The Transfer of Early Industrial Technologies to America

Darwin H. Stapleton

American Philosophical Society

Independence Square Philadelphia

1987

MEMOIRS OF THE

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Held at Philadelphia

For Promoting Useful Knowledge

Volume 177

Copyright 1987 by the American Philosophical Society

Manufactured in the U.S.A. by Allen Press, Lawrence, Kansas

Library of Congress Catalog Card. No. 86-72882

International Standard Book No. 0-87169-177-9

US ISSN 0065-9738

Cover: Water-Power Blowing Engine, Catasauqua, Pennsylvania

Ed. The following excerpt is comprised of Chapter 5 – a thorough and detailed look at the activities of David Thomas. The article is heavily annotated – citing much valuable source information. J. McV 9/2006

V: David Thomas and the Anthracite Iron Revolution

Perhaps one of the most critical transfers of technology to the United States in the nineteenth century was the transfer of the process for smelting iron ore with anthracite coal beginning in 1840. Before that transfer the United States had only charcoal-fueled furnaces with cold, low-pressure blasts and (with few exceptions) bellows powered by waterwheels. Ironmaking technology was little changed from that of the first American furnace at Saugus, Massachusetts, in the seventeenth century.¹ While these charcoal furnaces generally produced a high-quality product which was well suited for agricultural implements and some machinery,² the growing market of the 1820s and 1830s was for cheap iron construction materials (e.g., rails for railroads, pipes for waterworks, columns and fronts for buildings, and steam engines). The American iron industry did not immediately respond to this change in demand and large amounts of iron were imported from Britain.³

With the transfer of anthracite iron technology the technique and character of the American iron industry began to change, and in the four or five decades after 1840 the industry was revolutionized. By the end of the period coal-fueled furnaces produced the vast majority of American iron; charcoal furnaces were considerably different in technique; and the United States had become the world's leader in iron furnace design and operation.⁴ David Thomas, a Welsh ironmaster who came to the United States in 1839 to build the first successful anthracite iron furnace, played a significant role in transferring the anthracite iron technology.

Thomas acquired his skill and knowledge in the British iron industry, which was the most technically advanced iron industry of the world in the early nineteenth century. Its position was due to three innovations. In 1709 at Coalbrookdale, Abraham Darby made the first successful attempt to manufacture iron with coked coal and thereafter there was a slow growth of the use of coke in Britain. No longer were all ironmasters dependent on charcoal from the shrinking forests. A second innovation was the use of steam power to blow the blast, first achieved at Brosely in 1776 by John Wilkinson. Steam power was not affected by seasonal variations of water supply, as water power was, and often provided more power than available water power. The third critical innovation occurred in 1828 when James Neilson patented the use of a heated blast, which reduced the amount of furnace fuel which merely heated the furnace air to a temperature suitable for successful combustion. Neilson's invention dramatically increased the productivity of British iron furnaces.⁵

Of these three innovations, the one which was the most radical was the use of coke. Darby's trial of coke fuel at Coalbrookdale was successful partly because of the serendipitous use of low-sulfur coal (sulfur being a damaging impurity in iron), and partly because coke iron was appropriate for the casting process invented by Darby. But it is unlikely that Darby would have attempted coke-firing at all had he not had experience with coke in the copper-smelting and beer-brewing industries. Even with that experience there must have been a protracted learning period after the first success at Coalbrookdale, which may be the best explanation for the long period before significant numbers of British furnaces turned to coke ^.6

In any case, the British experience with coal-fueled furnaces was unlikely to be transferable to the United States until its coal was sufficiently exploited and available in quantity at cheap prices. That happened by about 1825 when the Lehigh and Schuylkill navigations tapped the anthracite coal resources of northeastern Pennsylvania^.7 The lack of cheap coal also tended to limit the application of another of the British innovations, the introduction of steam engines for blowing the blast, because fuel for the engines was a major expense. As late as the 1830s there were few furnaces in the United States with steam engines^.8 On the other hand, there was no resource obstacle to speedy experimentation with the third innovation, the hot blast, but when it was tried at a charcoal furnace in New Jersey in 1835, it was not a great success.⁹ It did not come into common use until after 1840.¹⁰

While ample supplies of cheap coal were a precondition for the transfer of British coal-fuel technology to America, experienced British iron workers actually transferred the technology. There was the added dimension, at first, that only anthracite coal, not bituminous, was abundantly available for American furnaces, and anthracite was impossible to coke in preparation for the furnace as bituminous coal was in Britain. Since American bituminous coal was not mined in quantity until well after the anthracite beds of northeastern Pennsylvania were opened, the early attempts to smelt with mineral fuel focused on anthracite.

W. Ross Yates has reviewed the American experiments and their indifferent results.¹¹ As early as 1826 the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (operators of the Lehigh Canal) built a furnace at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, in which anthracite was used as a fuel without success. The next year an ironmaster of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, published a notice of experiments with anthracite which discussed problems with blast pressure and furnace size.¹² Then, in 1831 after Neilson's hot blast had been invented, Frederick W. Geissenhainer performed some successful experiments in a small hot-blast furnace. On that basis he received a patent which covered the use of both the cold and hot blast for the manufacture of iron with anthracite. He attempted commercial production in 1836 when he built a furnace in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, but after two months his hot-blast machinery broke down and the work stopped. Geissenhainer died in 1838 before he could carry out further experiments.

Late in the 1830s there were two further trials. In 1838 the firm of Baughman, Guiteau and Co. built a small furnace near Mauch Chunk and produced iron with anthracite and a hot blast, but output was small and the company went bankrupt. 13 In the next year the Pioneer furnace at Pottsville was put into blast and remained in production for ninety days, but it had many difficulties with its hot-blast machinery and did not operate for some time afterward. It is interesting that the Pioneer furnace was superintended by a Welshman, Benjamin Perry, who had experience with ironmaking in his native country.¹⁴ Perry was involved with the blowing-in of two more anthracite furnaces in 1840, and there were two others in production before the middle of that year in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Yet none of these attempts to smelt iron with anthracite was a complete technical success. All shut down within a year because of low production, poor-quality iron, and problems with the blast machinery.¹⁵ The correct mixture of furnace size, blast pressure, temperature of the blast, and other elements had not been achieved. It was on the other side of the Atlantic that the proper method was first found.

There is in South Wales near Swansea a bed of coal with strong anthracitic characteristics; that is, it is coal with a very high carbon content, a low level of impurities (especially sulfur), and very little matter which can be passed off as a gas when heated. In the coking process by which coal was prepared for the furnace in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, coal was charred like charcoal until the gaseous matter had escaped.¹⁶ The resulting coke was porous, which allowed better air circulation and combustion in the furnace. The anthracite coal in South Wales, however, just like that in northeastern Pennsylvania, had such a small quantity of potential gas that it did not coke properly, and was considered useless as furnace fuel by the neighboring iron works.

