The Beginnings of Cheap Steel Part 2

[34] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 169.

David Mushet's advocacy of Martien's claim to priority over Bessemer has already been noticed (p. 33). From him we learn[35] that Martien's experiments leading to his patent of September 15, 1855, had been carried out at the Ebbw Vale Works in South Wales, where he engaged in "perfecting the Renton process."[36] Martien's own process consisted in pa.s.sing air through metal as it was run in a trough from the furnace and before it pa.s.sed into the puddling furnace.

[35] _Mining Journal_, 1856, vol. 26, p. 631.

[36] James Renton's process (U.S. patent 8613, December 23, 1851) had been developed at Newark, New Jersey, in 1854. It was a modification of the puddling furnace, in which the ore and carbon were heated in tubs, utilizing the waste heat of the reverberatory furnace (see the _Mechanics' Magazine_, vol. 62, p.

246, 1855). Renton died at Newark in September 1856 (_Mechanics'

Magazine_, 1856, vol. 65, p. 422).

It is known that Martien's patent was in the hands of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works by March 1857.[37] This fact must be added to our knowledge that Mushet's patent of September 22, 1856 was drawn up with a specific reference to the application of his "triple compound" to "iron ...

purified by the action of air, in the manner invented by Joseph Gilbert Martien,"[38] and that this and his other manganese patents were under the effective control of Ebbw Vale. It seems a reasonable deduction from these circ.u.mstances that Brown's offer to buy out Bessemer and his subsequent threat were the consequences of a determination by Ebbw Vale to attack Bessemer by means of patent infringement suits.

[37] _Mining Journal_, 1857, vol. 27, p. 193.

[38] British patent 2219, September 22, 1856.

Some aspects of the Ebbw Vale situation are not yet explained. Martien came to South Wales from Newark, New Jersey, where he had been manager of Renton's Patent Semi-Bituminous Coal Furnace, owned by James Quimby, and where he had something to do with the installation of Renton's first furnace in 1854. The first furnace was unsuccessful.[39] Martien next appears in Britain, at the Ebbw Vale Iron Works. No information is available as to whether Martien's own furnace was actually installed at Ebbw Vale, although as noted above, David Mushet claims to have been invited to see it there.

[39] Joseph P. Lesley, _The iron manufacturer's guide_, New York, 1859, p. 34. Martien's name is spelled Marteen. A description of the furnace is given in _Scientific American_ of February 11, 1854, (vol. 9, p. 169). In the patent interference proceedings referred to below, it was stated that the furnace was in successful operation in 1854.

Martien secured an American patent for his process in 1857 and to file his application appears to have gone to the United States, where he remained at least until October 1858.[40] He seems to have taken the opportunity to apply for another patent for a furnace similar to that of James Renton. This led to interferences proceedings in which Martien showed that he had worked on this furnace at Bridgend, Glamorganshire (one of the Ebbw Vale plants), improving Renton's design by increasing the number of "deoxydizing tubes." This variation in Renton's design was held not patentable, and in any case Renton's firm was able to show that they had successfully installed the furnace at Newark in 1852-1853, while Martien could not satisfy the Commissioner that his installation had been made before September 1854. Priority was therefore awarded to Quimby, Brown, Renton, and Creswell.[41]

[40] U.S. patent 16690, February 22, 1857. A correspondent of the _Mining Journal_ (1858, vol. 28, p. 713) states that Martien had not returned to England by October 1858.

[41] U.S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of Patents, dated May 26, 1859 in the matter of interference between the application of James M. Quimby and others ... and of Joseph Martien.

Since Renton had not patented his furnace in Great Britain, Martien's use of his earlier knowledge of Renton's work and of his experience at Bridgend in an attempt to upset Renton's priority is a curious and at present unexplainable episode. Perhaps the early records of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works, if they exist, will show whether this episode was in some way linked to the firm's optimistic combination of the British patents of Martien and Mushet.

That Ebbw Vale exerted every effort to find an alternative to Bessemer's process is suggested, also, by their purchase in 1856 of the British rights to the Uchatius process, invented by an Austrian Army officer. The provisional patent specifications, dated October 1, 1855, showed that Uchatius proposed to make cast steel directly from pig-iron by melting granulated pig-iron in a crucible with pulverized "sparry iron" (siderite) and fine clay or with gray oxide of manganese, which would determine the amount of carbon combining with the iron. This process, which was to prove commercially successful in Great Britain and in Sweden but was not used in America,[42] appeared to Ebbw Vale to be something from which, "we can have steel produced at the price proposed by Mr. Bessemer, notwithstanding the failure of his process to fulfil the promise."[43]

[42] J. S. Jeans, _op. cit._ (footnote 5), p. 108. The process is not mentioned by James M. Sw.a.n.k, _History of the manufacture of iron in all ages_, Philadelphia, American Iron and Steel a.s.sociation, 1892.

