Industrial Biography

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In the exercise of his mechanical calling, he introduced several
improved tools, but was much hindered by the inferior quality of the
metal supplied to him, which was common German steel. He also
experienced considerable difficulty in finding a material suitable
for the springs and pendulums of his clocks. These circumstances
induced him to turn his attention to the making of a better kind of
steel than was then procurable, for the purposes of his trade. His
first experiments were conducted at Doncaster;*
[footnote...
There are several clocks still in existence in the neighbourhood of
Doncaster made by Benjamin Huntsman; and there is one in the
possession of his grandson, with a pendulum made of cast-steel. The
manufacture of a pendulum of such a material at that early date is
certainly curious; its still perfect spring and elasticity showing
the scrupulous care with which it had been made.
...]
but as fuel was difficult to be had at that place, he determined, for
greater convenience, to remove to the neighbourhood of Sheffield,
which he did in 1740. He first settled at Handsworth, a few miles to
the south of that town, and there pursued his investigations in
secret. Unfortunately, no records have been preserved of the methods
which he adopted in overcoming the difficulties he had necessarily to
encounter. That they must have been great is certain, for the process
of manufacturing cast-steel of a first-rate quality even at this day
is of a most elaborate and delicate character, requiring to be
carefully watched in its various stages. He had not only to discover
the fuel and flux suitable for his purpose, but to build such a
furnace and make such a crucible as should sustain a heat more
intense than any then known in metallurgy. Ingot-moulds had not yet
been cast, nor were there hoops and wedges made that would hold them
together, nor, in short, were any of those materials at his disposal
which are now so familiar at every melting-furnace.

Huntsman's experiments extended over many years before the desired
result was achieved. Long after his death, the memorials of the
numerous failures through which he toilsomely worked his way to
success, were brought to light in the shape of many hundredweights of
steel, found buried in the earth in different places about his
manufactory. From the number of these wrecks of early experiments, it
is clear that he had worked continuously upon his grand idea of
purifying the raw steel then in use, by melting it with fluxes at an
intense heat in closed earthen crucibles. The buried masses were
found in various stages of failure, arising from imperfect melting,
breaking of crucibles, and bad fluxes; and had been hid away as so
much spoiled steel of which nothing could be made. At last his
perseverance was rewarded, and his invention perfected; and though a
hundred years have passed since Huntsman's discovery, the description
of fuel (coke) which he first applied for the purpose of melting the
steel, and the crucibles and furnaces which he used, are for the most
part similar to those in use at the present day. Although the making
of cast-steel is conducted with greater economy and dexterity, owing
to increased experience, it is questionable whether any maker has
since been able to surpass the quality of Huntsman's manufacture.

The process of making cast-steel, as invented by Benjamin Huntsman,
may be thus summarily described. The melting is conducted in clay
pots or crucibles manufactured for the purpose, capable of holding
about 34 lbs. each. Ten or twelve of such crucibles are placed in a
melting-furnace similar to that used by brass founders; and when the
furnace and pots are at a white heat, to which they are raised by a
coke fire, they are charged with bar steel reduced to a certain
degree of hardness, and broken into pieces of about a pound each.
When the pots are all thus charged with steel, lids are placed over
them, the furnace is filled with coke, and the cover put down. Under
the intense heat to which the metal is exposed, it undergoes an
apparent ebullition. When the furnace requires feeding, the workmen
take the opportunity of lifting the lid of each crucible and judging
how far the process has advanced. After about three hours' exposure
to the heat, the metal is ready for "teeming." The completion of the
melting process is known by the subsidence of all ebullition, and by
the clear surface of the melted metal, which is of a dazzling
brilliancy like the sun when looked at with the naked eye on a clear
day. The pots are then lifted out of their place, and the liquid
steel is poured into ingots of the shape and size required. The pots
are replaced, filled again, and the process is repeated; the red-hot
pots thus serving for three successive charges, after which they are
rejected as useless.