The Yniscedwyn Ironworks were located in the middle of the anthracite field about thirteen miles from Swansea. Because of its location coke had to be brought to it from more than ten miles away.¹⁷ The works had been in existence producing good iron since sometime in the eighteenth century,¹⁸ and in 1823 were acquired by George Crane, who had retired from the hardware business in Birmingham.¹⁹ He retained the superintendent of the works, David Thomas, who had come to Yniscedwyn in 1817 after five years' experience in iron manufacture at the nearby Neath Abbey Ironworks^'20 one of the leading works in Britain ²¹

Although there must have been many other skilled iron workers at Yniscedwyn, David Thomas was the superintendent. He was the only son of a farmer of Tyllwyd in Glamorganshire, Wales, and had been given the best schooling available in his neighborhood. In 1812, at age seventeen, he began work for the Neath Abbey Ironworks near Swansea, and according to his biographer, "here young David spent five years, acquiring his technical training in the machine shops and foundry, while devoting his leisure hours to the study of the working of the blast furnaces.”²² In 1817 he was in Cornwall for several months erecting a pumping engine. In that same year, perhaps because of Neath Abbey's change of ownership, he moved to the Yniscedwyn Ironworks to become its general superintendent^.23

The combination of Crane and Thomas was a dynamic one, and they began in 1826 to experiment with anthracite coal ²⁴ Thomas later stated that a small experimental furnace was built in 1825 for the trial in the next year, and it was enlarged and charged with anthracite again in 1832. Neither attempt was a success.²⁵ Sometime later, probably in 1836, the idea occurred to Thomas and Crane that the Neilson hot blast which was coming into wide use in Scotland might solve their problem.²⁶ David Thomas went to Scotland to learn about the new technique, and returned with a license from Neilson to use it, as well as a mechanic to build a hot-blast oven.²⁷ There was some preliminary experimentation with the combination of anthracite and the hot blast, but it was early in February 1837 before Crane and Thomas successfully produced iron with anthracite at Yniscedwyn.²⁸ Something of the excitement of the moment was communicated by Crane in a letter to one of the proprietors of a neighboring ironworks in a letter dated 14 April 1837.²⁹

Have you heard that I have now successfully brought the Stone Coal [i.e., anthracite] question to a termination. The experiment cost me the labor of some months, and has been attended with a serious expense, but I am now making the Ton of Pigs with 31 to 33 Cwt. of Raw Stone Coal, the fuel 10 to 11 Cwt. for the Heat [sic] Air Stoves to be added, and we hope to do better than this. The Iron very much stronger than cold blast Coke Iron. I am told that Mr. Crawshay and yourselves are forming New Works in the Forest of Dean, if you were to come down to see what I have now been doing for the last 8 or 9 weeks with Stone Coal only, if it is not too late, I think that you would recommend the Dowlais Company to apply for a license to me, and look out for some eligible spot in some part of the Stone Coal District ....

Thereafter anthracite coal was the only fuel used at the Yniscedwyn furnaces until they ceased production in 1877.³⁰

Yniscedwyn was clearly successful in smelting iron with anthracite because of the application of the hot blast. Crane and Thomas were among the innovators in its use in their region, since a recent estimate is that "as late as 1839, only one-sixth of the Welsh furnaces were using the hot blast. 113 ' The blast at Yniscedwyn was heated outside the furnace, as Crane's letter indicates .32

Another element of the success was the size of the furnace at Yniscedwyn. It was forty-one feet high, ten and a half feet wide at the widest part (the "bosh"), and three feet six inches square at the bottom, or "hearth," where the furnace was tapped.³¹ This was substantially larger than contemporary furnaces in the United States, including those used in attempts to smelt iron with anthracite³⁴ and as a result it probably had a better draft to aid in combustion. These dimensions also permitted greater charges and larger production.

The most important contribution to success at Yniscedwyn, however, was the British technical experience with coal in blast furnaces which was manifest in David Thomas. John Harris has pointed out the deep familiarity with coal-fuel techniques which the British had gained since the sixteenth century.³⁵ Quite a number of industries, including glass manufacture and copper smelting, had converted to coal before the nineteenth century through continued trial and adaptation. Smelting iron with coke rather than charcoal was almost universal in Britain by the time of the Yniscedwyn experiments, while in the United States only a few abortive attempts had been made.³⁶ Even the hot blast, although a recent invention, had already been modified by improving the stoves for heating the blast and by providing water-cooled tuyeres, the nozzles which admitted the blast into the furnace.³⁷ When David Thomas went to Scotland to learn about the hot blast it was possible to bring back an "experienced mechanic" to construct the apparatus at Yniscedwyn.³⁸

There has been some disagreement as to whether George Crane or David Thomas deserves the credit for the success at Yniscedwyn. In later years Crane's eulogizer emphasized his role, while Thomas's son defended his.³⁹ It appears that Crane supported and actively prosecuted the experiments since he was the proprietor of the works, but there is no evidence that Crane had the technical skill to carry out or assess the experiments made. Clearly that was the contribution of David Thomas, whose training at Neath Abbey, and subsequent experience at Yniscedwyn made him an expert in the British technique of iron smelting with coke.⁴⁰ In the context of the transfer of technology, Thomas was incomparably better prepared to experiment with anthracite than any American of the time.

News of the smelting of iron with anthracite in South Wales did not take long to cross the Atlantic. It was transmitted by Solomon White Roberts, an American civil engineer who had been in Wales since sometime in 1836 as an inspector of iron manufactured for American railroads.⁴¹ Apparently he was in the employ of A. and G. Ralston of Philadelphia, who were major importers of British rails.⁴² In May 1837, about three months after the first successful anthracite blast, Roberts visited Yniscedwyn and then notified his uncle Josiah White of his observations.⁴³

White was a manager of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (LC and N), which operated the Lehigh Canal and in addition, owned and mined large tracts of anthracite coal lands in northeastern Pennsylvania. The LC and N had been actively encouraging experimentation with anthracite coal along the canal route. In 1835 the managers agreed to supply an unnamed local company with a thousand tons of coal "to be used exclusively in experiments in smelting iron ore within two years from the 1st of August 1835”⁴⁴ They also stipulated that if the company produced iron with anthracite for three months, it would also receive lower prices on the Navigation Company's coal and be able to ship certain amounts of coal or iron toll-free on the canal.⁴⁵ Shortly thereafter the LC and N offered similar benefits to any company attempting to smelt iron with anthracite, adding an offer of free water power for the experiment from the Lehigh Canal or one of the canal's dams. On proof of success, the LC and N would grant a deed to any water power between lock thirteen (near Palmerton) and dam eight (the last dam, near Easton), a prime industrial area. To fulfill the requirements for these bonuses the experimenter had to begin by 15 August 1835, produce iron for three months, and complete the experiment within two years.⁴⁶ In 1836 the managers of the LC and N repeated the offer, but the few companies which applied to take advantage of the terms never got underway ⁴⁷

The state of Pennsylvania also provided some encouragement to experimenters by passing a special act in 1836 allowing companies using coke or coal in the smelting of iron to incorporate themselves, an advantage not generally enjoyed by industrial concerns at this time.⁴⁸ Yet even with this legislation, and with the publication of the news of Crane's success, ⁴⁹ there were in the next months no successful attempts to make iron with anthracite.

