2, 290, 304.

By mid-1861, on the other hand, Bessemer was beginning to meet with
increasing respect from the trade. The Society of Engineers received a
dispassionate account of the achievement at the Sheffield Works from E.
Riley, whose firm (Dowlais) was among the earlier and disappointed
licensees of the process.[77] In August 1861, five years after the
ill-fated address before the British Association, the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, meeting in Sheffield, the center of the British
steel trade, heard papers from Bessemer and from John Brown, a famous
ironmaster. The latter described the making of Bessemer rails, the
product which above all was to absorb the Bessemer plants in America
after 1865. After the meeting, the engineers visited Bessemer's works;
and later it was reported,[78] "at Messrs. John Brown and Company's
works, the Bessemer process was repeated on a still larger scale and a
heavy armor plate rolled in the presence of some 250 visitors...."

[77] _The Engineer_, 1861, vol. 12, p. 10.

[78] _Ibid._, p. 63.

These proceedings invited Robert Mushet's intervention. Still under the
impression that his patent was still alive and, with Martien's, in the
"able hands" of the Ebbw Vale Iron Company, he condemned Bessemer for
his "lack of grace" to do him justice, and took the occasion to indict
the patent system which denied him and Martien the fruits of their
labors.[79]

[79] _Ibid._, pp. 78 and 177.

_The Engineer_ found Mushet's position untenable on the very grounds he
was pleading--that patents should not be issued to different men at
different times for the same thing; and showed that Bessemer in his
patents of January 4, 1856, and later, had clearly anticipated Mushet.
In a subsequent article, _The Engineer_ disposed of Martien's and
Mushet's claims with a certain finality. The Ebbw Vale Iron Works had
spent L7,000 trying to carry out the Martien process and it was
unlikely that they would have allowed Bessemer to infringe upon that
patent if they had any grounds for a case. Bessemer was not imitating
Mushet. The latter's "triple compound" required manganese pig-iron
(with a content of 2 to 5 percent of manganese) at L13 per ton while
Bessemer used an oxide of manganese (at a 50 percent concentration): at
L7 per ton.

The alloy of manganese and other materials now used in the
atmospheric process contains 50 percent of manganese a proportion
which could never