When Huntsman had perfected his invention, it would naturally occur
to him that the new metal might be employed for other purposes
besides clock-springs and pendulums. The business of clock-making was
then of a very limited character, and it could scarcely have been
worth his while to pursue so extensive and costly a series of
experiments merely to supply the requirements of that trade. It is
more probable that at an early stage of his investigations he
shrewdly foresaw the extensive uses to which cast-steel might be
applied in the manufacture of tools and cutlery of a superior kind;
and we accordingly find him early endeavouring to persuade the
manufacturers of Sheffield to employ it in the manufacture of knives
and razors. But the cutlers obstinately refused to work a material so
much harder than that which they had been accustomed to use; and for
a time he gave up all hopes of creating a demand in that quarter.
Foiled in his endeavours to sell his steel at home, Huntsman turned
his attention to foreign markets; and he soon found he could readily
sell abroad all that he could make. The merit of employing cast-steel
for general purposes belongs to the French, always so quick to
appreciate the advantages of any new discovery, and for a time the
whole of the cast-steel that Huntsman could manufacture was exported
to France. When he had fairly established his business with that
country, the Sheffield cutlers became alarmed at the reputation which
cast-steel was acquiring abroad; and when they heard of the
preference displayed by English as well as French consumers for the
cutlery manufactured of that metal, they readily apprehended the
serious consequences that must necessarily result to their own trade
if cast-steel came into general use. They then appointed a deputation
to wait upon Sir George Savile, one of the members for the county of
York, and requested him to use his influence with the government to
obtain an order to prohibit the exportation of cast-steel. But on
learning from the deputation that the Sheffield manufacturers
themselves would not make use of the new steel, he positively
declined to comply with their request. It was indeed fortunate for
the interests of the town that the object of the deputation was
defeated, for at that time Mr. Huntsman had very pressing and
favourable offers from some spirited manufacturers in Birmingham to
remove his furnaces to that place; and it is extremely probable that
had the business of cast-steel making become established there, one
of the most important and lucrative branches of its trade would have
been lost to the town of Sheffield.

The Sheffield makers were therefore under the necessity of using the
cast-steel, if they would retain their trade in cutlery against
France; and Huntsman's home trade rapidly increased. And then began
the efforts of the Sheffield men to wrest his secret from him. For
Huntsman had not taken out any patent for his invention, his only
protection being in preserving his process as much a mystery as
possible. All the workmen employed by him were pledged to inviolable
secrecy; strangers were carefully excluded from the works; and the
whole of the steel made was melted during the night. There were many
speculations abroad as to Huntsman's process. It was generally
believed that his secret consisted in the flux which he employed to
make the metal melt more readily; and it leaked out amongst the
workmen that he used broken bottles for the purpose. Some of the
manufacturers, who by prying and bribing got an inkling of the
process, followed Huntsman implicitly in this respect; and they would
not allow their own workmen to flux the pots lest they also should
obtain possession of the secret. But it turned out eventually that no
such flux was necessary, and the practice has long since been
discontinued. A Frenchman named Jars, frequently quoted by Le Play in
his account of the manufacture of steel in Yorkshire,*
[footnote...
Annales des Mines, vols. iii. and ix., 4th Series.
...]
paid a visit to Sheffield towards the end of last century, and
described the process so far as he was permitted to examine it.
According to his statement all kinds of fragments of broken steel
were used; but this is corrected by Le Play, who states that only the
best bar steel manufactured of Dannemora iron was employed. Jars adds
that "the steel is put into the crucible with A FLUX, the composition
of which is kept secret;" and he states that the time then occupied
in the conversion was five hours.

It is said that the person who first succeeded in copying Huntsman's
process was an ironfounder named Walker, who carried on his business
at Greenside near Sheffield, and it was certainly there that the
making of cast-steel was next begun. Walker adopted the "ruse" of
disguising himself as a tramp, and, feigning great distress and
abject poverty, he appeared shivering at the door of Huntsman's
foundry late one night when the workmen were about to begin their
labours at steel-casting, and asked for admission to warm himself by
the furnace fire. The workmen's hearts were moved, and they permitted
him to enter. We have the above facts from the descendants of the
Huntsman family; but we add the traditional story preserved in the
neighbourhood, as given in a well-known book on metallurgy : --

