lifetime of most of this audience. The time at our disposal forbids my describing these interesting furnaces; I can only refer you to Dr. Haanel's interesting reports and to the transactions of this society, particularly to our Volume XV. One surmise of my own I will, however, take time to mention: I have predicted that this electric-furnace pig iron, made without the admittance or use of air blast, will be far superior to ordinary pig iron for conversion into steel, because of the absence of oxygen or, particularly, of nitrogen. Time will test this prediction, too.

Electric steel is at present a topic of absorbing interest and great potentialities. It was primarily a competitor of the most expensive kind of steel-crucible steel. It was first made commercially in 1900, by Mr. F. A. Kjellin, of Sweden, by melting together in an electric furnace the same high-grade materials which are usually melted down in crucibles to form crucible steel. The product was made equal in quality to crucible steel, it was produced in lots of a ton or more at a melt, of very satisfactory uniformity, and with cheap water power to furnish electricity the cost was considerably below that of crucible steel.

The steel melting pot or crucible is a siliceous vessel, holding about 100 pounds of steel, lasting only a few heats, and lifted in and out of the furnace by manual labor. The consumption of fuel to get the required melting heat is wickedly wasteful; not over 5 per cent of the heat-developing power of the fuel used is efficiently utilized as heat in the melted steel, and the actual proportion is usually less than half that much. The cost of labor, crucibles, and fuel is excessive, and to this must be added the high cost of the pure material which must be used-practically the purest iron which can be made.

The electric furnace is changing all this, rapidly in continental Europe, slower in Sheffield, and still slower in America; but the change is spreading surely and inevitably. Real crucible steel will soon be a thing of the past, supplanted entirely by electric furnace steel of equal quality, made and sold much more cheaply.

The electric furnaces used are of almost all types. The induction furnace was developed commercially by Kjellin in Sweden, improved, enlarged, and greatly developed by his associates in Germany, combined with the Colby pattern in America, and still further modified by Hiorth in Norway. Thirty-six of these furnaces, the maximum capacity being one at Krupp's works at Essen, 81⁄2 tons at a charge, are now built or building. The American Electric Furnace Co. is organized to push their building and operation in America. The arc radiation furnace was developed by Maj. Stassano, an Italian artillery officer. It melts by heat radiated from powerful electric arcs. Several of these are in operation in Europe, and a

gentleman managing one of the large American steel companies, who has just returned from an inspection of the different electric steel furnaces operating in Europe, tells me that he considered the Stassano furnace as doing the best work, all around, of all the furnaces he saw in operation. I have seen this furnace operating smoothly and regularly in Turin, producing steel for castings which were being sold in competition with open-hearth and Bessemer steel castings in the open market. The single arc furnace is best illustrated by the Girod furnace, which is built like the body of an open-hearth furnace with the electric current entering the bath by carbon electrodes suspended above it, and springing arcs to it, while the current leaves the bath through metallic conductors passing through the saucer-shaped hearth below the level of the metallic surface. These furnaces work with great regularity, and a large number are operating in Europe, in capacities up to 12 tons each. I am informed that the Krupp Works at Essen has just contracted to put in five of these of the 12-ton size, which would confirm statements made to me by my European friends that this furnace is working the best of all the electric steel furnaces now operating in Europe. The double-arc furnace, of which the Heroult furnace is the most familiar type, works with two arcs in series, the current entering the bath and leaving it also through electrodes suspended above it. The general style is that of an open-hearth furnace with electrodes passing through the roof. The current used is roughly 100 kilowatts per ton of steel capacity, and the largest so far operated is 15 tons. A 3-ton furnace of this type was seen by you at the Firth-Stirling Steel Works at Demmler, yesterday, producing crucible-quality steel. The United States Steel Corporation has acquired licenses to operate the Heroult furnace, and has already two 15-ton furnaces in operation. Without doubt, the Heroult furnace is at the present time the most popular and successful electric steel furnace in the United States. I have not time to more than name the Keller, the Hiorth, the Harmet, the Frick-all of which are operating at this present moment in Europe.

There are other ways of making steel than the crucible method. Bessemer steel is the cheapest, and open-hearth steel is next best. These two varieties grade into each other in quality, but between open-hearth and crucible steel there is an enormous gap in price and in quality which is destined to be bridged over by intermediate qualities of electric steel as it becomes cheaper and is manufactured on a larger scale. This will soon become one of the large uses of the electric method, occupying a field peculiarly its own. It will enable steel manufacturers to supply steel better than the best open-hearth product at less than the price of crucible steel. I need not enlarge upon the advantages of this to a Pittsburgh audience.

