. Mushet _especially when in
combination with the Bessemer process_, steel as good as Swedish steel"
would be produced at L6 per ton. Mushet may have intended to invite a
patent action, but evidently Bessemer could now more than ever afford
to ignore the "sage of Coleford."

[82] U.S. patent 17389, dated May 26, 1857. The patent was not
renewed when application was made in 1870, on the grounds that
the original patent had been made co-terminal with the British
patent. The latter had been abandoned "by Mushet's own fault" so
that no right existed to an American renewal (U.S. Patent Office,
Decision of Commissioner of Patents, dated September 19, 1870).

[83] See below, p. 45. The exact date of the purchase of Mushet's
patent is not known.

[84] _Engineering_, 1882, vol. 33, p. 114. The deal was completed
in 1863.

[85] _The Engineer_, 1864, vol. 18, pp. 405, 406.

[86] _Mining Journal_, 1864, vol. 34, pp. 77 and 94 (italics
supplied). It has not yet been possible to ascertain if this
company was successful. Mushet writes from this time on from
Cheltenham, where the company had its offices. Research continues
in this interesting aspect of his career.

The year 1865 saw Mushet less provocative and more appealing; as for
instance: "It was no fault of Mr. Bessemer's that my patent was lost,
but he ought to acknowledge his obligations to me in a manly,
straightforward manner and this would stamp him as a great man as well
as a great inventor."[87]

[87] _Mining Engineer_, 1865, vol. 35, p. 86.

But Bessemer evidently remained convinced of the security of his own
patent position. In an address before the British Association at
Birmingham in September 1865 he made his first public reply to
Mushet.[88] In his long series of patents Mushet had attempted to
secure--

almost every conceivable mode of introducing manganese into the
metal.... Manganese and its compounds were so claimed under all
imaginable conditions that if this series of patents could have
been sustained in law, it would have been utterly impossible for
[me] to have employed manganese with steel made by his process,
although it was considered by the trade to be impossible to make
steel from coke-made iron without it.

[88] _The Engineer_, 1865, vol. 20, p. 174.

The failure of those who controlled Mushet's batch of pa