✍ Scribed by F.Lynwood Garrison
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In reviewing the history of the metallurgy of iron and steel, we find that ever since the recognition of the important role which carbon plays in the economy of this impor_ tant industry, great efforts have been made to explain the phenomena, presumably due to carbon, which accompany certain metallurgical operations. The mere fact that carbon was known to exi, t in the metal in two distinct forms, graphitic and combined (the latter so-called for want of a more scientific definition), was not sufficient to explain to the inquiring mind such changes of molecular structure as take place in the cementation furnace ; and that this particular problem is perhaps no nearer solution to-day than thirty years ago, is probably due, in great measure, to the fact that the process as a commercial operation has long since fallen into disuse. It has, of late, however, cropped up in a somewhat different form in the methods of facehardening armor-plate by the addition of carbon, and possibly of chromium.
Although, within recent years, patents have been granted for increasing the combined carbon, and thus imparting additional hardness to articles of steel, as long ago as I83O, Karsten, in his researches upon the solvent action of acids upon iron and steel, observed a carbon compound which was evidently not graphite, and which must, consequently, be considered under the equivocal head of combined carbon. He did not succeed either in preparing or separating such a carbon compound having a definite chemical composition, but his observations led him to believe that carbon united with iron in such proportions that chemical union was effected, and that the
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