"This paper," says Percy, "excited much attention, and was the first really public announcement of the invention." It was read in America with great interest; and it has recently become publicly known that under its stimulus the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt caused an experimental converter to be erected at the furnaces of Messrs. Cooper & Hewitt, at Phillipsburg, N. J. To an inquiry from me regarding this converter Mr. Hewitt has very courteously replied as follows:
New York,February 13, 1891.
W. F. Durfee, Esq.,Birdsboro, Berks County, Pa.
Dear Sir: In reply to your letter of the 11th instant, I cheerfully furnish the very meager description which is necessary to enable you to describe the introduction of the Bessemer process, so far as Cooper & Hewitt are concerned, in this country. On reading the paper of Mr. Bessemer, delivered at Cheltenham, I directed that an apparatus should be prepared at our works at Phillipsburg, N. J. The idea had been to use the ordinary blast from the furnace engines, which at the time were blowing about five pounds to the inch. I can not give you any drawing of the converter, but it was built according to the description contained in the Cheltenham paper. The capacity was about one ton. Before the apparatus was tried, Mr. Cooper went to Europe, where he ascertained that the Bessemer invention was a total failure, because the material produced was unfit for use. On receipt of this information, we suspended all further efforts to produce steel by the direct process, and, as a matter of fact, it now turns out that no steel was ever made in this experimental apparatus. So far as I know, therefore, the first actual steel made in this country by the Bessemer process was produced at Wyandotte; and, in ignorance of the fact that our apparatus was really never put in operation, I think I made a larger claim than would be justified by the facts; but you will remember that what I said was not intended to set up any claim for priority, but only to establish the fact that we were very hospitable to new ideas in the development of the steel business.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed) Abram S. Hewitt.This very frank letter is confirmatory of the fact (until recently undisputed) that "the first actual steel made in this country by the Bessemer process was produced at Wyandotte" more than eight years after Mr. Bessemer read his paper at Cheltenham. In 1856 Mr. Bessemer obtained two patents in the United States for his improved method of making steel; "but," says Swank, "was immediately confronted by a claim of priority preferred by William Kelly, an iron-master of Eddyville, Ky., but a native of Pittsburg, Pa."
Before speaking further of the relative claims of Bessemer and Kelly, we will explain as fully as space will permit the apparatus invented by the former, which, with slight modifications, is used wherever Bessemer steel is manufactured. The vessel in which the melted pig iron, or iron taken in a molten state directly from the blast-furnace, is transmuted into steel, is called a "converter." Fig. 57 is a vertical section of an early form of one of these vessels, which are made of heavy plate iron, and provided with a
