e, also claimed a
double-headed steel rail "made by me under another of my patent
processes," and sent to Derby to be laid down there to be "subjected to
intense vertricular triturations." Mushet's description of the
preparation of this ingot[61] shows that it was derived from "Bessemer
scrap" made by Ebbw Vale in the first unsuccessful attempts of that
firm to simulate the Bessemer process. This scrap Mushet had remelted
in pots with spiegel in the proportions of 44 pounds of scrap to 3 of
melted spiegel. It was his claim that the rail was rolled direct from
the ingot, something Bessemer himself could not do at that time.

[58] October 17, 1857, writing as "Sideros" (_Mining Journal_,
1857, vol. 27, p. 723).

[59] _Mining Journal_, 1857, vol. 27, p. 871, and 1858, vol. 28,
p. 12.

[60] _Ibid._ (1858), p. 34.

[61] Mushet, _op. cit._ (footnote 46), p. 12. The phrase quoted
is typical of Mushet's style.

This was the beginning of a series of claims by Mushet as to his
essential contributions to Bessemer's invention. The silence of the
latter during this period is impressive, for according to Bessemer's
own account[62] his British Association address was premature, and
although the sale of licenses actually provided him with working funds,
the impatience of those experimenting with the process and the flood of
competing "inventions" all embarrassed him at the most critical stage
of this development of the process: "It was, however, no use for me to
argue the matter in the press. All that I could say would be mere talk
and I felt that action was necessary, and not words."[63]

[62] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), pp. 161 ff. and 256 ff.

[63] _Ibid._, p. 171.

Action took the form of continued experiments and, by the end of 1857,
a decision to build his own plant at Sheffield.[64] An important
collateral development resulted from the visit to London in May 1857 of
G. F. Goransson of Gefle, Sweden. Using Bessemer equipment, Goransson
began trials of the process in November 1857 and by October 1858 was
able to report: "Our firm has now entirely given up the manufacture of
bar iron, and our blast furnaces and tilt mills are now wholly employed
in making steel by the Bessemer process, which may, therefore, be now
considered an accomplished commercial fact."[65]

[64] This enterprise, started in conjunction with Galloway's of
Manchester, one of the