firmation of their doubts. I at
once decided that Mr. Kelly was correct in his Theory and then went
on to explain the received opinion of chemists a century ago on
this subject, and the present received opinion which was in direct
confirmation of the novel theory of Mr. Kelly. I also mentioned the
analogy of said Kelly's process in decarbonising iron to the
process of decarbonising blood in the human lungs.

The Doctor does not say, specifically, if he or any of the "company"
went to see the process in operation.

Kelly obtained affidavits from another seventeen witnesses. Ten of
these recorded their recollections of experiments conducted in 1847.
Five described the 1851 work. Two knew of or had seen both. One of the
last group was John B. Evans who became forge manager of Kelly's Union
Forge, a few miles from Suwanee. This evidence is of interest since a
man in his position should have been in a position to tell something
about the results of Kelly's operations in terms of usable metal.
Unfortunately, he limits himself to a comment on the metal which had
chilled around a tuyere which had been sent back to the Forge ("it was
partly malleable and partly refined pig-iron") and to an account of a
conversation with others who had worked some of Kelly's "good wrought
iron" made by the new process.

Only one of the witnesses (William Soden) makes a reference to the
phenomenon which is an accompaniment of the blowing of a converter: the
prolonged and violent emission of sparks and flames which startled
Bessemer in his first use of the process[99] and which still provides
an exciting, if not awe-inspiring, interlude in a visit to a steel
mill. Soden refers, without much excitement, to a boiling commotion,
but the results of Kelly's "air-boiling" were, evidently, not such as
to impress the rest of those who claimed to have seen his furnace in
operation. Only five of the total of eighteen of the witnesses say that
they witnessed the operations. Soden, incidentally, knew of seven
different "air-boiling" furnaces, some with four and some with eight
tuyeres, but he also neglected to report on the use of the metal.

[99] Bessemer, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 144.

As is well known, Kelly satisfied the Acting Commissioner that he had
"made this invention and showed it by drawings and experiment as early
as 1847," and he was awarded priority by the Acting Commissioner's
decision of April 13, 1857, and