Part 19 (1/2)

Many long years of pleasant toil and exertion had done their work. A full momentum of prosperity had been given to my engineering business at Patricroft. My share in the financial results acc.u.mulated, with accelerated rapidity, to an amount far beyond my most sanguine hopes.

But finding, from long-continued and incessant mental efforts, that my nervous system was beginning to become shaken, especially in regard to an affection of the eyes, which in some respects damaged my sight, I thought the time had arrived for me to retire from commercial life.

Behold us, then, settled down at Hammerfield for life. We had plenty to do. My workshop was fully equipped. My hobbies were there, and I could work them to my heart's content. The walls of our various rooms were soon hung with pictures and other works of art, suggestive of many pleasant a.s.sociations of former days. Our library bookcase was crowded with old friends in the shape of books that had been read and re-read many times, until they had almost become part of ourselves. Old Lancas.h.i.+re friends made their way to us when ”up in town,” and expressed themselves delighted with our pleasant house and its beautiful surroundings.

I was only forty-eight years old, which may be considered the prime of life. But I had plenty of hobbies, perhaps the chief of which was astronomy. No sooner had I settled at Hammerfield than I had my telescopes brought out and mounted. The fine, clear skies with which we were favored furnished me with abundant opportunities for the use of my instruments. I began again my investigations on the sun and the moon, and made some original discoveries.

It is time to come to an end of my recollections. I have endeavored to give a brief _resume_ of my life and labors. I hope they may prove interesting as well as useful to others. Thanks to a good const.i.tution and a frame invigorated by work, I continue to lead, with my dear wife, a happy life.

XIII.

SIR HENRY BESSEMER.

THE AGE OF STEEL.

In intervals of the reading meetings so many of the children's afternoons with Uncle Fritz had been taken up with excursions to see machinery at work, that their next meeting at the Oliver House was, as it proved, the last for the winter.

They had gone to the pumping-station of the waterworks, and had seen the noiseless work of the great steam-engine there. They had gone to the aetna Mills at Watertown, and with the eye of the flesh had seen ”rovers”

and shuttles, and had been taught what ”s...o...b..rs” are. They had gone to Waltham, and had been taught something of the marvellous skill and delicacy expended on the manufacture of watches. They had gone to Rand and Avery's printing-house; and here they not only saw the processes of printing, but they saw steam power ”converted” into electricity. They had gone to the Locomotive Factory in Albany Street, and understood, much better than before, the inventions of George Stephenson, under the lead of the foremen in the shops, who had been very kind to them.

On their last meeting Uncle Fritz reminded them of something which one of these gentlemen had taught them about the qualities of steel and iron; and again of what they had seen of steel-springs at Waltham, when they saw how the balances of watches are arranged.

”Some bright person has called our time 'the Age of Steel,'” he said.

”You know Ovid's division was 'the Age of Gold, the Age of Silver, the Age of Bra.s.s, the Age of Iron.' And Ovid, who was in low spirits, thought the Age of Iron was the worst of all. Now, we begin to improve if we have entered the Age of Steel; for steel is, poetically speaking, glorified iron.

”Now the person to whom we owe it, that, in practice, we can build steel s.h.i.+ps to-day where we once built iron s.h.i.+ps, and lay steel rails to-day where even Stephenson was satisfied with iron, is Sir Henry Bessemer.

The Queen knighted him in recognition of the service he had rendered to the world by his improvements in the processes of turning iron into steel.

”It is impossible to estimate the addition which these improvements have made to the physical power of the world. I have not the most recent figures, but look at this,” said Uncle Fritz. And he gave to John to read from a Life of Sir Henry Bessemer:--

”Prior to this invention the entire production of cast steel in Great Britain was only about fifty thousand tons annually; and its average price, which ranged from 50 to 600, prohibited its use for many of the purposes to which it is now universally applied. After the invention, in the year 1877, the Bessemer steel produced in Great Britain alone amounted to 750,000 tons, or fifteen times the total of the former method of manufacture, while the selling price averaged only 10 per ton, and the coal consumed in producing it was less by 3,500,000 tons than would have been required in order to make the same quality of steel by the old, or Sheffield, process. The total reduction of cost is equal to about 30,000,000 sterling upon the quant.i.ty manufactured in England during the year.”

The same book goes on to show that in other nations 20,000,000 worth of Bessemer steel was produced in the same year.

