LLXENSM I L L A S IT FVAS IN 1854 This is on t h e Bite of the original mill on which the first boiler plates were rolled about 1820
PHOTOGRAPH FROM AN OLC, ESGRAVISG O F THE
Ferrous Metallurgy U J
ERLE G. HILL Lukeiis Steel Company, Coatesville, Pa.
coal in these norks imtead of charcoal. the fornier to he had a t an easy rate, the latter not nithout great expence, b u t hitherto they ha\ e proved ineffectn e, the workmen finding by experience that a sea coal fire, hon vehenient soeyer, will not penetrate thr most fixed parts of the ore, by which means they leave much of the nietal behind nnmelted.” A 3 early as 1614 Dud Dudley. an Englishman, had tried coke as a fuel, hut he n a s SO harased by his competitors that he failed. Such was the state of the industry nhen the first attempts n-ere made to found iron in America.
S
OlIEOKE ha. said that no .ingle thing better meacures the illdustrid standing of a nation than itsuseof metalc.. Shelter, food, and clothing do not vary viidely from natior to nation, but the use of iron and steel does. In no other rountry haa the groJT th of the use of metals been G O great as in the United States. I n England in the middle of the seventeenth ceritur? n hen ~v was esiron smelting began in America, ferrous metallurmU sentially the metallurgy of nrought iron. Small amounts of steel were being made by the cementation process. Cast iron was used for the casting of cannon, cannon h d q , and to some extent for domestic hearths. However, it mas of poor quality and the castings were' crude largely on account of the inability of the founder to heat his metal to a true liquid state. Iron was made either directly by reducing the ore in “bloomeries,” or indirectly by reducing the ore in
