Chapter 4

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