feet by a grateful country. The country, as represented by the Inland Revenue Department, appropriated the invention, but practically ignored the inventor, although at that time it was known that stamps were transferred from old deeds to the new ones, and that they were forged in other ways to the probable extent of £100,000 per year. One morning young Bessemer (he was then not 20 years of age) called at Somerset House with a number of stamps he had forged himself, and also with a method of impressing stamps which was practically proof against forgery. The department jumped at his idea, obtained an act to recall all unused stamps, and started afresh on a new plan. Promises were made to the inventor and not fulfilled, and after dancing attendance for a long time, he withdrew from the affair, sick with hope deferred. Years passed and probably the matter was forgotten by everybody but himself. But the spirit which enabled him to fight his way through many other difficulties, kept alive the recollection, and eventually his chance came. The emperor of the French offered him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, on condition he could obtain permission from his government to wear it. This permission was refused, and in 1878, other circumstances recalling this refusal, Bessemer wrote a scathing letter to the Times describing all the circumstances of the service he had once rendered the state. He also set to work to find the people who had been connected with the manufacture of the dies for the stamps, and to collect other evidence. He then laid the matter before Lord Beaconsfield, and after a fitting delay, he was informed that Her Most Gracious Majesty had been pleased to signify her intention of conferring the honor of knighthood upon him. The ceremony took place on June 26, 1879, and thus after some forty-six years Sir Henry Bessemer received the reward of his juvenile efforts. It is not often that a harvest is gathered so late, probably because it is seldom a man is found with so much energy as to push his claim for the payment of debt nearly half a century old.

Probably his attempt to get justice out of the Board of Inland Revenue was the only occasion on which Bessemer was defeated. It was his characteristic to attack a problem again and again, putting his whole soul into it, and proceeding as if success was certain. Had it not been for this, most of his ventures must have been failures, for they were generally matters of extreme difculty in which he had no previous experience to guide him. He was not an iron manufacturer when he took up the great problem of his life, neither was he a trained chemist nor a metallurgist. Still earlier, when he commenced the manufacture of bronze powder, which laid the foundation of his fortune, he was entirely without knowledge of the subject, and could hardly be called an engineer. But he believed in himself and his powers, and devoted months of steady work to his experiments at a period when he could not afford to waste time. For it must be remembered that

Bessemer did not start the world with money. His father was in comfortable circumstances, but the son had to make an income for himself as soon as he came to man's estate. He tried many things while yet little more than a boy, and in each of them he attained a fair measure of success. Among these was a means of consolidating plumbago dust into a solid block for the manufacture of pencil leads, an invention which he sold for the totally inadequate sum of £200 and which is still in regular use. Next he undertook the casting of type, introducing the use of a force pump to drive the metal into a mould, as is done to this day. Messrs. Wilson, the well-known type-founders of Edinburg," bought the invention, but owing to the opposition of their workmen, they did not at the time carry it out. Next he went into the preparation of rollers for paper embossing and printing, and the production of alloys used in the preparation of "forcers" employed in embossing cards and leather. One branch of trade led him into another, while all the time he was on the watch for some outlet for his ability that should absorb his time and enable him to drop the many small manufactures which his versatile mind had originated. He was anxious to marry, and the responsibilities of matrimony could not be undertaken on the irregular sources of income which he had hitherto alone been able to procure. Still he persevered; he found a lucrative business in reproducing "Napoleon medals" in soft metal, and then he undertook to design a type-composing machine for a Mr. James Young. This was not his own venture, and although a considerable measure of success was attained, the machine did not oust the compositor.

In all these efforts we see the nature of the man. His confidence in himself was unbounded and was justified by the results that he achieved. It is noticeable that he never followed established lines. All his work was original, for he was an inventor to the tips of his fingers, and saw everything in a new light. Mere manufacturing had no interest for him. At this time he had not yet found the necessary outlet for his talents, and, one by one, he abandoned each enterprise, selling it for what he could get, and looking afield for something more worthy of his ability and promising more reward. His chance in life came by accident. The same incident had happened to hundreds of men before, but not one had had the intuition to see where it pointed, and to follow the path at all cost. He had occasion to purchase some "bronze powder," and was struck with the difference between its cost and the value of the raw material from which he assumed it was made. He paid 75. an ounce for it, while he judged the metal was not worth more than as many pence a pound. Here was an opening indeed for a mechanical inventor, for it was evident that the powder was prepared by slow and laborious hand process. Bessemer threw himself ardently into the matter, and produced a most ingenious device for reducing brass to grains of infinitesimal