The interest of the LC and N was still great, however, and in October of 1838 Nathan Trotter, one of the managers, reported that he had "been this afternoon engaged with the Board of Managers of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and that subject of Smelting Iron with Anthracite Coal was the subject of much conversation and is one in which the interest of the Company is much involved. "⁵⁰ What apparently stimulated this discussion was the impending journey to England of another of the managers, Erskine Hazard, to sell a bond issue of the company.⁵¹ He was delegated by an informal group of investors, most of whom were also managers of the LC and N, to visit Yniscedwyn and assess the potential of the new process in the United States .⁵²

At the same time the LC and N made a new offer to experimenters. It would grant "all the water power of any one of the dams between Allentown and Parryville" (within the area previously offered) to any company which capitalized itself at $50,000 or more and expended at least $15,000 on experiments within two years from 1 July 1839.⁵¹ According to one historian these terms were intended to eliminate competition with the new company by smaller businesses.⁵⁴ That seems likely, since at the board meeting in which Hazard was delegated to go to Europe the organizers of the informal company concluded an acceptance of the Lehigh Company's proposal.⁵⁵

Hazard made his trip in November of 1838. In the next month he was at Yniscedwyn, where he was soon convinced that the anthracite iron process could be transferred to Pennsylvania. In discussing the matter with him, George Crane recommended that Hazard employ David Thomas as ironmaster. Although Thomas was at first reluctant to emigrate, on 31 December 1838 he signed an agreement with Hazard to build a furnace on the Lehigh River for making iron with anthracite. Hazard and Thomas then ordered machinery for one blast furnace to be shipped to the United State.⁵⁶ David Thomas's son later recalled that "the blowing-machinery was constructed at the Soho Works, England, and the hot-blasts at Yniscedwyn from the same patterns as used there ... while the firebrick came from the Stourbridge works, England.”⁵⁷

Hazard returned to the United States in April and the corporation was formally organized as the "Lehigh Crane Iron Company" (LCIC) under the Pennsylvania act of 1836. Named in honor of George Crane (who had no investment in the company), the company was capitalized at $100,000. Its two thousand shares were subscribed by eight persons, including Josiah White and Erskine Hazard who each took four hundred shares. The LCIC was chartered by the state of Pennsylvania on 20 May 1839.⁵⁸ For its time it was a major enterprise and involved the risk of a large amount of capital, although due to the privilege of incorporation (rare at the time) the shareholders had liability limited to their investment.⁵⁹

David Thomas, his wife, and three sons arrived at New York in May and remained there for a month because he was ill with a fever. In July he went to the site of the Lehigh Canal that the directors of the company had chosen. (It later became the town of Catasauqua.) After laying out the works Thomas directed the construction of the furnace, the hot blasts and the water-powered blowing machinery. The furnace was probably larger than any other in America at the time,⁶⁰ being forty-five feet high, twelve feet at the bosh, and four and a half feet across the hearth.⁶¹ The hot blasts were, as at Yniscedwyn, separate from the furnace. A breast waterwheel twelve feet in diameter drove the blast machinery.⁶²

There were, however, some difficulties in constructing what was called a "works ... upon the Welsh plan" in the United States ^.63 Although the cylinders (five feet in diameter) for the blast engine had been ordered in Britain, they failed to arrive with the other equipment, because the hatchway of the ship to which they were consigned was not large enough to receive them .⁶⁴ The LCIC tried to order new ones, but "at this time there was not a boring-mill in the United States large enough to bore a cylinder of sixty inches diameter..”⁶⁵ Finally the new firm of Merrick and Towne of Philadelphia took the order and delivered satisfactory cylinders in May 1840.⁶⁶ Another problem encountered was locating a foundry in which to cast the large iron pieces needed for the waterwheel, but they were finally made nearby at Allentown.⁶⁷

Once all the equipment was in place at the furnace "some partial trials [were] made.”⁶⁸ These may have tested the ores available in the area and ascertained that all the equipment was working properly^.69 Nathan Trotter reported late in June that "we started our Anthracite Furnace and all went well enough until one of the tueyers [sic] gave out and occasioned some delay. There is however no doubt of its success."⁷⁰

Finally, the furnace was filled on 2 July, put in blast the next day, and produced nearly twenty tons of iron in its first week. Over the first seventeen weeks it averaged over forty-one tons per week, a large output compared with contemporary American furnaces, and it continued in blast until the Lehigh River flooded the works in January and damaged the blast machinery.⁷¹

By May, when Thomas put the furnace back in operation, the company was already making plans for a larger second furnace.⁷² having received enthusiastic reports from various places on the quality of the iron.⁷³ The work of David Thomas and the Lehigh Crane Iron Company was thus a success, and writers have since dated the beginning of the anthracite iron industry in the United States from the first blast at the LCIC works ⁷¹

Fig. 14. Furnace No. 1, built at Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, 1839-40.

Thomas's achievement in building and blowing-in the furnace at Catasauqua can be put in proper perspective if his experience is compared with two other attempts to blow-in mineral fuel furnaces: one prior to blowing-in at Catasauqua and one after.

In 1836 two Marylanders formed the Georges Creek Mining Company to exploit the bituminous coal and iron ore along a tributary of the Potomac River in western Maryland. Although they had no experience in the iron business they decided to build a coal-fueled iron furnace at a promising site known as Lonaconing. Construction began in 1837, and a Welsh ironmaster named David Hopkins was hired to superintend the furnace. Over the next several months other Welsh ironworkers joined Hopkins at Lonaconing.

The furnace they built was probably the most advanced in the United States at the time. It was fifty feet high and fourteen and a half feet at the boshes; it had a sixty-horsepower steam engine and two hot-blast ovens. Operations commenced on 16 May 1839 using raw (uncoked) bituminous coal (later coke was used).

The furnace produced modest quantities of adequate-quality pig iron. The furnace's performance varied because of difficulties with the blast and problems in acquiring suitable limestone flux. On 17 August the furnace was blown out, and was not successfully restored to operation for nearly seven years. The general causes of the furnace's failure were the economic recession beginning in late summer of 1839, and the high cost of transporting the iron from a remote area to seaboard markets. But the records of the company speak of closing in order to recommence operations on "a more economical scale" which probably means that experience had shown the promoters' plans to be technically and managerially unsound.⁷⁵

Shortly after David Thomas arrived at Catasauqua in July 1840, William Henry, an experienced American ironmaster, began building an anthracite furnace on the Lackawanna River at what is now the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The financial backing which he had was sparse, causing some problems, but even more annoying were the difficulties he had in obtaining the necessary firebrick, blast machinery, and hot-blast apparatus from American manufacturers. It was October of 1841 before Henry was able to attempt the first blast, and that was a disaster.⁷⁶ Apparently his blast machinery was faulty, and therefore "combustion in the center of the crucible was not sufficiently intense to liquefy completely the materials coming down from above. In the parlance of the trade, the slag was 'chilling before the blast'. . ⁷⁷. .

