Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/474

458 Stove is conveyed by Fig. 37, in which, the burning gases intensely heat the reticulated mass of fire-bricks B B, which in turn heat the air of the blast. All the fire-brick stoves are of such huge proportions that a modern furnace plant suggests a hot-blast apparatus with an attached furnace, rather than a furnace with hot-blast stoves.

Raw bituminous coal has been used to some considerable extent as a blast-furnace fuel since 1845, near the end of which year Mr. David Himrod (late of Youngstown, Ohio) used raw coal for a time with success in a furnace on Anderson's Run, Mercer County, Pa. This furnace had been "blown in" with charcoal, but the available quantity of this fuel being insufficient, some coke was mixed with it, and later raw coal was substituted for the coke; and we are told that "the furnace worked well and produced a fair quality of metal." The first furnace in America built with the intention of using raw bituminous coal as fuel was built in 1845 for Messrs. Wilkinson, Wilkes & Co., at Lowell, Mahoning County, Ohio. This furnace was successfully blown in with raw coal on the 8th of August, 1846, by John Crowther, an Englishman, who came to the United States in 1844, previous to which he had been the manager of seven furnaces in Staffordshire. Mr. Crowther adapted many furnaces in Ohio to the use of bituminous coal, and instructed his three sons, Joshua, Joseph J., and Benjamin, in their management. He died April 15, 1861, in England. The successful blowing in of the furnace at Lowell may be fairly