[43] _Mining Journal_, 1856, vol. 26, p. 707.

So far as is known only one direct attempt was made, presumably instigated by Ebbw Vale, to enforce their patents against Bessemer, who records[44] a visit by Mushet's agent some two or three months before a renewal fee on Mushet's basic manganese patents became payable in 1859.

Bessemer "entirely repudiated" Mushet's patents and offered to perform his operations in the presence of Mushet's lawyers and witnesses at the Sheffield Works so that a prosecution for infringement "would be a very simple matter." That, he says, was the last heard from the agent or from Mushet on the subject.[45] The renewal fee was not paid and the patents were therefore abandoned by Ebbw Vale and their a.s.sociates, a fact which did not come to Mushet's knowledge until 1861, when he himself declared that the patent "was never in my hands at all [so]

that I could not enforce it."[46]

[44] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 290.

[45] The American Iron and Steel Inst.i.tute's "Steel centennial (1957) press information" (see footnote 2), includes a pamphlet, "Kelly lighted the fireworks ..." by Vaughn Shelton (New York, 1956), which a.s.serts (p. 12) that Bessemer paid the renewal fee and became the owner of Mushet's "vital" patent.

[46] Robert Mushet, _The Bessemer-Mushet process_, Cheltenham, 1883, p. 24; _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 12, pp. 177 and 189.

Further support for the thesis that Ebbw Vale's policy was in part dictated by a desire to make Bessemer "see the matter differently" is to be found in the climatic episode. Work on Martien's patents had not been abandoned and in 1861 certain patents were taken out by George Parry, Ebbw Vale's furnace manager. These, represented as improvements of Martien's designs, were regarded by Bessemer as clear infringements of his own patents.[47] When it came to Bessemer's knowledge that Ebbw Vale was proposing to "go to the public" for additional capital with which to finance, in part, a large scale working of Parry's process, he threatened the financial promoter with injunctions and succeeded in opening negotiations for a settlement. All the patents "which had been for years suspended" over Bessemer were turned over to him for 30,000.

Ebbw Vale, thereupon, issued their prospectus[48] with the significant statement that the directors "have agreed for a license for the manufacture of steel by the Bessemer process which, from the peculiar resources they possess, they will be enabled to produce in very large quant.i.ties...." So Bessemer became the owner of the Martien and Parry patents. Mushet's basic patents no longer existed.

[47] _The Engineer_, 1862, vol. 14, p. 3. Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 296.

[48] _Mining Journal_, 1864, vol. 34, p. 478.

Mushet and Bessemer

That Mushet was "used" by Ebbw Vale against Bessemer is, perhaps, only an a.s.sumption; but that he was badly treated by Ebbw Vale is subject to no doubt. Mushet's business capacity was small but it is difficult to believe that he could have been so foolish as to a.s.sign an interest in his patents to Ebbw Vale without in some way insuring his right of consultation about their disposition. He claims that even in the drafting of his specifications he was obliged to follow die demands of Ebbw Vale, which firm, believing, "on the advice of Mr. Hindmarsh, the most eminent patent counsel of the day,"[49] that Martien's patent outranked Bessemer's, insisted that Mushet link his process to Martien's. This, as late as 1861, Mushet believed to be in effective operation.[50] His later repudiation of the process as an absurd and impracticable patent process "possessing neither value nor utility"[51]

may more truly represent his opinion, especially as, when he wrote his 1861 comment, he still did not know of the disappearance of his patents.

[49] _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 12, p. 189.

[50] _Ibid._, p. 78.

[51] Mushet, _op. cit._ (footnote 46), p. 9.

