nal_ (1858, vol. 28, p. 713) states that Martien had
not returned to England by October 1858.

[41] U.S. Patent Office, Decision of Commissioner of Patents,
dated May 26, 1859 in the matter of interference between the
application of James M. Quimby and others ... and of Joseph
Martien.

Since Renton had not patented his furnace in Great Britain, Martien's
use of his earlier knowledge of Renton's work and of his experience at
Bridgend in an attempt to upset Renton's priority is a curious and at
present unexplainable episode. Perhaps the early records of the Ebbw
Vale Iron Works, if they exist, will show whether this episode was in
some way linked to the firm's optimistic combination of the British
patents of Martien and Mushet.

That Ebbw Vale exerted every effort to find an alternative to
Bessemer's process is suggested, also, by their purchase in 1856 of the
British rights to the Uchatius process, invented by an Austrian Army
officer. The provisional patent specifications, dated October 1, 1855,
showed that Uchatius proposed to make cast steel directly from pig-iron
by melting granulated pig-iron in a crucible with pulverized "sparry
iron" (siderite) and fine clay or with gray oxide of manganese, which
would determine the amount of carbon combining with the iron. This
process, which was to prove commercially successful in Great Britain
and in Sweden but was not used in America,[42] appeared to Ebbw Vale to
be something from which, "we can have steel produced at the price
proposed by Mr. Bessemer, notwithstanding the failure of his process to
fulfil the promise."[43]

[42] J. S. Jeans, _op. cit._ (footnote 5), p. 108. The process is
not mentioned by James M. Swank, _History of the manufacture of
iron in all ages_, Philadelphia, American Iron and Steel
Association, 1892.

[43] _Mining Journal_, 1856, vol. 26, p. 707.

So far as is known only one direct attempt was made, presumably
instigated by Ebbw Vale, to enforce their patents against Bessemer, who
records[44] a visit by Mushet's agent some two or three months before a
renewal fee on Mushet's basic manganese patents became payable in 1859.
Bessemer "entirely repudiated" Mushet's patents and offered to perform
his operations in the presence of Mushet's lawyers and witnesses at the
Sheffield Works so that a prosecution for infringement "would be a very
simple matter." That, he says, was the last heard fr