U.S. Patent 17628 was granted him as of
June 23, 1857. The _Scientific American_ sympathized with Bessemer's
realization that his American patent was "of no more value to him than
so much waste paper" but took the opportunity of chastising Kelly for
his negligence in not securing a patent at a much earlier date and
complained of a patent system which did not require an inventor to make
known his discovery promptly. The journal advocated a "certain fixed
time" after which such an inventor "should not be allowed to subvert a
patent granted to another who has taken proper measures to put the
public in possession of the invention."[100]

[100] _Scientific American_, 1857, vol. 12, p. 341.

Little authentic is known about Kelly's activities following the grant
of his patent. His biographer[101] does not document his statements,
many of which appear to be based on the recollections of members of
Kelly's family, and it is difficult to reconcile some of them with what
few facts are available. Kelly's own account of his invention,[102]
itself undated, asserts that he could "refine fifteen hundredweight of
metal in from five to ten minutes," his furnace "supplying a cheap
method of making run-out metal" so that "after trying it a few days we
entirely dispensed with the old and troublesome run-out fires."[103]
This statement suggests that Kelly's method was intended to do just
this; and it is not without interest to note that several of his
witnesses in the Interference proceedings, refer to bringing the metal
"to nature," a term often used in connection with the finery furnace.
If this is so, his assumption that he had anticipated Bessemer was
based on a misapprehension of what the latter was intending to do, that
is, to make steel.

[101] Boucher, _op. cit._ (footnote 97).

[102] U.S. Bureau of the Census, _Report on the manufacturers
of the United States at the tenth census (June 1, 1880) ...,
Manufacture of iron and steel_, report prepared by James M.
Swank, special agent, Washington, 1883, p. 124. Mr. Swank was
secretary of the American Iron and Steel Association. This
material was included in his _History of the manufacture of iron
in all ages_, Philadelphia, 1892, p. 397.

[103] _Ibid._, p. 125. The run-out fire (or "finery" fire) was a
charcoal fire "into which pig-iron, having been melted and
partially refined in one fire, was run and further re