"One cold winter's night, while the snow was falling in heavy flakes,
and the manufactory threw its red glared light over the
neighbourhood, a person of the most abject appearance presented
himself at the entrance, praying for permission to share the warmth
and shelter which it afforded. The humane workmen found the appeal
irresistible, and the apparent beggar was permitted to take up his
quarters in a warm corner of the building. A careful scrutiny would
have discovered little real sleep in the drowsiness which seemed to
overtake the stranger; for he eagerly watched every movement of the
workmen while they went through the operations of the newly
discovered process. He observed, first of all, that bars of blistered
steel were broken into small pieces, two or three inches in length,
and placed in crucibles of fire clay. When nearly full, a little
green glass broken into small fragments was spread over the top, and
the whole covered over with a closely-fitting cover. The crucibles
were then placed in a furnace previously prepared for them, and after
a lapse of from three to four hours, during which the crucibles were
examined from time to time to see that the metal was thoroughly
melted and incorporated, the workmen proceeded to lift the crucible
from its place on the furnace by means of tongs, and its molten
contents, blazing, sparkling, and spurting, were poured into a mould
of cast-iron previously prepared: here it was suffered to cool, while
the crucibles were again filled, and the process repeated. When cool,
the mould was unscrewed, and a bar of cast-steel presented itself,
which only required the aid of the hammerman to form a finished bar
of cast-steel. How the unauthorized spectator of these operations
effected his escape without detection tradition does not say; but it
tells us that, before many months had passed, the Huntsman
manufactory was not the only one where cast-steel was produced."*
[footnote...
The Useful Metals and their Alloys (p. 348), an excellent little
work, in which the process of cast-steel making will be found fully
described.
...]

However the facts may be, the discovery of the elder Huntsman proved
of the greatest advantage to Sheffield; for there is scarcely a
civilized country where Sheffield steel is not largely used, either
in its most highly finished forms of cutlery, or as the raw material
for some home manufacture. In the mean time the demand for Huntsman's
steel steadily increased, and in l770, for the purpose of obtaining
greater scope for his operations, he removed to a large new
manufactory which he erected at Attercliffe, a little to the north of
Sheffield, more conveniently situated for business purposes. There he
continued to flourish for six years more, making steel and practising
benevolence; for, like the Darbys and Reynoldses of Coalbrookdale, he
was a worthy and highly respected member of the Society of Friends.
He was well versed in the science of his day, and skilled in
chemistry, which doubtless proved of great advantage to him in
pursuing his experiments in metallurgy.*
[footnote...
We are informed that a mirror is still preserved at Attercliffe, made
by Huntsman in the days of his early experiments.
...]
That he was possessed of great perseverance will be obvious from the
difficulties he encountered and overcame in perfecting his valuable
invention. He was, however, like many persons of strong original
character, eccentric in his habits and reserved in his manner. The
Royal Society wished to enrol him as a member in acknowledgment of
the high merit of his discovery of cast-steel, as well as because of
his skill in practical chemistry; but as this would have drawn him in
some measure from his seclusion, and was also, as he imagined,
opposed to the principles of the Society to which he belonged, he
declined the honour. Mr. Huntsman died in 1776, in his seventy-second
year, and was buried in the churchyard at Attercliffe, where a
gravestone with an inscription marks his resting-place.

His son continued to carry on the business, and largely extended its
operations. The Huntsman mark became known throughout the civilised
world. Le Play the French Professor of Metallurgy, in his Memoire of
1846, still speaks of the cast-steel bearing the mark of "Huntsman
and Marshall" as the best that is made, and he adds, "the buyer of
this article, who pays a higher price for it than for other sorts, is
not acting merely in the blind spirit of routine, but pays a logical
and well-deserved homage to all the material and moral qualities of
which the true Huntsman mark has been the guarantee for a century."*
[footnote...
Annales des Mines, vol. ix., 4th Series, 266.
...]

Many other large firms now compete for their share of the trade; and
the extent to which it has grown, the number of furnaces constantly
at work, and the quantity of steel cast into ingots, to be tilted or
rolled for the various purposes to which it is applied, have rendered
Sheffield the greatest laboratory in the world of this valuable
material. Of the total quantity of cast-steel manufactured in
England, not less than five-sixths are produced there; and the
facilities for experiment and adaptation on the spot have enabled the
Sheffield steel-makers to keep the lead in the manufacture, and
surpass all others in the perfection to which they have carried this
important branch of our national industry. It is indeed a remarkable
fact that this very town, which was formerly indebted to Styria for
the steel used in its manufactures, now exports a material of its own
conversion to the Austrian forges and other places on the Continent
from which it was before accustomed to draw its own supplies.