Legion of Honor, but as permission to wear it was refused he had to be content with a large gold medal given him by Napoleon III. He was an honorary member of the Iron and Steel Board of Sweden, a freeman of the city of Hamburg, an honorary member and gold medalist of the Society of Arts and Manufactures of Berlin, and a Grand Cross of the Order of H. I. M. Francis Joseph of Austria. In contrast with this appreciation shown abroad, the action of our own government was particularly unedifying. They gave him a knighthood, when a seat in the House of Lords would have been an insufficient acknowledgment of the immense services he had rendered to the country and to humanity. It would seem as if statesmen were so immersed in party politics that their mental vision was distorted, and they are unable to discern the real sources of the prosperity of the country. Contributions to the election funds of the Liberal or Conservative parties are the surest means of gaining rank, while it is only by chance that those who, like Bessemer, found new industries and transform old ones, receive any recognition. Nevertheless, posterity will do them justice, and when 99 per cent of our politicians have been forgotten, and our titled nobodies have dropped out of recollection, the name of Bessemer will live in honor, and will shine in company with some half-dozen others who may be reckoned as the greatest benefactors of toiling humanity.

SIR HENRY BESSEMER.

(From The Engineer, London, Eng., March 18, 1898.)

Sir Henry Bessemer died on Tuesday evening at his residence at Denmark Hill. He was born on the 19th of January, 1813, and his long life has carried him into a generation for whom his achievements lack the interest which they possessed for the few great metallurgists, his contemporaries, yet alive. By those who who had had the good fortune to know him well his death will be keenly lamented. But his increasing years and infirmities. have long withdrawn him from public life, and for the younger metallurgists his name is not one with which to conjure.

Concerning the work which he accomplished, most of the details are familiar to those interested in the manufacture of steel, and nothing more is necessary or indeed possible-just now than a recapitulation of certain prominent facts and dates. the man himself was too remarkable in many respects, and his career too instructive and suggestive, to be passed over wholly in silence. It is satisfactory to know that for a considerable period he was at work on an autobiography. Bessemer wrote excellent English. He was extremely genial, and very happy and sanguine in his disposition, and he brought therefore excellent. qualifications to the work of authorship. The history of his life. and work will consequently no doubt possess exceptional inter

est. It will be necessary, however, to read between the lines to learn what manner of man he was. Bessemer was a very peculiar product of the nineteenth century. His total lack of systematic scientific training at once made him and marred him. It is a noteworthy fact that in all ages, consciously or unconsciously, those who teach deem it certain that what they have to impart represents finality. We very seldom meet in text-books or hear from lecturers suggestions that improvements in such and such directions are possible. If Bessemer had been carefully taught metallurgy, as it was understood in the days of such men as Truran, for example, he would never have invented the Bessemer process. On his own showing, indeed, he rather blundered upon it than invented it; and he was carefully assured by those who were supposed to know all about steel making that ever had been known or could be known, that the process was wholly impossible. No scientific training stood in the way and stopped Bessemer from trying experiments. In a single instance he was successful, and his success worked a greater change in the world's ways than it is easy to realize. But it is said that he spent no less than £10,000 on Patent-office fees; and of the hundreds of inventions which he made, very few attained to success. The reason must be sought in Bessemer's character. His ideas singularly lacked proportion. He failed to catalogue all the conditions affecting an invention, and determining its success or its failure; and to those whose existence he did recognize he was wholly incapable of attaching a just value. For example, he invented a steady cabin for ships, which was to prevent seasickness. This cabin or saloon was hung upon gimbals, and somewhere about the middle of it was mounted a fly-wheel weighing a couple of tons, which was to revolve at 1,000 or 1,500 revolutions per minute. The gyroscopic action of the revolving mass was to keep the saloon steady. That it would operate to prevent rolling under certain conditions was admitted. Bessemer had a model saloon fitted up in his grounds at Denmark Hill, on a rocking platform, to resemble the hull of a ship. Everything worked admirably. what the inventor failed to see was that no strict parallel could be drawn between the mechanical action of the rolling platform on land and the tumultuous universality of violent motion brought about by a moderate gale in the British Channel. The Bessemer steamship, on which he certainly spent £25,000, and probably twice that sum, was a pronounced failure. Again, he spent very considerable sums on the production of a steam gun. In order that the action of the steam on the bullet might be sufficiently prolonged, the barrel was coiled up in itself in a flat spiral, terminating in a few feet of straight pipe at a tangent to the rest. He took an almost childish delight in seeing this weapon flatten lead bullets against an iron plate; he quite failed to see that there was no use for such a thing, or that it was as absolute a toy as the steam gun of Jacob Perkins. No doubt if Bessemer had had