OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: OR, YEAR-BOOK OF FACTS IN SCIENCE AND ART FOR 1869, EXHIBITING THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES AND IMPROVEMENTS IN MECHANICS, USEFUL ARTS, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY TOGETHER WITH NOTES ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE DURING THE YEAR 1868; A LIST EDITED BY SAMUEL KNEELAND, A.M., M.D., FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, SECRETARY OF AND INSTRUC- BOSTON : GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO. 1871. Mar. 2. the Publishers. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. ROCKWELL & ROLLINS, NOTES BY THE EDITOR, ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE FOR THE YEAR 1868. DURING the year 1868 the civilized world seems to have been in a state of extreme scientific tension, — discovery after discovery, and invention after invention, following each other so closely, that the chronicler of its progress is tempted to exclaim in the words of another, "If knowledge be power, then indeed is man getting powerful. To what is it all tending? What limit of knowledge can man attain?" The time was when the harvest of discovery was reaped only centuries after the seeds were planted; now a man may live to see both seedtime and harvest, and the poor inventor of to-day will be the millionnaire of to-morrow. "Wheatstone has lived to see the junction of two hemispheres by an invention at whose birth he was present." This is emphatically the age of steel. Steel rails, steel boilers, steel in machinery, steel in construction, are fast superseding iron for the same purposes. The manufacture of steel is undoubtedly to be the most important and extensive in the world; and America is, beyond all others, the country of good iron ore. We have an inexhaustible supply of the best quality of iron ore, and an apparently inexhaustible supply of fuel to work it with; and are of necessity interested in any improvements in the manufacture of steel. Among the noteworthy improvements in the manufacture of steel, to which the reader's attention is called in the present volume, are the processes of Bessemer, of Hargreaves and Heaton, of Whelpley and Storer, and of Ellershausen, the furnaces of Siemens and Wilson, and the use of pulverized fuel. In the Bessemer process, in which the metal is decarbonized by a blast of air passed through it, the spectroscope has been successfully em ployed to determine the exact moment of complete decarbonization, rendering the product more uniform in quality, and less dependent on the skill and attention of the workmen. In the second process above named, oxygen gas, disengaged from nitrate of soda, passes up through the molten metal, removing, it is claimed, not only the carbon, but the sulphur, silicium, phosphorus, and other impurities. It can render available very inferior qualities of iron ore, and there is an ample supply of the nitrate in various countries. In the third process mentioned (see p. 17), steel is made directly from the ores, even very impure ones, by the employment of the intense heat from pulverized fuel, with the powdered ores in connection with proper fluxes; occupying only 8 hours from the crude ore to the finished steel bar, instead of the several days of the usual processes, and at 50 per cent. less cost; making steel of any required quality, and combined with any desired alloy. Chrome iron is coming into extensive use, on account of its exceeding hardness; the ore is very abundant in Delaware and Pennsylvania. From the high temperature of the Siemens regenerative gas furnace, steel may be made on its open hearth by the mutual reaction of pig and wrought iron upon each other, in this way utilizing waste material unsuitable for the Bessemer process, and applicable in many localities deemed unfavorable to the production of steel. In the Ellershausen process, (see p. 122), two new metallurgical principles are carried out: namely, 1. That cast iron thoroughly intermingled with oxides will not melt; 2. That any impurities in the mixture thus effected are removed by reheating. The practical application of these consists in forming a conglomerate of the liquid cast iron, as it runs from the blast furnace, with a sufficient amount of oxide (crude ores pulverized), and subsequently heating this conglomerate to a welding heat. This process, which is considered by prominent iron masters as the most important yet discovered for lessening the cost and improving the quality of their manufactures, is fully described in the "Pittsburgh Gazette," for Jan. 26, 1869. In an address by George Robertson, President of the Scottish Society of Arts, in Nov., 1867, occur the following remarks on the effect of trade unions on the prosperity of the country, much of which may be applicable in the United States at the present time. "It appears to me that, in interfering so much with individual labor, these unions tend to undo a great deal of what the introduction of machinery has done to make England great and pros |