Among the improved processes invented of late years for the
manufacture of steel are those of Heath, Mushet, and Bessemer. The
last promises to effect before long an entire revolution in the iron
and steel trade. By it the crude metal is converted by one simple
process, directly as it comes from the blast-furnace. This is
effected by driving through it, while still in a molten state,
several streams of atmospheric air, on which the carbon of the crude
iron unites with the oxygen of the atmosphere, the temperature is
greatly raised, and a violent ebullition takes place, during which,
if the process be continued, that part of the carbon which appears to
be mechanically mixed and diffused through the crude iron is entirely
consumed. The metal becomes thoroughly cleansed, the slag is ejected
and removed, while the sulphur and other volatile matters are driven
off; the result being an ingot of malleable iron of the quality of
charcoal iron. An important. feature in the process is, that by
stopping it at a particular stage, immediately following the boil,
before the whole of the carbon has been abstracted by the oxygen, the
crude iron will be found to have passed into the condition of
cast-steel of ordinary quality. By continuing the process, the metal
losing its carbon, it passes from hard to soft steel, thence to
steely iron, and last of all to very soft iron; so that by
interrupting the process at any stage, or continuing it to the end,
almost any quality of iron and steel may be obtained. One of the most
valuable forms of the metal is described by Mr. Bessemer as
"semi-steel," being in hardness about midway between ordinary
cast-steel and soft malleable iron. The Bessemer processes are now in
full operation in England as well as abroad, both for converting
crude into malleable iron, and for producing steel; and the results
are expected to prove of the greatest practical utility in all cases
where iron and steel are extensively employed.

Yet, like every other invention, this of Mr. Bessemer had long been
dreamt of, if not really made. We are informed in Warner's Tour
through the Northern. Counties of England, published at Bath in l80L,
that a Mr. Reed of Whitehaven had succeeded at that early period in
making steel direct from the ore; and Mr. Mushet clearly alludes to
the process in his "Papers on Iron and Steel." Nevertheless, Mr.
Bessemer is entitled to the merit of working out the idea, and
bringing the process to perfection, by his great skill and
indomitable perseverance. In the Heath process, carburet of manganese
is employed to aid the conversion of iron into steel, while it also
confers on the metal the property of welding and working more soundly
under the hammer--a fact discovered by Mr. Heath while residing in
India. Mr. Mushet's process is of a similar character. Another
inventor, Major Uchatius, an Austrian engineer, granulates crude iron
while in a molten state by pouring it into water, and then subjecting
it to the process of conversion. Some of the manufacturers still
affect secrecy in their operations; but as one of the Sanderson
firm--famous for the excellence of their steel--remarked to a visitor
when showing him over their works, "the great secret is to have the
courage to be honest--a spirit to purchase the best material, and the
means and disposition to do justice to it in the manufacture."

It remains to be added, that much of the success of the Sheffield
manufactures is attributable to the practical skill of the workmen,
who have profited by the accumulated experience treasured up by their
class through many generations. The results of the innumerable
experiments conducted before their eyes have issued in a most
valuable though unwritten code of practice, the details of which are
known only to themselves. They are also a most laborious class; and
Le Play says of them, when alluding to the fact of a single workman
superintending the operations of three steel-casting furnaces--"I
have found nowhere in Europe, except in England, workmen able for an
entire day, without any interval of rest, to undergo such toilsome
and exhausting labour as that performed by these Sheffield workmen."

CHAPTER VII.

THE INVENTIONS OF HENRY CORT.

"I have always found it in mine own experience an easier matter to
devise manie and profitable inventions, than to dispose of one of
them to the good of the author himself."--Sir Hugh Platt, 1589.

Henry Cort was born in 1740 at Lancaster, where his father carried on
the trade of a builder and brickmaker. Nothing is known as to Henry's
early history; but he seems to have raised himself by his own efforts
to a respectable position. In 1765 we find him established in Surrey
Street, Strand, carrying on the business of a navy agent, in which he
is said to have realized considerable profits. It was while
conducting this business that he became aware of the inferiority of
British iron compared with that obtained from foreign countries. The
English wrought iron was considered so bad that it was prohibited
from all government supplies, while the cast iron was considered of
too brittle a nature to be suited for general use.*
[footnote...
Life of Brunel, p. 60.
...]
Indeed the Russian government became so
persuaded that the English nation could not carry on their
manufactures without Russian iron, that in 1770 they ordered the
price to be raised from 70 and 80 copecs per pood to 200 and 220
copecs per pood.*
[footnote...
SCRIVENOR, History of the Iron Trade, 169.
...]

