in his two patents have been followed
by iron manufacturers, with various modifications, the results of
enlarged experience, down to the present time. After the lapse of
seventy-eight years, the language employed by Cort continues on the
whole a faithful description of the processes still practised: the
same methods of manufacturing bar from cast-iron, and of puddling,
piling, welding, and working the bar-iron through grooved rollers--all
are nearly identical with the methods of manufacture perfected by Henry
Cort in 1784. It may be mentioned that the development of the powers
of the steam-engine by Watt had an extraordinary effect upon the
production of iron. It created a largely increased demand for the
article for the purposes of the shafting and machinery which it was
employed to drive; while at the same time it cleared pits of water
which before were unworkable, and by being extensively applied to the
blowing of iron-furnaces and the working of the rolling-mills, it thus
gave a still further impetus to the manufacture of the metal. It would
be beside our purpose to enter into any statistical detail on the
subject; but it will be sufficient to state that the production of
iron, which in the early part of last century amounted to little more
than 12,000 tons, about the middle of the century to about 18,000 tons,
and at the time of Cort's inventions to about 90,000 tons, was found,
in 1820, to have increased to 400,000 tons; and now the total quantity
produced is upwards of four millions of tons of pig-iron every year, or
more than the entire production of all other European countries. There
is little reason to doubt that this extraordinary development of the
iron manufacture has been in a great measure due to the inventions of
Henry Cort. It is said that at the present time there are not fewer
than 8200 of Cort's furnaces in operation in Great Britain alone.[5]

Practical men have regarded Cort's improvement of the process of
rolling the iron as the most valuable of his inventions. A competent
authority has spoken of Cort's grooved rollers as of "high
philosophical interest, being scarcely less than the discovery of a new
mechanical Power, in reversing the action of the wedge, by the
application of force to four surfaces, so as to elongate a mass,
instead of applying force to a mass to divide the four surfaces." One
of the best authorities in the iron trade of last century, Mr.
Alexander Raby of Llanelly, li