ordinarily used in steel-making, as being the ultimate solution of the said problem. He is endeavoring to make the dream come true by trying to induce a combination of miners, metallurgists, and steel manufacturers to furnish the requisite money for an elaborate series of experiments to find an ideal high-alloy of steel for long-span bridges and, perhaps, if he lives long enough, he will be successful. He feels confident that within three years after actually starting the investigation, with ordinarily good luck in respect to governing conditions, and with a reasonable expenditure of money, he could find how to manufacture the material desired at a fairly-moderate pound-price. A successful solution of this problem would be epoch-making in respect to the economics of bridgework.

There appeared in the New York Times of February 18th, 1920, a notice concerning some experiments that are being made in France upon the production of high-grade steels by a modification of the Bessemer process. If these experiments prove to be successful, the manufacture of the author's proposed "Nichromol Steel" may be readily materialized. The following is the notice referred to:

Paris, Feb. 16.— A revolution in the steel industry is promised by four inventors who are working here. Final tests of their process are now being made. Their claim is that hard steel—nickel, chromium, manganese and the other kinds—can be manufactured at roughly the same cost as ordinary Bessemer steel, with the sole added expense of the alloys involved.

In a mill on the northern outskirts of Paris to-day five experiments were made each involving the production of a ton and a half of high-class steel. There was little in appearance to distinguish the new from the ordinary Bessemer process. There was an ordinary furnace, packed with coal and iron. The metal was fused at a relatively low temperature and then passed to a furnace, where the temperature was raised to 1500° C. and the impurities burned out. By the Bessemer process a relatively small percentage of impurities, chiefly phosphorus and sulphur, is eliminated. The result is that Bessemer steel is suitable for only ordinary work and cannot be employed as raw material for the high grade steel necessary for many phases of industry.

The essential feature of these experiments is that by the addition of certain secret substances and by means of a certain undivulged process the ordinary Bessemer steel process can be applied to produce steel as pure as that derived electrically.

These results are predicted by the inventors:

First, France will be in a position to produce high-grade steel at the same cost, or approximately the same cost, as ordinary steel plus the expense of the alloys, while special steel containing no alloys can be produced at the same price as ordinary steel.

Second, high-grade steel, which hitherto could not be employed for such ordinary purposes as railway rails, etc., now becomes available for the everyday purposes of commerce.

The four inventors have been working for more than six months and have satisfied themselves that the high-grade steel they produce answers to every test, whether of chemical analysis or of physical properties, such as hardness, tensile stress, malleability, etc.

One of the inventors is Jules Lambrecht of Herstal, Belgium, who worked as a steel expert for France during the war. Another is Marc Antoine, also a Belgian, known as an authority on railroad steel. The other two, whose names may not now be mentioned, are Frenchmen.

To-day's tests were attended by a number of steel experts and scientists who took