Such being the case, Cort's attention became directed to the subject
in connection with the supply of iron to the Navy, and he entered on
a series of experiments with the object of improving the manufacture
of English iron. What the particular experiments were, and by what
steps he arrived at results of so much importance to the British iron
trade, no one can now tell. All that is known is, that about the year
1775 he relinquished his business as a navy agent, and took a lease
of certain premises at Fontley, near Fareham, at the north-western
corner of Portsmouth Harbour, where he erected a forge and an iron
mill. He was afterwards joined in partnership by Samuel Jellicoe (son
of Adam Jellicoe, then Deputy-Paymaster of Seamen's Wages), which
turned out, as will shortly appear, a most unfortunate connection for
Cort.

As in the case of other inventions, Cort took up the manufacture of
iron at the point to which his predecessors had brought it, carrying
it still further, and improving upon their processes. We may here
briefly recite the steps by which the manufacture of bar-iron by
means of pit-coal had up to this time been advanced. In 1747, Mr.
Ford succeeded at Coalbrookdale in smelting iron ore with pit-coal,
after which it was refined in the usual way by means of coke and
charcoal. In 1762, Dr. Roebuck (hereafter to be referred to) took out
a patent for melting the cast or pig iron in a hearth heated with
pit-coal by the blast of bellows, and then working the iron until it
was reduced to nature, or metallized, as it was termed; after which
it was exposed to the action of a hollow pit-coal fire urged by a
blast, until it was reduced to a loop and drawn out into bar-iron
under a common forge-hammer. Then the brothers Cranege, in 1766,
adopted the reverberatory or air furnace, in which they placed the
pig or cast iron, and without blast or the addition of anything more
than common raw pit-coal, converted the same into good malleable
iron, which being taken red hot from the reverberatory furnace to the
forge hammer, was drawn into bars according to the will of the
workman. Peter Onions of Merthyr Tydvil, in 1783, carried the
manufacture a stage further, as described by him in his patent of
that year. Having charged his furnace ("bound with iron work and well
annealed") with pig or fused cast iron from the smelting furnace, it
was closed up and the doors were luted with sand. The fire was urged
by a blast admitted underneath, apparently for the purpose of keeping
up the combustion of the fuel on the grate. Thus Onions' furnace was
of the nature of a puddling furnace, the fire of which was urged by a
blast. The fire was to be kept up until the metal became less fluid,
and "thickened into a kind of froth, which the workman, by opening
the door, must turn and stir with a bar or other iron instrument, and
then close the aperture again, applying the blast and fire until
there was a ferment in the metal." The patent further describes that
"as the workman stirs the metal," the scoriae will separate, "and the
particles of iron will adhere, which particles the workman must
collect or gather into a mass or lump." This mass or lump was then to
be raised to a white heat, and forged into malleable iron at the
forge-hammer.

Such was the stage of advance reached in the manufacture of bar-iron,
when Henry Cort published his patents in 1783 and 1784. In dispensing
with a blast, he had been anticipated by the Craneges, and in the
process of puddling by Onions; but he introduced so many improvements
of an original character, with which he combined the inventions of
his predecessors, as to establish quite a new era in the history of
the iron manufacture, and, in the course of a few years, to raise it
to the highest state of prosperity. As early as 1786, Lord Sheffield
recognised the great national importance of Cort's improvements in
the following words: - If Mr. Cort's very ingenious and meritorious
improvements in the art of making and working iron, the steam-engine
of Boulton and Watt, and Lord Dundonald's discovery of making coke at
half the present price, should all succeed, it is not asserting too
much to say that the result will be more advantageous to Great
Britain than the possession of the thirteen colonies (of America);
for it will give the complete command of the iron trade to this
country, with its vast advantages to navigation." It is scarcely
necessary here to point out how completely the anticipations of Lord
Sheffield have been fulfilled, sanguine though they might appear to
be when uttered some seventy-six years ago.*
[footnote...
Although the iron manufacture had gradually been increasing since the
middle of the century, it was as yet comparatively insignificant in
amount. Thus we find, from a statement by W. Wilkinson, dated Dec.
25, 1791, contained in the memorandum-book of Wm. Reynolds of
Coalbrookdale, that the produce in England and Scotland was then
estimated to be

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