strength.

It does not appear that there was any novelty in the use of rollers by
Cort; for in his first specification he speaks of them as already well
known.[4] His great merit consisted in apprehending the value of
certain processes, as tested by his own and others' experience, and
combining and applying them in a more effective practical form than had
ever been done before. This power of apprehending the best methods,
and embodying the details in one complete whole, marks the practical,
clear-sighted man, and in certain cases amounts almost to a genius.
The merit of combining the inventions of others in such forms as that
they shall work to advantage, is as great in its way as that of the man
who strikes out the inventions themselves, but who, for want of tact
and experience, cannot carry them into practical effect.

It was the same with Cort's second patent, in which he described his
method of manufacturing bar-iron from the ore or from cast-iron. All
the several processes therein described had been practised before his
time; his merit chiefly consisting in the skilful manner in which he
combined and applied them. Thus, like the Craneges, he employed the
reverberatory or air furnace, without blast, and, like Onions, he
worked the fused metal with iron bars until it was brought into lumps,
when it was removed and forged into malleable iron. Cort, however,
carried the process further, and made it more effectual in all
respects. His method may be thus briefly described: the bottom of the
reverberatory furnace was hollow, so as to contain the fluid metal,
introduced into it by ladles; the heat being kept up by pit-coal or
other fuel. When the furnace was charged, the doors were closed until
the metal was sufficiently fused, when the workman opened an aperture
and worked or stirred about the metal with iron bars, when an
ebullition took place, during the continuance of which a bluish flame
was emitted, the carbon of the cast-iron was burned off, the metal
separated from the slag, and the iron, becoming reduced to nature, was
then collected into lumps or loops of sizes suited to their intended
uses, when they were drawn out of the doors of the furnace. They were
then stamped into plates, and piled or worked in an air furnace, heated
to a white or welding heat, shingled under a forge hammer, and passed
through the grooved rollers after the method described in the first
patent.

The processes described by Cort