The Beginnings of Cheap Steel

The Beginnings of Cheap Steel is by Philip W. Bishop, who is named as curator of arts and manufactures. The contents list names Steel before the 1850's, Bessemer and His Competitors, Robert Mushet and William Kelly's Air-Boiling Process, among others. The summary says that other inventors claimed a part in the invention of the Bessemer process of making steel. The discussion in the technical press is re-examined to throw light on the relations of these various claimants to the iron and steel industry of their time.

Joseph Gilbert Martien, of Newark, New Jersey, secured a provisional patent a few days before Bessemer obtained one of his series of patents for making cast steel. William Kelly, an ironmaster of Eddyville, Kentucky, opposed the granting of a United States patent to Bessemer and substantiated, to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of Patents, his claim to priority in the air boiling process. Robert Mushet of Coleford, Gloucestershire, is described as a metallurgist who intervened to claim that he had devised the means whereby Martien's and Bessemer's ideas could be made practical.