860. _The iron manufacturer's guide_ (see footnote 104) also
refers to Kelly's process as having "just been tried with great
success" at Cambria.

[107] U.S. patents 16082, dated November 11, 1856, and 16083,
dated November 18, 1856. Bessemer's unsuccessful application
corresponded with his British patent 2321, of 1855 (see footnote
98).

It was not until 1861 that the question arose as to what happened to
Kelly's process. The occasion was the publication of an account of
Bessemer's paper at the Sheffield meeting of the (British) Society of
Mechanical Engineers on August 1, 1861. Accepting the evidence of "the
complete industrial success" of Bessemer's process, the _Scientific
American_[108] asked: "Would not some of our enterprising manufacturers
make a good operation by getting hold of the [Kelly] patent and
starting the manufacture of steel in this country?"

[108] _Scientific American_, 1861, new ser., vol. 5, pp. 148-153.

There was no response to this rhetorical question, but a further
inquiry as to whether the Kelly patent "could be bought"[109] elicited
a response from Kelly. Writing from Hammondsville, Ohio, Kelly[110]
said, in part:

I would say that the New England states and New York would be sold
at a fair rate.... I removed from Kentucky about three years ago,
and now reside at New Salisbury about three miles from
Hammondsville and sixty miles from Pittsburg. Accept my thanks for
your kind efforts in endeavoring to draw the attention of the
community to the advantages of my process.

[109] _Ibid._, p. 310.

[110] _Ibid._, p. 343.

This letter suggests that the Kelly process had been dormant since
1858. Whether or not as a result of the publication of this letter,
interest was resumed in Kelly's experiments. Captain Eber Brock Ward of
Detroit and Z. S. Durfee of New Bedford, Massachusetts, obtained
control of Kelly's patent. Durfee himself went to England in the fall
of 1861 in an attempt to secure a license from Bessemer. He returned to
the United States in the early fall of 1862, assuming that he was the
only "citizen of the United States" who had even seen the Bessemer
apparatus.[111]

[111] His claim is somewhat doubtful. Alexander Lyman Holley, who
was later to be responsible for the design of most of the first
Bessemer plants in the United States had been in England in 1859,
1860, and 1862