Mushet's boast[52] that he had never been into an ironworks other than his own in Coleford is a clue to the interpretation of his behavior in general and also of his frequent presumptuous claims. When, for instance, the development of the Uchatius process was publicized, he gave his opinion[53] that the process was a useless one and had been patented before Uchatius "understood its nature"; yet later[54] he could claim that the process was "in fact, my own invention and I had made and sold the steel thus produced for some years previously to the date of Captain Uchatius' patent". Moreover, he claims to have instructed Uchatius' agents in its operation! He may, at this later date, have recalled his challenge (the first of many such) in which he offered Uchatius' agent in England to pay a monetary penalty if he could not show a superior method of producing "sound serviceable cast steel from British c.o.ke pig-iron, _on the stomic plan_ and without any mixture of clay, oxide of manganese or any of these pot destroying ingredients."[55]

[52] _Ibid._, p. 25.

[53] _Mining Journal_, 1857, vol. 27, p. 755.

[54] Mushet, _op. cit._ (footnote 46), p. 28. The Uchatius process became the "You-cheat-us" process to Mushet (_Mining Journal_, 1858, vol. 28, p. 34).

[55] _Mining Journal_, 1857, vol. 27, p. 755 (italics supplied).

It was David Mushet (or Robert, using his brother's name)[56] who accused Bessemer, or rather his patent agent, Carpmael, of sharp practice in connection with Martien's specification, an allegation later supported by Martien's first patent agent, Avery.[57] The story was that for the drafting of his final specification, Martien, presumably with the advice of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works, consulted the same Carpmael, as "the leading man" in the field. The latter advised that the provisional specification restricted Martien to the application of his method to iron flowing in a channel or gutter from the blast furnace, and so prevented him from applying his aeration principle in any kind of receptacle. In effect, Carpmael was acting unprofessionally by giving Bessemer the prior claim to the use of a receptacle. According to Mushet, Martien had in fact "actually and publicly proved" his process in a receptacle and not in a gutter, so that his claim to priority could be maintained on the basis of the provisional specification.

[56] See footnote 22.

[57] _Mining Journal_, 1856, vol. 26, pp. 583, 631.

This, like other Mushet allegations, was ignored by Bessemer, and probably with good reason. At any rate, Martien's American patent is in terms similar to those of the British specification; he or his advisers seem to have attached no significance to the distinction between a gutter and a receptacle.

Mushet's claim to have afforded Bessemer the means of making his own process useful is still subject to debate. Unfortunately, doc.u.mentation of the case is almost wholly one sided, since his biggest publicizer was Mushet himself. An occasional editorial in the technical press and a few replies to Mushet's "lucubrations" are all the material which exists, apart from Bessemer's own story.

Mushet and at least five other men patented the use of manganese in steel making in 1856; his own provisional specification was filed within a month of the publication of Bessemer's British a.s.sociation address in August 1856. So it is strange that Robert Mushet did not until more than a year later join in the controversy which followed that address.[58] In one of his early letters he claims to have made of "his" steel a bridge rail of 750 pounds weight; although his brother insists that he saw the same rail in the Ebbw Vale offices in London in the spring of 1857, when it was presented as a specimen of Uchatius steel![59] Robert Mushet's indignant "advertis.e.m.e.nt" of January 5, 1858,[60] reiterating his parentage of this sample, also claimed a double-headed steel rail "made by me under another of my patent processes," and sent to Derby to be laid down there to be "subjected to intense vertricular triturations." Mushet's description of the preparation of this ingot[61] shows that it was derived from "Bessemer sc.r.a.p" made by Ebbw Vale in the first unsuccessful attempts of that firm to simulate the Bessemer process. This sc.r.a.p Mushet had remelted in pots with spiegel in the proportions of 44 pounds of sc.r.a.p to 3 of melted spiegel. It was his claim that the rail was rolled direct from the ingot, something Bessemer himself could not do at that time.

[58] October 17, 1857, writing as "Sideros" (_Mining Journal_, 1857, vol. 27, p. 723).

[59] _Mining Journal_, 1857, vol. 27, p. 871, and 1858, vol. 28, p. 12.

[60] _Ibid._ (1858), p. 34.

[61] Mushet, _op. cit._ (footnote 46), p. 12. The phrase quoted is typical of Mushet's style.

This was the beginning of a series of claims by Mushet as to his essential contributions to Bessemer's invention. The silence of the latter during this period is impressive, for according to Bessemer's own account[62] his British a.s.sociation address was premature, and although the sale of licenses actually provided him with working funds, the impatience of those experimenting with the process and the flood of competing "inventions" all embarra.s.sed him at the most critical stage of this development of the process: "It was, however, no use for me to argue the matter in the press. All that I could say would be mere talk and I felt that action was necessary, and not words."[63]

[62] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), pp. 161 ff. and 256 ff.

[63] _Ibid._, p. 171.