be obtained from the blast furnace, owing to the
highly oxidisable nature of that metal. And it is absolutely
necessary, in order to apply any useful alloy of iron, carbon and
manganese, in the manufacture of malleable iron and very soft steel
that the manganese should be largely in excess of the carbon
present.[80]

[80] _Ibid._, p. 208. There is an intriguing reference in this
editorial to an interference on behalf of Martien against a
Bessemer application for a U.S. patent. No dates are given and
the case has not been located in the record of U.S. Patent
Commissioner's decision.

Sufficient answer to Mushet was at any rate available in the fact that
many hundreds of tons of excellent "Bessemer metal" made without any
mixture of manganese or spiegeleisen in any form were in successful
use. And, moreover, spiegeleisen was not a discovery of Robert Mushet
or an exclusive product of Germany since it had been made for twenty
years at least from Tow Law (Durham) ores. If Bessemer had refused
Mushet a license (and this was an admitted fact), Bessemer's refusal
must have been made in self-defense:

Mr. Mushet having set up a number of claims for "improvements" upon
which claims, we have a right to suppose, he was preparing to take
toll from Mr. Bessemer, but which claims, the latter gentleman
discovered, in time, were worthless and accordingly declined any
negotiations with the individual making them.[81]

[81] _Ibid._, p. 254.

Mushet's claims were by this time rarely supported in the periodicals.
One interesting article in his favor came in 1864 from a source of
special interest to the American situation. Mushet's American
patent[82] had been bought by an American group interested in the Kelly
process at about this time,[83] and Bessemer's American rights had also
been sold to an American group that included Alexander Lyman
Holley,[84] who had long been associated with Zerah Colburn, another
American engineer. Colburn, who subsequently (1866) established the
London periodical _Engineering_ and is regarded as one of the founders
of engineering journalism, was from 1862 onward a frequent contributor
to other trade papers in London. Colburn's article of 1864[85] seems to
have been of some importance to Mushet, who, in the prospectus of the
Titanic Steel and Iron Company, Ltd., issued soon after, brazenly
asserted[86] that, "by the process of Mr