”You see,” said Uncle Fritz, ”that here is an addition to the real wealth of the world such as makes any average fairy story about diamonds and rubies rather cheap and contemptible.

”You will like Sir Henry Bessemer, Hester, because he was happily trained and had good chances when he was a boy. And you will be amused to see how his bright wife was brighter than all the internal-revenue people. She was so bright that she lost him the appointment which had enabled him to marry her. But I think he says somewhere, with a good deal of pride, that but for that misfortune, and the injustice which accompanied it, he should have probably never made his great inventions.

It is one more piece of 'Partial evil,--universal good.'”

Then the children, with Uncle Fritz's aid, began picking out what they called the plums from the accounts he showed them of Sir Henry Bessemer's life.

BESSEMER'S FAMILY.

At the time of the great Revolution of 1792 there was employed in the French mint a man of great ingenuity, who had become a member of the French Academy of Sciences at the age of twenty-five. When Robespierre became Dictator of France, this scientific academician was transferred from the mint to the management of a public bakery, established for the purpose of supplying the populace of Paris with bread. In that position he soon became the object of revolutionary frenzy. One day a rumor was set afloat that the loaves supplied were light in weight; and, spreading like wildfire, it was made the occasion of a fearful tumult. The manager of the bakery was instantly seized and cast into prison. He succeeded in escaping, but it was at the peril of his life. Knowing the peril he was in, he lost no time in making his way to England; and he only succeeded in doing so by adroitly using some doc.u.ments he possessed bearing the signature of the Dictator. Landing in England a ruined man, his talents soon proved a pa.s.sport to success. He was appointed to a position in the English mint; and by the exercise of his ingenuity in other directions, he ere long acquired sufficient means to buy a small estate at Charlton, in Hertfords.h.i.+re. Such, in brief, were the circ.u.mstances that led to the settlement there of Anthony Bessemer, the father of Sir Henry Bessemer.

The latter may be said to have been born an inventor. His father was an inventor before him. After settling in England, his inventive ingenuity was displayed in making improvements in microscopes and in type-founding, and in the discovery of what his son has happily described as the true alchemy. The latter discovery, which he made about the beginning of the present century, was a source of considerable profit to him. It is generally known that when gold articles are made by the jewellers, there are various discolorations left on their surface by the process of manufacture; and in order to clear their surface, they are put into a solution of alum, salt, and saltpetre, which dissolves a large quant.i.ty of the copper that is used as an alloy. Anthony Bessemer discovered that this powerful acid not only dissolved the copper, but also dissolved a quant.i.ty of gold. He accordingly began to buy up this liquor; and as he was the only one who knew that it contained gold in solution, he had no difficulty in arranging for the purchase of it from all the manufacturers in London. From that liquor he succeeded in extracting gold in considerable quant.i.ties for many years. By some means that he kept secret (and the secret died with him), he deposited the particles of gold on the shavings of another metal, which, being afterwards melted, left the pure gold in small quant.i.ties. Thirty years afterward the Messrs. Elkington invented the electrotype process, which had the same effect. Anthony Bessemer was also eminently successful as a type-founder. When in France, before the Revolution of 1792, he cut a great many founts of type for Messrs. Firmin Didot, the celebrated French type-founders; and after his return to England he betook himself, as a diversion, to type-cutting for Mr. Henry Caslon, the celebrated English type-founder. He engraved an entire series, from pica to diamond,--a work which occupied several years. The success of these types led to the establishment of the firm of Bessemer and Catherwood as type-founders, carrying on business at Charlton. The great improvement which Anthony Bessemer introduced into the art of type-making was not so much in the engraving as in the composition of the metal. He discovered that an alloy of copper, tin, and bis.m.u.th was the most durable metal for type; and the working of this discovery was very successful in his hands. The secret of his success, however, he kept unknown to the trade.

He knew that if it were suspected that the superiority of his type consisted in the composition of the metal, a.n.a.lysis would reveal it, and others would then be able to compete with him. So, to divert attention from the real cause, he pointed out to the trade that the shape of his type was different, as the angle at which all the lines were produced from the surface was more obtuse in his type than in those of other manufacturers, at the same time contending that his type would wear longer. Other manufacturers ridiculed this account of Bessemer's type, but experience showed that it lasted nearly twice as long as other type. The business flourished for a dozen years under his direction, and during that period the real cause of its success was kept a secret. The process has since been re-discovered and patented. Such were some of the inventive efforts of the father of one of the greatest inventors of the present age.

HENRY BESSEMER.