thousand years ago. It may be that the very first thought by primitive
man was of how to smelt the metals he wanted so much and needed so
badly. His efforts to procure a means of making his fire burn under his
little dump of ore led him first into the science which has attained a
new importance in very recent times, pneumatics. The first American
furnaces were blown by the ordinary leather bellows, or by a contrivance
they had which was called a "blowing tub," or by a very ancient machine
known as a _"trompe"_ in which water running through a wooden pipe
was very ingeniously made to furnish air to a furnace. It is when the
means are small that ingenuity is actually shown. If the later man is
deprived of the use of the latest machinery he will decline to undertake
an enterprise where it is required. The same man in the woods, with
absolute necessity for his companion, will show an astonishing capacity
for persevering invention, and will live, and succeed.

[Illustration: WATER-POWER BLOWING TUB.]

In the lack of steam they learned, as stated, to use water-power for
making the blast. The "blowing-tub" was such a contrivance. It was built
of wood, and the air-boxes were square. There were two of these, with
square pistons and a walking-beam between them. A third box held the air
under a weighted piston and fed it to the furnace. Some of these were
still in effective use as late as 1873. They were still used long after
steam came. The entire machine might be called, correctly, a very large
piston-bellows. A smaller machine with a single barrel may be found now,
reduced, in the hands of men who clean the interior of pianos, and tune
them.

The first iron works built in the present United States that were
commercially successful, were established in Massachusetts, in the town