The furnace was cleared, and another attempt was made before the month was out, but it was no more successful. By that time it was apparent that the hot-blast equipment was inadequate. One of Henry's backers, George Scranton, installed a new oven and redesigned the furnace, and a new assistant was brought in who had experience with the anthracite furnaces in operation at Stanhope, New Jersey. Another blast was attempted with these changes in December, and although there was success for about two weeks, the furnace clogged again.⁷⁸

The Lackawanna works were finally put in order by a Welsh ironmaster, John F. Davis, who was employed at one of the anthracite furnaces in the Danville area. He was hired in January 1842, and directed the repair of the furnace so that on the eighteenth of that month he was able to put in successful operation. From that point the furnace worked properly, although Davis modified the blast apparatus further because he found it inadequate.⁷⁹

These episodes illustrate the intricate and obscure nature of smelting iron with coal, and the difficulty of transferring the technique from Britain to America. It is not surprising, then, that the proven skills of David Thomas were famous throughout the American iron industry for many years, and that the Lehigh Valley area was for thirty years the center of the coal-fueled iron industry.

But Thomas's fame came from more than the transfer of the anthracite iron process. He was also an innovator in furnace technique. His leadership in America was apparent immediately since the first furnace he built at Catasauqua was one of the largest and probably the best equipped in the United States. At the time it was built it had a higher blast pressure and a higher horsepower waterwheel, and blew more cubic feet of air per minute than any of the previous anthracite furnaces,⁸⁰ and probably more than any charcoal furnace .81 A contemporary of Thomas stated that "with the erection of this furnace commenced the era of higher and larger furnaces and better blast machinery, with consequent improvements in yield and quality of iron produced” ⁸²

Thomas remained an innovator in blast furnace size. For the Lehigh Crane Iron Company he built four more furnaces by 1850, all with a larger productive capacity, mostly due to larger size, than the first one ⁸⁵ In 1850 they were the most impressive group of furnaces in the United States.⁸⁴ These were exceeded only by those built in 1855 for his next employer, the Thomas Iron Company,⁸⁵ and although they were about the same size as the two previous ones, because of their innovative blast machinery and charging equipment they were regarded as "the model furnaces of America" in the early 1860s.⁸⁶

As Thomas's furnaces grew larger, he made their blast machinery more powerful and their blast pressures greater. Although the pressures which were originally used at the LCIC works were only slightly above average, "about 1852 he introduced engines at his furnaces . . . which increased the pressure to double that which was customary in England..”⁸⁷ His Thomas Iron Company works were reported in 1859 to be blown "at the extraordinary pressure of 8-1/2 lbs. to the square inch [above atmospheric pressure].”⁸⁸ Thomas's example was not generally followed at first, but higher blast pressures became typical of advanced American blast furnaces in later years.⁸⁹

Thomas was able to derive these powerful blasts not only from larger machinery-the blast cylinders of the first Thomas Iron Company furnaces were eighty-four inches in diameter-but also from different types of power.⁹⁰ Late in 1843 the directors of the LCIC began investigating the possibility of purchasing a water turbine for the works, and the following January made arrangements to have two made by Merrick

Fig. 16. Furnace No. 2, built at Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, in 1842.

and Towne.⁹¹ They were installed sometime that year, although a company report stated that they used more water than the breast wheels (a second breast wheel had been built

Fig. 17. Furnace No. 3, built at Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, in 1845-46.

to power the second furnace.⁹² to do the same amount of work .⁹³ Apparently the company was satisfied with them, however, because two years later all the water power was derived from them, and the waterwheels were used as auxiliaries..⁹⁴

The third furnace, built in 1845-46, was blown with steam power.⁹⁵ In laying plans for the furnace David Thomas and a majority of the directors of the LCIC decided to use a steam engine with steam raised by the heat of the furnace, but at least one of the directors, Josiah White, had been adamantly opposed to it.⁹⁶ His two objections were:

First-It is yet entirely a matter of experiment to obtain the power to drive the Engine from the Tunnel head of the Furnace, in an anthracite furnace, as no furnace using Anthracite Coal has been so driven. Second- . . . It would be manifestly imprudent to drive the furnace air by steam while we have abundance of water power on the canal free of cost . . . . ⁹⁷

White's first point suggests that David Thomas was an innovator in the operation of steam engines. Although they had been used for several years to blow the blast in some American furnaces,⁹⁸ the apparatus built for furnace number three was apparently the first at an anthracite furnace which heated the boilers with the furnace's escaping heat. Within a few years Frederick Overman, in his manual of ironmaking practice, The Manufacture of Iron, indicated that this technique was widely used.

At most anthracite furnaces [steam is generated] ... by putting the boilers on top of the furnace .... There is no reason whatever for employing water power in propelling blast machines at blast furnaces. There is abundance of waste heat for the generation of steam. The expense of erecting a steam engine will be found less, in most cases, than that incurred in the erection of a water wheel.⁹⁹

While the engine built for the third LCIC furnace had a steam cylinder twenty-six inches in diameter with a six-foot stroke,¹⁰⁰ furnaces four and five, built in 1850, were blown by two engines working together which had steam cylinders thirty-four inches in diameter with nine-foot strokes.¹⁰¹ These were the engines which in the early 1850s allowed Thomas to raise his blast pressure to the "extraordinary" level of eight and a half pounds per square inch. When the Thomas Iron Company furnaces were constructed they were powered by even larger engines. ¹⁰²

David Thomas was also associated with an early trial of a new method of refining iron by utilizing the gases escaping from the furnace stack. The LCIC was approached in September 1842 by C. E. Detmold, a German engineer living in America, with the proposition that the company utilize the gas process which had been developed and patented at Wasseralfingen in Germany by Wilhelm von Faber du Faur.¹⁰³ After some negotiation the company made an agreement with Detmold concerning the royalties to be paid to him as von Faber du Faur's agent, and then constructed the necessary apparatus.¹⁰⁴

It was later described as "very similar to ... a puddling furnace," and was fueled by gases taken from the stack of the second furnace.¹⁰⁵ Puddling furnaces, or reverberatory furnaces, were commonly heated by coal, and used to convert pig iron into wrought or "refined" iron. There would have been a great saving of the expense of manufacturing wrought iron if the waste gases of the furnace could have been used for refining. After a trial in the latter half of 1843, however, the experiment was abandoned.¹⁰⁶ One difficulty was that the working of the chamber which removed the gases seriously damaged the furnace lining, which subsequently had to be replaced.¹⁰⁷ Another problem was that "after a rain ... the wet material going into the furnace so reduced the temperature of the gases ... [that they were] insufficient to melt the iron.”¹⁰⁸

Although the Lehigh Crane Iron Company was not successful with using waste gas for refining iron, the idea continued to be widely discussed.¹⁰⁹ Detmold's device was used more successfully over the next twenty years to supply heat for hot-blast ovens and steam boilers.¹¹⁰

The LCIC's attempt to produce wrought iron should be looked at as one of the early attempts of the American iron industry at forward integration: that is, the completion at one site of two or more stages in the manufacture of a product. The LCIC for more than a year also seriously considered the construction of a rolling mill, probably to make rails, but the idea never had material results.¹¹¹ In contemplating the combination of making pig iron, refining it, and making it into rails, the LCIC was foreshadowing a development which even a decade later was barely underway in the United States.¹¹²

There was another field, however, in which the LCIC was technically far in advance of American practice. Walter Johnson described in 1841 the equipment which David Thomas had installed for handling the materials with which the furnace was charged.

