is patent agent, Carpmael, of sharp
practice in connection with Martien's specification, an allegation
later supported by Martien's first patent agent, Avery.[57] The story
was that for the drafting of his final specification, Martien,
presumably with the advice of the Ebbw Vale Iron Works, consulted the
same Carpmael, as "the leading man" in the field. The latter advised
that the provisional specification restricted Martien to the
application of his method to iron flowing in a channel or gutter from
the blast furnace, and so prevented him from applying his aeration
principle in any kind of receptacle. In effect, Carpmael was acting
unprofessionally by giving Bessemer the prior claim to the use of a
receptacle. 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.

[56] See footnote 22.

[57] _Mining Journal_, 1856, vol. 26, pp. 583, 631.

This, like other Mushet allegations, was ignored by Bessemer, and
probably with good reason. At any rate, Martien's American patent is in
terms similar to those of the British specification; he or his advisers
seem to have attached no significance to the distinction between a
gutter and a receptacle.

Mushet's claim to have afforded Bessemer the means of making his own
process useful is still subject to debate. 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.

Mushet and at least five other men patented the use of manganese in
steel making in 1856; his own provisional specification was filed
within a month of the publication of Bessemer's British Association
address in August 1856. So it is strange that Robert Mushet did not
until more than a year later join in the controversy which followed
that address.[58] In one of his early letters he claims to have made of
"his" steel a bridge rail of 750 pounds weight; although his brother
insists that he saw the same rail in the Ebbw Vale offices in London in
the spring of 1857, when it was presented as a specimen of Uchatius
steel![59] Robert Mushet's indignant "advertisement" of January 5,
1858,[60] reiterating his parentage of this sampl