get hold of a piece of steel if they can."


REMARKABLE MACHINERY AND TOOLS.

It will be readily understood that the rolls, the hammers, the
machinery for punching, drilling, planing, etc., used in the
manufacture and preparation of plates and angles for shipbuilding and
armor plates are on a scale far different at the present date from
what they were in 1869. Perhaps the most striking examples of powerful
machinery for these purposes are the great Creuzot hammer, the falling
mass of which has recently been increased to 100 tons, and the new
planing machines at the Cyclops Works, which weigh upward of 140 tons
each, for planing compound armor plates 19 in. thick and weighing 57
tons.


THE FUTURE OF IRON AND STEEL.

Some of the eminent men who have preceded me in this chair have made
their inaugural address the occasion for a forecast of the
improvements in practice and the developments in area of the great
industry in which we are engaged. Several of these forecasts have been
verified by the results; in other cases they have proved to be
mistaken; nor need this excite surprise. I believe that few would have
predicted, when the consideration of the subject was somewhat
unfortunately deferred through want of time at our Paris meeting of
1878, that the basic process would so speedily prove itself to be of
such paramount value as we now know it to possess. On the other hand,
the extinction of the old puddling process has long been the favorite