that
air-purified cast-iron, when treated as set forth in my
specifications, would afford tough malleable iron ... I found,
however, that the remelting of the coke pig-iron, in contact with
coke fuel, hardened the iron too much, and it became evident that
an air-furnace was more proper for my purpose ... [the
difficulties] arose, not from any defect in my process, but were
owing to the small quantity of the metal operated upon and the
imperfect arrangement of the purifying vessel, which ought to be so
constituted that it may be turned upon an axis, the blast taken
off, the alloy added and the steel poured out through a spout ...
_Such a purifying vessel Mr. Bessemer has delineated in one of his
patents._

[31] _Ibid._, p. 770 (italics supplied).

Mushet also claimed to have designed his own "purifying and mixing"
furnace, of 20-ton capacity, which he had submitted to the Ebbw Vale
Iron Works "many months ago," without comment from them. There is an
intriguing reference to the painful subject of two patents not
proceeded with, and not discussed "in the avaricious hope that the
parties connected with the patents will make me honorable amends ...
these patents were suppressed without my knowledge or consent." Lest
his qualifications should be questioned, Mushet concludes:

I do not profess to be an iron chemist, but I have undoubtedly made
more experiments upon the subject of iron and steel than any man
now living and I am thereby enabled to say that all I know is but
little in comparison with what has yet to be discovered.

So began Mushet's claim to have solved Bessemer's problem, a claim
which was to fill the correspondence columns of the engineering
journals for the next ten years. Interpretation of this correspondence
is made difficult by our ignorance of the facts concerning the control
of Mushet's patents. These have to be pieced together from his
scattered references to the subject.

His experiments were conducted, at least nearly up to the close of the
year 1856, with the cooperation of Thomas Brown of the Ebbw Vale Iron
Works.[32] The price of this assistance was apparently half interest in
Mushet's patents, though for reasons which Mushet does not explain the
deed prepared to effect the transfer was never executed.[33] Mushet
continued, however, to regard the patents as "wholly my own, though at
the same time, I am bound in honor to tak