The stock at this furnace is very expeditiously elevated from the level of the base of the stack, by means of water pumped up by the blast wheel, into a cistern near the trunnel [sic] head, and which is thence allowed to flow alternately into two boxes of suitable dimensions, suspended by a chain passing over a pulley in such a manner, that the descent of one box filled with water, and bearing on its cover the empty barrows for stock, elevates the other box now emptied of water, but carrying up the barrows, loaded with ore, coal and limestone.¹¹³

What subsequent changes in the furnace-charging equipment were made is not known, but in 1847 the company built a special system of railroad tracks and trestles for unloading coal from canal boats. With that addition, the directors of the company stated that, "we have now nearly every desired convenience at our works, and unless it shall hereafter be thought expedient to lay down rail road tracks to our prominent mines we know not what else can be necessary.”¹¹⁴ David Thomas kept up his leadership in the area of raw materials handling at the Thomas Iron Company's works where, it was reported in 1864, "the materials [were] conveyed to the top of the stacks by atmospheric pressure.”¹¹⁵ The use of mechanical power was unusual, since at that time men or animals hauled the charge to the top of almost all American furnaces.¹¹⁶

In these innovations at the Lehigh Crane Iron Company David Thomas was the man who contributed the bulk of the technological "know-how," even though the directors of the company were men with substantial knowledge of the iron industry. Josiah White and Erskine Hazard had been, in the second decade of the nineteenth century, partners in a wire works outside of Philadelphia.¹¹⁷ Nathan Trotter was a metal merchant who took a keen interest in developments in the American iron industry.¹¹⁸ Other directors included the three Earp brothers, Thomas, George and Robert, who were also merchants in the metal trade, and one of whom, Robert, had some connection with a rolling mill.¹¹⁹ These men sometimes gave instructions to David Thomas which expressed their technical judgment.¹²⁰

Yet it is clear from the directors' minutes that David Thomas's opinion was highly valued and that he frequently had much to say about the company's course on technical matters. Invariably he was consulted by the directors on the construction of new equipment. For example, in planning for the second furnace they:

Resolved That the President [Robert Earp] in conjunction with Erskine Hazard be requested to proceed forthwith in arranging and contracting for the construction of a Furnace of such dimensions as they and David Thomas may deem most advantageous to the interests of the company.¹²¹ Several years later when furnaces four and five were about to be built the directors requested that Thomas "attend a meeting of the Board at as early a day as convenient to submit to the Board his ideas and calculations as to the cost of said Furnaces." ¹²² Sometimes the board gave him complete responsibility for smaller items, as when they decided that "the replacing of the Water Wheel No. I be left to the discretion of David Thomas our Supt.” ¹²² Thomas occasionally had the controlling voice in the company's decisions. The most striking example of this was recorded in the directors' minutes in the spring of 1844, "The Board met today to take into consideration the expediency of continuing the present pipe Contract but adjourned without coming to any definite conclusion awaiting further instruction from David Thomas.”¹²⁴

David Thomas was well compensated by the Lehigh Crane Iron Company for his work and skills. In the original agreement, signed with Erskine Hazard in Wales, Thomas was given an annual salary in the neighborhood of $800.¹²⁵ It was occasionally increased over the following years so that in 1847 he was paid $2,500, a substantial sum for the time.¹²⁶ The size of his salary allowed him in 1854 to become an investor in the Thomas Iron Company, which was formed by local capitalists and named after him. Its works were at Hokendauqua, about a mile up the Lehigh from Catasauqua. His son Samuel was the superintendent, but Thomas exercised considerable influence in the management of the works, ¹²⁷ He was also a large stockholder in and for a time president of the Catasauqua Manufacturing Company, an enterprise which had rolling mills at Catasauqua and Ferndale, Pennsylvania.¹²⁸ He was active as an investor or stockholder of the Carbon Iron Company, the Catasauqua and Fogelsville Railroad, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and the National Bank of Catasauqua.¹²⁹ David Thomas was energetically managing his investments until near his death on 20 June 1882.

Perhaps the activity which Thomas most enjoyed in his last years was helping to found the American Institute of Mining Engineers (which included many in its membership from metallurgical trades), and his term as its first president in 1871. He was chosen because he was "the man whose name would do more than any other name to unite in support of our new enterprise the enthusiasm of science with the experience of practice.”¹³⁰

This honor demonstrated that David Thomas was recognized as a leader of his industry. To place his leadership in historical perspective, one must ask whether he was revered only as a symbol of the rapid rise of the iron industry or whether his practices and innovations were sources of major changes in American blast furnace technique? Although the evidence is indirect, it tends to suggest that Thomas's practices and innovations diffused to much of the American iron industry and affected it significantly.

The major method of diffusion must have been through other ironmasters visiting and inspecting the LCIC works at Catasauqua. At least in the first year, the company's managers actively promoted visits, probably because of their simultaneous interest in promoting consumption of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company's anthracite.¹³¹

Thomas himself may have played an active role in the diffusion. Although his story is not fully corroborated by other sources, David Thomas claimed in later years that he was responsible for much of the success of the Pioneer furnace in Pottsville. That furnace had a widely publicized ninety-days' blast with anthracite late in 1839 before its machinery proved inadequate.¹³² Thomas stated that the man who built Pioneer furnace had urged him to come to Pottsville in the summer of 1839 and that he "visited him in August, 1839, and furnished him with plans of in-wall, bosh, hearth, etc., and continued to visit him about once a month until the furnace was completed. . . . Then I was so engaged that I could not remain with him long enough to put it in blast.”¹³³ Thereafter David Thomas's services may have been more closely guarded by his company, although in at least one instance a company was given permission "to make enquiries of David Thomas respecting the construction of Anthracite furnaces.”¹³⁴ In some instances men infused with David Thomas's ideas and skills must have left the LCIC to go to other anthracite ironworks,¹³⁵ although there is firm evidence for only one of his sons doing so. Samuel Thomas was trained under his father and then in 1848 built a furnace for the New Jersey Iron Company at Boonton, New Jersey.¹³⁶ He became superintendent of the Thomas Iron Company in 1854 and president in 1864, and three years later organized the Lock Ridge Iron Company and built its first furnace.¹³⁷ Another of David Thomas's sons, John, became superintendent of the Lehigh Crane Iron Company after his father's retirement. ¹³⁸

The ultimate impact of David Thomas's skill may lie in the connection of the anthracite and bituminous iron industries, the latter of which became the dominant branch of American ironmaking after the Civil War."' A number of British ironworkers were important in the founding of the American bituminous industry, and direct transfer from Britain may have been the major source of technical skill in that branch. 140 The anthracite iron industry was, however, the first viable modern iron technology in the United States, and it pioneered in the use of many devices which were later adopted by the bituminous branch. The hot blast, more powerful blasts, steam engines, steam raised from the waste heat of the blast furnace, and waste gases used for steam boilers and hot-blast ovens were widespread in the anthracite iron businesses before the upsurge of the bituminous iron industry in the 1850s and 1860s.

