through the metallurgical world, but had gone out with all its sparks.” When Bessemer again brought the subject before the public, he found that no one believed in it; everyone said, “Oh, this is the thing that made such a blaze two or three years ago, and which was a failure.” Neither iron-makers nor steel-makers would now take it up. Bessemer and his partner thereupon joined with three other gentlemen to establish at Sheffield a steel-works of their own, where the invention should be carried into full practice. In due time works were erected, and they commenced to sell steel, receiving at first very paltry orders, for such quantities as 28 lbs. or 56 lbs.; but the orders soon became larger, and afterwards very much larger, for they were underselling the Sheffield manufacturers by £20 a ton, and their steel was undistinguishable from the higher priced article. Bessemer had now bought his licences back again, and in the course of his second set of experiments had patented each improvement as it occurred to him, finally bringing the mechanical apparatus to the degree of efficiency requisite for practical working, without which his primary idea would have been valueless. Before directing the reader’s attention to the form the apparatus had assumed, we may transcribe what Mr. Jeans, in the work above referred to, has told about the commercial success of the Bessemer steel-making firm:— “On the expiration of the fourteen years’ term of partnership of this firm the works, which had been greatly increased from time to time out of revenues, were sold by private contract for exactly twenty-four times the amount of the whole subscribed capital, notwithstanding that the firm had divided in profits during the partnership a sum equal to fifty-seven times the gross capital, so that by the mere commercial working of the process, apart from the patent, each of the five partners retired after fourteen years from the Sheffield works with eighty-one times the amount of his subscribed capital, or an average of nearly cent. per cent., every two months,—a result probably unprecedented in the annals of commerce.” [Illustration: FIG. 24.—_Bessemer Converter._ A, Front view, showing the mouth, _c_; B, Section. ]