There are also varieties of methods of manufacture of steel, aside from the melting together of highly pure materials as in the crucible method, which are equally available in most types of the electric furnace. The Bessemer converter takes liquid pig iron as it comes from the blast furnace and by rapid oxidation by air blast converts it into steel. Mr. Heroult has tried to combine the Bessemer converter with the electric furnace in one apparatus the idea being to first oxidize the metal by air blast and then to finish it while electric current supplied the necessary heat. I have no information that this combination furnace is anywhere in successful operation, but the equivalent of the same operation performed first in the Bessemer converter and then on the blown metal transferred into an electric furnace for finishing is already in regular commercial operation at the South Chicago Works of the United States Steel Corporation. I have had the privilege and pleasure, thanks to Mr. Heroult, of studying that operation, in company with Mr. Heroult and the editor of Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering. You may find a description of the process in the April number of that journal, so I will not repeat it here-except so far as to say that 15 tons of the product of the Bessemer blow, oxidized to the extent usual in the Bessemer converter, was kept melted less than two hours on the basic hearth of the electric furnace, treated with two different slags to refine it from phosphorus and sulphur, deoxidized or "dead-melted," and then poured into ingots of steel intended for axles. The steel produced was of better quality than the usual corresponding open-hearth metal, and was produced at slightly less total cost. This combination process bids fair to give a new lease of life to the declining Bessemer steel industry; its economic importance will appeal particularly to this audience.

The open-hearth steel furnace is at present the most important of the methods of manufacturing steel-"tonnage steel." It makes steel from pig iron and scrap of proper quality, or from pig iron and iron ore (mill scale), or from pig, scrap, and ore. It makes its best steel on silica hearths from high-grade material low in sulphur and phosphorus, and its cheapest steel on basic hearths from almost anything. The electric furnace can do any or all of these things, and, as a general proposition, produce better steel from given materials than the open-hearth furnace. Under what circumstances it will pay to use the electric furnace instead of the open-hearth furnace would take at least one lecture to discuss; we will not go deeply into it here. In Europe, countries which have very cheap water power, around $10 per horsepower year, and fuel costing $4 to $6 per ton, are finding the electric furnace the cheaper; with power costing $20 and coal $5, the two are about on equal terms; in Pittsburgh, with power at $30 and coal at $1, the open-hearth furnace is by far the cheaper for produc

ing such steel as it can produce. However, even here the combination of Bessemer and electric furnace is possibly cheaper than the all open-hearth process; the combination of open-hearth and electricfurnace processes is quite possible and practicable to produce cruciblequality steel on a large (tonnage) scale, and the combination of the open-hearth and electric furnace into one furnace is not only a possible combination, but is actually being "tried out." The latter idea is to take an open-hearth furnace and to place electrodes in the roof. The furnace is run as an ordinary open-hearth furnace, with the electrodes withdrawn, and at the close of the open-hearth heat gas and air are shut off entirely, the electrodes lowered into proximity to the bath, and the heat finished as an electric-furnace heat. The idea is sound and practicable and will result in the production of better steel than can be obtained from any open-hearth furnace at but a slight advance on the cost of the open-hearth steel, say $2 to $3 per ton.

As to the capacity for enlargement of electric steel furnaces, they started out to duplicate the crucible-steel process, producing 100 pounds of melted steel at a heat, and in eight years have risen to 15 tons' capacity. In Europe an electric calcium-carbide furnace of 18,000 kilowatts, capable of producing 200 tons of carbide daily, is in practical operation. A furnace of like power capacity could be built to make steel, and would be a 200-ton steel furnace or larger. We can therefore say with assurance that with a little more experience and experiment electrometallurgists will be able to furnish the steel maker with electric steel furnaces as large as are wantedup to 200 tons' capacity, if desired.

ANCIENT AND MODERN VIEWS REGARDING THE
CHEMICAL ELEMENTS.1

By Prof. SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY, K.C.B., Ph.D., LL.D., D.Sc., M.D., F.R.S.

It has been the usual custom of my predecessors in office either to give a summary of the progress of science within the past year or to attempt to present in intelligible language some aspect of the science in which they have themselves been engaged. I possess no qualifications for the former course, and I therefore ask you to bear with me while I devote some minutes to the consideration of ancient and modern views regarding the chemical elements. To many in my audience part of my story will prove an oft-told tale; but I must ask those to excuse me, in order that it may be in some wise complete. In the days of the early Greeks the word "element” was applied rather to denote a property of matter than one of its constituents. Thus, when a substance was said to contain fire, air, water, and earth (of which terms a childish game doubtless once played by all of us is a relic), it probably meant that they partook of the nature of the so-called elements. Inflammability showed the presence of concealed fire; the escape of "airs" when some substances are heated or when vegetable or animal matter is distilled no doubt led to the idea that these airs were imprisoned in the matters from which they escaped; hardness and permanence were ascribed to the presence of earth, while liquidity and fusibility were properties conveyed by the presence of concealed water. At a later date the Spagyrics added three hypostatical principles to the quadrilateral; these were salt, sulphur, and mercury. The first conveyed solubility, and fixedness in fire; the second, inflammability; and the third, the power which some substances manifest of producing a liquid, generally termed "phlegm,” on application of heat, or of themselves being converted into the liquid state by fusion.

It was Robert Boyle, in his Skeptical Chymist, who first controverted these ancient and medieval notions, and who gave to the word

1 Presidential address by Prof. Ramsay at the Portsmouth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1911. Reprinted by permission from author's separate, omitting introductory matter on work of the association.