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Mushet says of the early manufacture of iron at Merthyr Tydvil that "A modification of the charcoal refinery, a hollow fire, was worked with coke as a substitute for charcoal, but the bar-iron hammered from the produce was very inferior." The pit-coal cast-iron was nevertheless found of a superior quality for castings, being more fusible and more homogeneous than charcoal-iron.
Bessemer's great discovery ... and ... nothing that Mr. Bessemer may hereafter patent can deprive Mr. Robert Mushet of having been the first to remove the obstacles to the success of Mr. Bessemer's process. Ibid., p. 823. Bessemer still did not intervene in the newspaper discussion; nor had he had any serious supporters, at least in the early stage.
Their purchase of the Uchatius process and their final attempt to develop Martien's ideas through the Parry patents, which exposed them to a very real risk of a suit by Bessemer, are also indications of the politics in the case. Mushet seems to have been a willing enough victim of Ebbw Vale's scheming.
The royalties from this, with Bessemer's pension seem to have left Mushet in a reasonably comfortable condition until his death in 1891; but even the award of the Bessemer medal by the Iron and Steel Institute in 1876 failed to remove the conviction that he had been badly treated. One would like to know more about the politics which preceded the award of the trade's highest honor.
The two latter articles had a considerable influence on the opposition to the intended tax upon iron in 1807, and were frequently referred to in the discussions on the subject in Parliament. Mr. Mushet died in 1847. Dr. Roebuck's grandson, John Arthur Roebuck, by a singular coincidence, at present represents Sheffield in the British Parliament.
The only result which followed from your father taking out his patents was that they pointed out to me some rights which I already possessed, but of which I was not availing myself. Thus he did me some service and even for this unintentional service, I cannot live in a state of indebtedness.... With that he gave Miss Mushet money to cover a debt for which distraint was threatened.
According to Mushet, Martien had in fact "actually and publicly proved" his process in a receptacle and not in a gutter, so that his claim to priority could be maintained on the basis of the provisional specification. See footnote 22. Mining Journal, 1856, vol. 26, pp. 583, 631. This, like other Mushet allegations, was ignored by Bessemer, and probably with good reason.
He died at his private dwelling-house, No. 14, Highbury Place, Islingtonn, on the 30th August, 1789, after a fortnight's illness. This is confirmed by the report of a House of Commons Committee on the subject Mr. It is, however, stated by Mr. Mushet that the evidence was not fairly taken by the committee that they were overborne by the audacity of Mr.
Unfortunately, documentation of the case is almost wholly one sided, since his biggest publicizer was Mushet himself. An occasional editorial in the technical press and a few replies to Mushet's "lucubrations" are all the material which exists, apart from Bessemer's own story.
Who first applied fire to the ore, and made it plastic; who discovered fire itself, and its uses in metallurgy? No one can tell. Tradition says that the metal was discovered through the accidental burning of a wood in Greece. Mr. Mushet thinks it more probable that the discovery was made on the conversion of wood into charcoal for culinary or chamber purposes.
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