itself in a position to take
advantage of the European innovations and to start a period of growth
which, in the next 50 years, was to establish her as the world's
largest producer of steel.

This study reviews the controversy as to the origin of the process
which, for more than 35 years[1] provided the greater part of the steel
production of the United States. It concerns four men for whom priority
of invention in one or more aspects of the process has been claimed.

[1] From 1870 through 1907, "Bessemer" production accounted for
not less than 50 percent of United States steel production. From
1880 through 1895, 80 percent of all steel came from this source:
Historical Statistics of the United States 1789-1945 (Washington,
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1949), Tables
J. 165-170 at p. 187.

The process consists in forcing through molten cast iron, held in a
vessel called a converter, a stream of cold air under pressure. The
combination of the oxygen in the air with the silicon and carbon in the
metal raises the temperature of the latter in a spectacular way and
after "blowing" for a certain period, eliminates the carbon from the
metal. Since steel of various qualities demands the inclusion of from
0.15 to 1.70 percent of carbon, the blow has to be terminated before
the elimination of the whole carbon content; or if the carbon content
has been eliminated the appropriate percentage of carbon has to be put
back. This latter operation is carried out by adding a precise quantity
of manganiferous pig-iron (spiegeleisen) or ferromanganese, the
manganese serving to remove the oxygen, which has combined with the
iron during the blow.

The controversy which surrounded its development concerned two aspects
of the process: The use of the cold air blast to raise the temperature
of the molten metal, and the application of manganese to overcome the
problem of control of the carbon and oxygen content.

Bessemer, who began his experiments in the making of iron and steel in
1854, secured his first patent in Great Britain in January 1855, and
was persuaded to present information about his discovery to a meeting
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in August 1856. His title "The Manufacture
of Iron without Fuel" was given wide publicity in Great Britain and in
the United States. Among those who wrote to the papers to conte