Evening star., 1919-10-03
STEEL "|NDUSTRY'S
| GREATEST ASSET
Geographic Society Writer So
/ Terms 1t in Telling of Bes-
Semer Process.

In view Of the nationwide attention
now directed toward the strike of
steel workers. the National Geographic
Society has issued a bulletin, based
on a communication from William
Joseph Showalter, concerning the
making of steel, which he terms I'm
dustry's greatest asset" The bulletin
follows.
Two Invent Process.
'The story of Bessemer steel is one
of the fascinating chronicles of the in
dustrial world. 1t seems to have been
one of those cases where two men
working in different countries, each
without knowledge of what the other
was aoing, reached the same conclu-
sion about the same time. Both were
granted American patents: but upon
application for renewal the patent
office held Kelly to be the inventor.
the world. however, gives the credit
to Bessemer. and the process is known
as the Bessemer process.
Kelly was a maker of o1d-faSh-
ioned cooking pots and kettles. 1t is
related that one day he was sitting
In front of his furnace and observed
a point of incandescence where there
was no charcoal--only the metal and
the air. This led him to contend that
air alone would burn out the impuri-
ties from molten iron. When he de-
Veloped his fitting converter his en-
ginecr blew such tremendous blast
through the first charge that iron
and all went up as sparks, to his dis
comfiture and the crowds amusement
He finally succeeded in getting the
amount of air regulated. and poured
out of his converter the first Bessemer
steel People said Kelly would soon
be burning ice. Since his old converter
was first used billions of dollars
~ nf Dt nf
worlds converters.
Both Kelly and Bessemer were
bafled by the problem of regulating
the supply of air so that it would
of which is essential to steel. Fur
thermore. their products frequently
proved to be brittle, owing to the
fact that the molten metal absorbed
oxygen from the air blast. The first
difficulty was solved eventually by
tically all the carbon. then adding
exactly the amount required for the
specific quality of steel desired.
The second difficulty was overcome
through the addition of manganese
to take care of the hurtful oxygen.
tribution of Robert F. Mushet, a
Scotch steel maker. Goransson, a
Swedish ironmaster had previously
achieved the same results by using
pig iron initially rich in manganese.
Thereafter underdone and overdone
steel disappeared.
Converter Is Described.
ITO go into a great building where
verters is to see more heat than
Dante ever pictured. A converter is
huge egg swung 'amidships' on
trunions. The great egg of steel
lined with fire brick has the top OF.
Some twenty tons of molten pig are
some 200 little holes in the bottom
powerful engines pump in stream of
cold air. AS the oxygen-laden air
sweeps up through the molten iron
it touches the molten carbon and
silicon. which constitute the impur-
. titles. and carries them away. Mil
lions of red and white sparks fill the
air, as il some demon with the fiery
fluid were giving a pyrotechnic per-
torrance. A tousand engines, with
saftey valves kissing under tremen-
dous pressure, have the voice of a
flame that pours forth is violet.
then shades into orange, becomes a
dazzling white. burning finally to
faint blue, which is sign that all
the impurities are gone.
Then the blast ceases. the carbon
ed portions burnt out 10 added, the
great brick and steel egg swings back
to position, the carbon is mixed with
the fervent liquid, and then the egg
tips over on it's side and out of the
top flows the liquid steel into a great
1adle. When it is swung back into
position a man with colored glasses
walks out over the converter and
peers down into it's white-hot depths
to see il the heat from the last
charge has melted away any Of the
frebrick lining. II 1t has he hurls
balls of putty-like clay down into the
holes to stop them up, or sets a crew
of workmen to patching the damaged
shell. This done, the big egg swings
back again, gets another charge of
molten iron, and begins the process
over again. The whole operation
takes about twenty minutes-a ton
of steel a minute. Bessemer steel is
used for structural material. railroad
rails. wire and pipe.
TN 1900 there was twice as much
steel produced in the United States
by the Bessemer as by the open
hearth process. But with the rapid
exhaustion of ores having the proper
amounts of phosphorus for converter
practice the open-hearth furnace.
which can use with equal success ores
which contain neither a large or a
small amount of phosphorus. largely
replaced the Bessemer converter"
TOAL Hooo A@