Ed. In the following, it was actually Hopkin Thomas, Master Mechanic (Chief Engineer) at the Crane who trained the next generation. It was Giles Edwards, who worked with Hopkin in Tamaqua and at the Crane who was at the referenced event in Chatanooga. Capt. Bill Jones grew up in Catasauqua with James Thomas, Hopkin’s son, and both became highly successful after having apprenticed under Hopkin Thomas. J. McV – 9/2006.

Significant figures such as John Fritz moved from the anthracite iron industry to the bituminous iron industry, and several bituminous ironmasters trained under David Thomas.¹⁴¹ An ironmaster trained at the Lehigh Crane Iron Company blew in the first coke furnace at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a former employee of the Thomas Iron Company designed two of the early furnaces at Birmingham, Alabama.¹⁴² William R. Jones (Captain Bill Jones), who had his apprenticeship at the Lehigh Crane Iron Company, became famous as the innovative superintendent of the J. Edgar Thomson Works of the Carnegie Steel Company. It should be noted that the art of "hand-driving" a furnace to obtain maximum production was probably begun by David Thomas, but did not become standard until Jones promoted it at the Thomson Works in the 1870s and 1880s.¹⁴³

Even though the full extent of David Thomas's influence is difficult to assess, the story of his transfer of ironmaking technology from Wales to the United States is one of the clearest examples of the transfer of technology in the nineteenth century. His skills, rooted in the British heritage of a coal-using technology, allowed him to play a major role in solving the anthracite coal problem at Yniscedwyn. He was brought to the United States by men who were concerned with the same problem in America, and he had an active part in the direction of the Lehigh Crane Iron Company, the company that they formed. Because of his innovative genius that company and the Thomas Iron Company which he helped to found remained leaders in the American iron industry long after the original transfer of Thomas's process proved to be a success. Thomas's influence was subsequently felt in the bituminous iron industry, and in that form a part of his legacy remains with us today.

Key to footnote abbreviations

DM = Board of Directors' Minutes, Lehigh Crane Iron Company, Accession 1198, Hagley Museum and Library, Greenville, Wilmington, Delaware.

JFI =Journal of the Franklin Institute.

PMHB = Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

SM = Stockholders' Minutes, Lehigh Crane Iron Company, Accession 1198, Hagley Museum and Library, Greenville, Wilmington, Delaware.

1 See Arthur Cecil Bining, Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1939), especially 71- 83, for blast furnace technology before 1840.

2 Louis C. Hunter, "Influence of the Market upon Technique in the Iron Industry in Western Pennsylvania up to 1860," Journal of Business and Economic History I (February 1929): 28 1. Although Hunter's argument pertains to a particular region, his description of the market can be applied to the entire United States.

3 Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth-Century America: An Economic Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1964), 21-22. The estimates of Robert W. Fogel in Railroads and American Economic Growth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), especially 194, show a decreasing but continued dominance of the American rail market by British suppliers from 1840 until the latter 1850s.

4 Temin, Iron and Steel, 96- 98, 157- 63; Richard H. Schallenberg and David A. Ault, "Raw Materials Supply and Technological Change in the American Charcoal Iron Industry," Technology and Culture 18 (July 1977): 436-66.

5 Thomas Southcliffe Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1951), 29-38, 69-70; W. K. V. Gale, The British Iron and Steel Industry: A Technical History (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1967), chaps. 2, 4, 9.

6 Hyde has assembled figures showing that up to the 1740s the Coalbrookdale furnace and forge had higher production costs than comparable charcoal-fueled works. I would attribute that in some degree to the slow acquisition of knowledge about how to operate a coke-fueled furnace efficiently. Charles K. Hyde, Technological Change in the British Iron Industry, 1700-1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 32-41. On the non-verbal nature of coal-fuel technology and the learning of its mysteries, see the seminal article by John Harris, "Skills, Coal, and British Industry in the Eighteenth Century," History 61 (June 1976): 167-82.

7 Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States," Business History Review 46 (Summer 1972): 163. A readable account ofthe anthracite district before 1825 is provided by H. Benjamin Powell, Philadelphia's First Fuel Crisis: Jacob Cist and the Developing Market for Pennsylvania Anthracite (University Park:The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978).

8 Two usually reliable sources suggest that few steam engines were in use at blast furnaces before 1840. James M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages (Philadelphia: published by the author, 1884), 147, 160, 172, mentions three. The ‘steam engine census" of 1838 lists eight furnaces with steam engines: "Steam Engines," 25th Cong., 3rd Sess., HR doc. 21 (1838) [serial set no. 345], 133, 156, 183,191-192,410.

9 Swank, History, 326; W. David Lewis, "The Early History of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," PMHB 96 (October 1972): 427, 429.

10 Swank, History, 326.

11 W. Ross Yates, "Discovery of the Process for Making Anthracite Iron," PMHB 98 (April 1974): 206-23. The following discussion of anthracite blast furnaces before mid-1840 is based on pp. 208, 210-11, 217, 219-20 in Yate's article.

12 Joshua Malin, "Description of a Furnace for Smelting Iron, by means of Anthracite," The Franklin Journal and American Mechanics Magazine 4 (October 1827): 217-19.

13 The Easton (Penna.) Democrat & Argus of 17 September 1840 and succeeding weeks carried a notice for a sheriff’s sale which describes this furnace thoroughly.

14 In addition to Yates, "Discovery," 219, see The Miners' Journal (Pottsville, Penna.), 26 October 1839, and Ele Bowen, ed., The Coal Regions of Pennsylvania (Pottsville, Perma.: Carvalho and Co., 1848), 32.

15 Yates, "Discovery," 220-21; Swank, History, 273. For example, the Pioneer furnace, which received a prize for its ninety-days' production, had major problems with its hot blast: The Miners' Journal, 18 July 1840, 1 August 1840, 12 September 1840; S. W. Roberts, 26 April 1841, to Charles Roberts, Roberts Autograph Collection, Haverford College Library, Haverford, Penna.

16 Gale, British Iron and Steel Industry, 30-31; Ashton, Iron and Steel, 31; Temin, Iron and Steel, 59, 89, 201

17 George Crane, "On the Smelting of Iron with Anthracite Coal," JFI new ser. 21 (1838): 127-28; David Thomas, 23 February 1872, to F. H. Lynn, in Guide-Book of the Lehigh Valley Railroad (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1873), 154-56 (hereafter cited as Thomas to Lynn, Guide-Book).

18 W. E. Minchinton, "The Place of Brecknock in the Industrialization of South Wales," Brycheiniog 7 (1961): 23.

19 Solomon W. Roberts, "Obituary of the late George Crane, Esq., the founder of the Anthracite Iron Manufacture," JFI new ser. 11 (1846): 214. In Britain the "hardware business" included founding and machine manufacture.

20 Edward Roberts, "David Thomas: The Father of the Anthracite Iron Trade," Red Dragon (October 1883), issued separately (Westfield, Neath., [1883]), 4.

