Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/341

Rh well as the arrangements for furnishing the charcoal for the different furnaces, we parted from Mr. Townsend."

On June 27, 1810, Mr. Clemens Rentgen, of Pikeland, Chester County, Pennsylvania, obtained a patent for "rolling iron round, for ships' bolts, and other uses," by the following method: "This machine consists of two large iron rollers, fixed in a strong frame. Each roller has concavities turned in them, meeting each other to form perfectly round bolts, of from half an inch to one and three quarter inches, or any other size, in diameter, through which rollers the iron is drawn from the mouth of the furnace with great dispatch, and the iron is then manufactured better and more even than it is possible to forge it out. The force applied to the end of these rollers is like that applied to mills."

Swank states that W. H. Wahl, Ph. D., Secretary of the Franklin Institute (who is a descendant of Mr. Rentgen), showed him the original patent, and informed him that Mr. Rentgen "rolled round iron as early as 1812 or 1813, some of which was for the Navy Department of the United States Government"; and he adds, "The fact that a patent was granted to him as late as June 27, 1810, for a machine to roll iron in round shapes, would seem to furnish conclusive proof that Cort's rolls had not then been introduced into the United States." About the beginning of the present century the steam-engine (two or three steam-engines had been imported and used for draining mines prior to the Revolutionary War) as a motive power for driving mills and factories began to attract attention. The period of its introduction is worthy of mention, as it has played a very important part in the development of the iron and steel industries of this country.

According to Swank, "the first rolling-mill erected in the United States to 'puddle' iron, and roll it into bars, was built by Col. Isaac Meason, in 1816 and 1817, at Plumsock, on Redstone Creek, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Thomas C. Lewis was the chief engineer in the erection of the mill, and George Lewis, his brother, was the turner and roller. They were Welshmen. ... The mill contained two 'puddling furnaces,' one 'heating furnace,' one 'refinery,' and one 'tilt-hammer.' Raw coal was used in the 'puddling' and 'heating furnaces,' and coke in the 'refinery.'"

In the early practice in this country the operation of "puddling," by which cast iron is converted into wrought iron, was usually preceded by a process called "refining," which was effected by means of an apparatus called a "refinery" a vertical section of one of the latest and best forms of which is shown in Fig. 21.