Could he not improve steel also? For eighteen months he built and pulled down one furnace after another, at great expense. At last "the idea struck him," he says, of making cast-iron malleable by forcing air into the metal when in a fluid state, cast-iron being a combination of iron and carbon. When oxygen is forced in, it unites with the carbon, and thus the iron is left nearly pure. The experiment was tried at the factory, in the midst of much trepidation, as the union of the compressed air and the melted iron produced an eruption like a volcano; but when the combustion was over, the result was steel. Astonished and delighted, after two years and a half of labor, Bessemer at once took out a patent; and the following week, by request, Aug. 11, 1856, read a paper before the British Association, on "The manufacture of malleable iron and steel without fuel." There was great ridicule made beforehand. Said one leading steel-maker to another. "I want you to go with me this morning. There is a fellow who has come down from London to read a paper on making steel from cast-iron without fuel! Ha! ha! ha!" The paper was published in the "Times," and created a great sensation. Crowds hastened to Baxter House to see the wonderful process. In three weeks Mr. Bessemer had sold one hundred thousand dollars worth of licenses to make steel by the new and rapid method. Fame, as well as great wealth, seemed now assured, when lo! in two months, it being found that only certain kinds of iron could be worked, the newspapers began to ridicule the new invention, and scientists and business men declared the method visionary, and worse than useless. Mr. Bessemer collected a full portfolio of these scathing criticisms; but he was not the man to be disconcerted or cast down. Again he began the labor of experimenting, and found that phosphorus in the iron was the real cause of the failure. For three long years he pursued his investigations. His best friends tried to make him desist from what the world had proved to be an impracticable thing. Sometimes he almost distrusted himself, and thought he would give up trying, and then the old desire came back more strongly than ever. At last, success was really assured, but nobody would believe it. Every one said, "Oh, this is the thing which made such a blaze two or three years ago, and which was a failure." Mr. Bessemer took several hundredweight of the new steel to some Manchester friends, that their workmen might try it, without knowing from whence it came. They detected no difference between this which cost thirty dollars a ton, and what they were then using at three hundred dollars a ton.