21 Lawrence Ince, "The Neath Abbey Ironworks," Industrial Archeology I I (Spring 1977):21-37.

22 Roberts, "David Thomas," 3-4. According to Ince, "Neath Abbey Ironworks," 25, 29, Neath Abbey was a notable producer of steam engines during Thomas's training there.

23 Ince, "Neath Abbey Ironworks," 25; Roberts, "David Thomas," 4. Roberts appears to be reliable as a biographer. He interviewed one of David Thomas's sisters, and Samuel Thomas, David Thomas's son, stated that "Mr. Roberts's narrative is authentic, by reason of his free access to the records of the Yniscedwyn anthracite iron-works during his long connection with them." Samuel Thomas, "Reminiscences of the Early Anthracite-iron Industry," Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 29 (1899): 902.

24 Crane, "On the Smelting of Iron," 127; Thomas to Lynn, Guide-Book.

25 Thomas to Lynn, Guide-Book.

26 Crane told the story of how the idea occurred in his article, "On the Smelting of Iron," 129; Thomas's story in Roberts, "David Thomas," 6.

27 Roberts, "David Thomas," 6.

28 Crane, "On the Smelting of Iron," 127; Thomas to Lynn, Guide-Book.

29 George Crane, 14 April 1837, to Thomas or John Evans, in Madeleine Elsas, ed., Iron in the Making (Frome and London: Glamorgan County Council, 1960), 202-203. Crane's reference to a "license" concerns the patent on the process which he had obtained. See "Specification of a Patent for Smelting Iron with Anthracite Coal," JFI new ser. 21 (1838): 405-406; Roberts, "Obituary," 216.

30 Minchinton, "The Place of Brecknock," 23-24.

31 Hyde, Technological Change and the British Iron Industry, 155.

32 See n. 29 above, and Crane, "On the Smelting of Iron," 128.

33 Crane, "On the Smelting of Iron," 127. Other sources give the height as forty five feet and the width at the bosh as eleven feet: Roberts, "David Thomas," 6; Thomas, "Reminiscences," 904; Thomas to Lynn, Guide-Book.

34 William Firmstone, "Sketch of Early Anthracite Furnaces,' , Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 3 (1874-75): 153-55; Walter R. Johnson, Notes on the Else of Anthracite in the Manufacture of Iron (Boston: Little and Brown, 184 1), 28-29.

35 Harris, "Skills, Coal and British Industry," 167-82; John R. Harris, "Saint Gobain and Ravenhead," in Great Britain and Her World, 1760-1914: Essays in Honour of W. 0. Henderson, ed. Barrie M. Ratcliffe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), 27-70; John R. Harris, Industry and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Britain and France (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1972).

36 Swank, History, 278-79.

37 Hyde, Technological Change and the British Iron Industry, 154.

38 Roberts, "David Thomas," 6.

39 Roberts, "Obituary," 216; Thomas, "Reminiscences," 926.

40 The Neath Abbey Ironworks used coke. Ince, "Neath Abbey Ironworks," 2 1, 23; Roberts, "David Thomas," 4.

41 Solomon W. Roberts, Memoir of Josiah White (Easton, Penna.: Bixler & Corwin, 1860), 6; Solomon W. Roberts, "Reminiscences of the First Railroad Over the Allegheny Mountain," PMHB 2 (1878): 388; Sylvester Welch, 13 December 1836, to Charles Roberts, Roberts Autograph Collection; W. S. Campbell, 29 March 1836, to Moncure Robinson (extract), box 43, Acc. 1520, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware.

42 Moncure Robinson, 5 February 1837, to Conway Robinson, Moncure Robinson Papers, Earl Gregg Swem Library, The College of William and Mary in Virginia, Williamsburg, Va.

43 Roberts, Memoir, 6; Solomon W. Roberts, "The Early History of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company," The Railway World 1 (1875): 299.

44 Anthony Joseph Brzyski, "The Lehigh Canal and Its Effect on the Economic Development of the Region through Which It Passed" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1957), 469.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., 469-70.

.47 Ibid., 47 1.

48 "Articles of Association," 23 April 1839, SM; Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776-1860 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 39-40.

49 E.g., "Stone Coal Iron," "Iron from Anthracite," JFI new ser. 20 (1837): 185; Report of the Board of Managers of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to the Stockholders (Philadelphia: James Kay, Jr. and Brother, 1838), 19.

50 Nathan Trotter & Co., 3 October 1838, tojevons Sons and Co., Foreign Letters Sent, Nathan Trotter Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

51 Brzyski, "Lehigh Canal," 304-305, 477.

52 Ibid., 477; 9 November 1840, SM.

53 Brzyski, "Lehigh Canal," 476-77.

54 Ibid., 477.

55 Ibid.

56 9 November 1840, SM.

57 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 927. The Lehigh Crane Iron Company later paid the Yniscedwyn Iron Company P600: 11 November 1839, DM.

58 Brzyski, "Lehigh Canal," 305; "Articles of Association," 23 April 1839, SM; 23 May 1839, DM.

59 One economic historian concludes that the shift from charcoal to anthracite fuel was accomplished mostly through major new investments which greatly increased the scale of the typical iron industry plants. William D. Walsh, The Diffusiono/'Technological Change in the Pennsylvania Pig Iron Industry, 1850-1870 (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 160, 171-73.

60 Firmstone, "Sketch," 155. The location was named "Catasauqua" in 1846: 2 March 1846, DM.

61 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 908-909.

62 Ibid., 908, 910-911.

63 A History of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1846), 58; Report of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1840), 28.

64 9 November 1840, SM; Thomas, "Reminiscences," 910.

65 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 912.

66 9 November 1840, SM; Thomas, "Reminiscences," 913. Although there is no direct evidence to corroborate the story of the enlargement of the boring mill, it is not inconsistent with published descriptions of the Merrick and Towne "Southwark Foundry" established in 1839. William Hamilton, "Report on the Boring Mill, Constructed by Messrs. Merrick and Towne," American Railroad Journal 11 (1840): 186-88;j. Leander Bishop, A History of American Manufactures, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Edward Young and Co., 1864) 2: 547-48; Bruce Sinclair, Philadelphia's Philosopher Mechanics: A History of the Franklin Institute, 1824-1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 290-91.

67 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 914.

68 9 November 1840, SM.

69 Various ores from Pennsylvania and New Jersey were used at first: 9 November 1840, SM.

70 Nathan Trotter, 30 June 1840, to Jevons Sons and Co., Foreign Letters Sent, Nathan Trotter Collection.

71 9 November 1840, 14 November 1841, SM; Thomas, "Reminiscences," 915; Solomon White Roberts, 26 April 1841, to Charles Roberts, Roberts Autograph Collection.

72 25 August 1840, 1 January 1841, 20 September 1841, DM; 14 November 1841, SM.

73 9 November 1840, SM; Nathan Trotter, 30 July 1840, 19 October 1840, 19 December 1840, to Jevons Sons and Co., Foreign Letters Sent, Nathan Trotter Collection.

