown Daily Democrat_, souvenir edition, autumn 1894
(italics supplied). Mr. Fry was at the Cambria Iron Works from
1858 until after 1882.

Fry later asserted[116] that Kelly's experiments in 1862 were simply attempts to copy Bessemer's methods. (The possibility is under investigation that the so-called "pioneer converter" now on loan to the U.S. National Museum from the Bethlehem Steel Company, is the converter referred to by Fry.)

[116] _Engineering_, 1896, vol. 61, p. 615.

William Kelly, in effect, disappeared from the record until 1871 when he applied for an extension of his patent of June 23, 1857. The application was opposed (by whom, the record does not state) on the grounds that the invention was not novel when it was originally issued, and that it would be against the public interest to extend its term. The Commissioner ruled that,[117] on the first question, it was settled practice of the Patent Office not to reconsider former decisions on questions of fact; the novelty of Kelly's invention had been re-examined when the patent was reissued in November 1857. Testimony showed that the patent was very valuable; and that Kelly "had been untiring in his efforts to introduce it into use but the opposition of iron manufacturers and the amount of capital required prevented him from receiving anything from his patent until within very few years past." Kelly's expenditures were shown to have amounted to $11,500, whereas he had received only $2,400. Since no evidence was filed in support of the public interest aspect of the case, the Commissioner found no substantial reason for denying the extension; indeed "very few patentees are able to present so strong grounds for extension as the applicant in the case."

[117] See U.S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of
Patents, dated June 15, 1871.

In a similar application in the previous year, Bessemer had failed to win an extension of his U.S. patent 16082, of November 11, 1856, for the sole reason that his British patent with which it had been made co-terminal had duly expired at the end of its fourteen years of life, and it would have been inequitable to give Bessemer protection in the United States while British iron-masters were not under similar restraint. But if it had not been for this consideration, Bessemer "would be justly entitled to what he asks on this occasion." The Commissioner[118] observed: "It may be questioned whether [Bessemer] was first to discover the principle upon which his process was founded. But we owe its reduction to practice to his untiring industry and perseverance, his superior skill and science and his great outlay."

[118] U.S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of Patents
dated February 12, 1870.

Conclusions

Martien was probably never a serious contender for the honor of discovering the atmospheric process of making steel. In the present state of the record, it is not an unreasonable assumption that his patent was never seriously exploited and that the Ebbw Vale Iron Works hoped to use it, in conjunction with the Mushet patents, to upset Bessemer's patents.

The position of Mushet is not so clear, and it is hoped that further research can eventually throw a clearer light on his relationship with the Ebbw Vale Iron Works. It may well be that the "opinion of metallurgists in later years"[119] is sound, and that both Mushet and Bessemer had successfully worked at the same problem. The study of Mushet's letters to the technical press and of the attitude of the editors of those papers to Mushet suggests the possibility that he, too, was used by Ebbw Vale for the purposes of their attacks on Bessemer. Mushet admits that he was not a free agent in respect of these patents, and the failure of Ebbw Vale to ensure their full life under English patent law indicates clearly enough that by 1859 the firm had realized that their position was not strong enough to warrant a legal suit for infringement against Bessemer. Their purchase of the Uchatius process and their final attempt to develop Martien's ideas through the Parry patents, which exposed them to a very real risk of a suit by Bessemer, are also indications of the politics in the case. Mushet seems to have been a willing enough victim of Ebbw Vale's scheming. His letters show an almost presumptuous assumption of the mantle of his father; while his sometimes absurd claims to priority of invention (and demonstration) of practically every new idea in the manufacturing of iron and steel progressively reduced the respect for his name. Bessemer claims an impressive array of precedents for the use of manganese in steel making and, given his attitude to patents and his reliance on professional advice in this respect, he should perhaps, be given the benefit of the doubt. A dispassionate judgment would be that Bessemer owed more to the development work of his Swedish licensees than to Mushet.

[119] William T. Jeans, _The creators of the age of steel_,
London, 1884.

Kelly's right to be adjudged the joint inventor of what is now often called the Kelly-Bessemer process is questionable.[120] Admittedly, he experimented in the treatment of molten metal with air blasts, but it is by no means clear, on the evidence, that he got beyond the experimental stage. It is certain that he never had the objective of making steel, which was Bessemer's primary aim. Nor is there evidence that his process was taken beyond the experimental stage by the Cambria Works. The rejection of his "apparatus" by W. F. Durfee must have been based, to some extent at least, upon the Johnstown trials. There are strong grounds then, for agreeing with one historian[121] who concludes:

The fact that Kelly was an American is evidently the principal
reason why certain popular writers have made much of an invention
that, had not Bessemer developed his process, would never have
attracted notice. Kelly's patent proved very useful to industrial
interests in this country as a bargaining weapon in negotiations
with the Bessemer group for the exchange of patent rights.

[120] Bessemer dealt with Kelly's claim to priority in a letter
to _Engineering_, 1896, vol. 61, p. 367.

[121] Louis C. Hunter, "The heavy industries since 1860," in H.
F. Williamson (editor), _The growth of the American economy_, New
York, 1944, p. 469.

Kelly's suggestion[122] that some British puddlers may have communicated his secret to Bessemer can, probably, never be verified. All that can be said is that Bessemer was not an ironman; his contacts with the iron trade were, so far as can be ascertained, nonexistent until he himself invaded Sheffield. So it is unlikely that such a secret would have been taken to him, even if he were a well-known inventor.

[122] Later developed into a dramatic story by Boucher, _op.
cit._ (footnote 97).

End of Project Gutenberg's The Beginnings of Cheap Steel, by Philip W. Bishop