and its contents discharged into a traveling ladle, and quickly
delivered to machines called ballers, which are rotary reverberatory
furnaces, each revolving on a horizontal axis. In the baller the iron
is very soon made into a ball without manual aid. It is then lifted
out by means of a suspended fork and carried to a Winslow squeezer,
where the ball is reduced to a roll twelve inches in diameter. Thence
it is taken to a furnace for a wash heat, and finally to the muck
train.

No reagents are employed, as in steel making or ordinary iron
puddling. The high heat of the metal is sufficient to preserve its
fluidity during its transit from the converter to the baller; and the
cinder from the blow is kept in the ladle.

The baller is a bulging cylinder having hollow trunnions through which
the flame passes. The cylinder is lined with fire brick, and this in
turn is covered with a suitable refractory iron ore, from eight to ten
inches thick, grouted with pulverized iron ore, forming a bottom, as
in the common puddling furnace. The phosphorus of the iron, which
cannot be eliminated in the intense heat of the converter, is,
however, reduced to a minimum in the baller at a much lower
temperature and on the basic lining. The process wastes the lining
very slightly indeed. As many as sixty heats have been taken off in
succession without giving the lining any attention. The absence of any
reagent leaves the iron simply pure and homogeneous to a degree never
realized in muck bars made by the old puddling process. Thus the
expense of a reheating and rerolling to refine the iron is obviated.
It was such iron as here results that Bessemer, in his early
experiments, was seeking to obtain when he was diverted from his
purpose by his splendid discoveries in the art of making steel. So