ABSTRACT
Before the steam engine came into use iron could not be produced or worked to anything like the extent attained even in the middle of the nineteenth century, for only by steam power could the blast be made effective and the rolling mill do its work. Not because metallurgy has been developed from chemistry, for the fact is rather the reverse; indeed, as the people have seen, the art of extracting iron from its ores was practised ages before chemistry as a science was dreamt of. Everyone knows how much iron is used in those great engineering structures that mark the present age, and of which a few examples will be described in succeeding articles. The idea of erecting a tower 1,000 feet high was not of itself new. From the Earl’s Court Wheel the view is both interesting and extensive, for on a clear day the prospect stretches as far as the Royal Castle of Windsor.