74 Temin, Iron and Steel, 61; Swank, History, 273; Yates, "Discovery," 220-21. An exhaustive survey of early attempts to smelt with anthracite has recently reached the same conclusion regarding Thomas's priority as these earlier studies: Craig L. Bartholomew, "Anthracite Iron," in Proceedings oj'the Canal Hisior ' y and Technolog Svnposiuni, vol. 3. Ed. Lance E. Metz (Easton, Penna.: Center for Canal History and technology, 1984), 13-52.

75 Katherine A. Harvey, ed., The Lonaconing Journals: The Founding of a Coal and Iron Community, 1837-1840. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 67, pt. 2 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1977), 9, 14-15, 20, 22,32,40-44,51-57,66.

76 Lewis, "Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company," 427-43.

77 Ibid., 443.

78 Ibid., 443-46.

79 Ibid., 446. Biographical data on Davis have not been found.

80 Johnson, Notes on the Use of Anthracite, 28-29, 66.

81 There is no definite authority for this, but it seems clear that anthracite furnaces were on the leading edge of innovation at this time.

82 Firmstone, "Sketch," 155. Firmstone's statement, and the following discussion of innovations at the LCIC and Thomas Iron Company, indicate that a recent publication's assertion that the technology of the Pennsylvania iron industry in 1860 was much as it "had been more than a century earlier" is seriously flawed. Paul F. Paskoff, Industrial Evolution: Organization, Structure and Growth of the Pennsylvania Iron Industry, 1750-1860 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 132

83 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 916-25.

84 See the list of anthracite furnaces in Pennsylvania, which had the vast majority of them: American Railroad Journal 23 (1850): 467.

85 J. P. Lesley, The Iron Manufacturer's Guide (New York: John Wiley, 1859), 89; Bishop, A History of American Manufactures, 2: 576.

86 Bishop, A History of American Manufactures, 2: 576.

87 Swank, History, 328. Also see Thomas, "Reminiscences," 925, and Temin, Iron and Steel, 161.

88 Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide, 8.

89 Temin, Iron and Steel, 16 1. See also John Fritz, The Autobiography of John Fritz (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1912), 142-43.

90 B. F. Fackenthal, Jr., The Thomas Iron Company, 1854-1904 (Easton, Penna.: n.p., 1904), 11.

91 4 December 1843, 1 January 1844, DM. For the history of the adoption of the turbine in the Philadelphia area, ca. 1843, see Louis C. Hunter, "Les Origines des turbines," Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leur applications 17 (1964): 216-18.

92 November 1841, SM; cf. Thomas, "Reminiscences," 916-17.

93 November 1844, SM; cf. Thomas, "Reminiscences," 918, who incorrectly remembered the turbines being installed in 1842.

94 8 February 1847, SM.

95 27 October 1845, DM; I February 1846, SM.

96 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 919, 921.

97 Josiah White, 6 November 1845, to President and Board of the Lehigh Crane Iron Co., in 7 November 1845, DM.

98 American Railroad Journal 23 (1850): 467; see n. 8 above.

99 Frederick Overman, The Manufacture of Iron in All Its Various Branches (Philadelphia: Henry C. Baird, 1850), 180, 400.

100 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 924.

101 Ibid., 925.

102 Bishop, A History of American.Manufactures, 2: 576; Fackenthal, The ThomasIron Company, 11.

103 September 1842, DM; Swank, History, 328.

104 20 September 1842, 14 November 1842, 12 January 1843, DM; 22 November 1842, SM.

105 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 918.

106 Ibid., 919. Apparently there was an earlier trial which resulted in "the destruction of the gas chamber": 3 January 1843, DM.

107 November 1844, SM.

108 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 919.

109 J. Lawrence Smith, "Observations on the more recent researches in the Manufacture of Iron," American Journal of Science, 2nd ser., 2 (1846): 97-98; American Railroad Journal 22 (1849): 704.

110 Swank, History, 328; Firmstone "Sketch," 156; Gale, British Iron and Steel Industry, 68. The LCIC probably used it for those purposes in later years, because in 185f they paid royalties to Detmold: 9 February 1852, SM.

111 I I November 1844, SM; 7 April 1845, 4 May 1846, DM.

112 A report in 1855 listed only six firms which had combined "the whole process of smelting and puddling": American Railroad Journal 28 (1855): 197. All these firms also had rolling mills: American Railroad journal 27 (1854): 281. On the general subject of integration during this period see Temin, Iron and Steel, 90-94, 109-14, and Paskoff, Industrial Evolution, 117-18.

113 Johnson, Notes on the Use of Anthracite, 51-52. Cf. Thomas, "Reminiscences," 910.

114 February 1848, SM. A committee of the managers had consulted with Thomas concerning plans for a coal unloading apparatus early in 1846: 9 February 1846, DM. Cf. Thomas, "Reminiscences," 926.

115 Bishop, A History of American Manufactures, 2: 576.

116 Temin, Iron and Steel, 96n.

117 Swank, History, 275.

118 Elva Tooker, Nathan Trotter, Philadelphia Merchant: 1787-1853 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), especially early chapters.

119 7 July 1845, DM; Memoirs and Auto-Biography of Some of the Wealthy Citizens of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: published by the booksellers, 1846), 20.

120 E.g., 11 October 1842, 6 January 1845, DM.

121 1 January 1841, DM.

122 27 November 1848, DM.

123 6 October 1845, DM.

124 27 May 1844, DM.

125 Thomas, "Reminiscences," 905-906.

126 3 June 1844, 6 October 1845, 5 July

127 Roberts, "David Thomas," 9; John W. Jordan et al., The Lehigh Valley (New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1905), 2 1; Lesley, Iron Manufacturer's Guide, 89; An Act to Incorporate the Thomas Iron Company (New York: W. E. &J. Sibell, 1855), 1; Fackenthal, The Thomas Iron Company, 7-8, 29.

128 Roberts, "David Thomas," 9; Letters, Catasauqua Manufacturing Company, ca. 1868-73, Nathan Trotter Collection.

129 Roberts, "David Thomas," 9; Jordan, The Lehigh Valley, 2 1.

130 Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 1I (1883): 15.

131 Report of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company (1840), 28; The Miners'Journal ,1 August 1840. Yates, "Discovery," 221, states that "the operation at Catasauqua became the principal model which other ironmasters sought to copy and improve on.

132 See ns. 14 and 15 above.

133 Thomas to Lynn, Guide-Book.

134 20 August 1847, DM. Darwin H. Stapleton, "The Diffusion of Anthracite Iron Technology: The Case of Lancaster County," Pennsylvania History 45 (April 1978): 147-57.

136 Jordan et al., The Lehigh Valley, 22-23. This was the same company that asked for his father's advice in the previous year: 20 August 1847, DM.

137 Jordan et al., The Lehigh Valley, 24.

138 Bishop, A History of American Manufactures, 2: 576.

139 Temin, Iron and Steel, 200, 266.

140 Swank, History, 278-79, 283.

141 Fritz, Autobiography.

142 Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham, Ala.: Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, 1910), 175-77, 354.

143 S.v., "Jones, William Richard," in Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 192736); Temin, Iron and Steel, 157; Robert C. Allen, "The Peculiar Productivity History of American Blast Furnaces, 1840-1913,"Journal ofEconomic History 37 (September 1977): 615.