Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885Various
History
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
One of the most important applications of the regenerative furnace has
been to the manufacture of steel, and he soon perceived that it was
necessary for himself to solve the various difficulties which others
regarded as practically insuperable. “Having,” he says, “been so often
disappointed by the indifference of manufacturers and the antagonism of
their workmen, I determined in 1865 to erect experimental or ‘sample
steel works’ of my own at Birmingham, for the purpose of maturing the
details of these processes, before inviting manufacturers to adopt
them.” The success of experiments in 1867-68, in making steel rails,
brought about the formation of the Landore Siemens Steel Co., whose
works were opened in 1874. When Dr. Siemens was knighted, the employés
of this company embodied their congratulations in an address, and had
prepared for him a very beautiful model of a steel furnace in ivory
and silver; the presentation of these was prevented by his premature
death, but the address stated that “the quantity of steel made here to
the end of last year on your process was upwards of 400,000 tons!” In
the ten years ending in 1882, the annual production of open-hearth
steel in the United Kingdom increased from 77,500 tons to 436,000 tons.
During an action in the Superior Courts of the United States, it was
stated that the inventor had received a million dollars in royalties,
the annual saving in that country by his process being 3¾ millions
of dollars! These statements refer mainly, I believe, to the conversion
of cast or wrought iron into steel, either by the “direct” process of
acting on pig-iron with iron ore in an open hearth, or by the “scrap
process” (Siemens-Martin) of melting wrought-iron and steel scrap in a
bath of pig-metal. Both of these require the preliminary treatment of
the blast furnace, and in speaking of them in 1873, Dr. Siemens said
that “however satisfactory these results might appear, I have never
considered them in the light of final achievements. On the contrary, I
have always looked upon the direct conversion of iron and steel from
the ore, without the intervention of blast furnaces and the refinery,
as the great object to be attained.” How far he succeeded in this may
be gathered from the fact that in a paper read on April 29, 1883,
before the Iron and Steel Institute, on the “Manufacture of Iron and
Steel by the Direct Process,” he showed how to produce 15 cwt. of
wrought iron direct from the ore in three hours, with a consumption
of 25 cwt. of coal per ton of metal, which is one-half the quantity
previously required for the production of a ton of pig-iron only, in
the blast furnace! The long and costly experiments which ended in the
realisation of his views extended over twenty-five years; and it is
worthy of note that he told the Parliamentary Committee on Patents that
he would not have continued them if the English patent law had not
insured such a period of protection as would repay him for his labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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