ABSTRACT
The most important event in the history of steel industry next to the discovery and application of the Bessemer process has been the application by the late Sir William Siemens of the regenerative furnace to the production of steel by the fusion of pig metal and scrap upon the open-hearth, or what is commonly known as the Siemens-Martin process, of which several modifications have since been adopted. This process is now usually spoken of as the open-hearth process. Perhaps the most distinguishing difference between the Bessemer and the open-hearth processes is that the former takes about fifteen minutes, and the latter takes six to eight hours to consummate. At an early stage the product of the Bessemer converter was more than suspected of brittleness and treachery. The two rival processes of steel manufacture have, almost naturally, and in accordance both with their own characteristics and aptitudes, and with the requirements of trade, settled down into the cultivation of distinct spheres.
