The Electric Furnace

Abstract

LITTLE more than 100 years have elapsed since the first experiments on electric furnaces were performed, when Davy, in 1810, succeeded in isolating aluminium and the alkali metals by the electrolysis of electrically fused salts. Five years later Pepys carried out experiments on the cementation of iron heated by passing an electric current through it. About half a cenfury elapsed, however, before a commercial furnace was put into operation, one of the earliest being built by the Cowles brothers at Milton, Staffs. The development that has taken place since that date may be gauged from the fact that the estimated production of electric furnace steel during 1918, in Great Britain alone, was 110,000 tons. This development was largely due to the war and, as the last edition of Stansfield's classic volume (bearing the same title as the book at present under review) is dated 1914, a demand doubtless exists for a further book on electric furnaces.

The Electric Furnace.

By Dr. J. N. Pring. (Monographs on Industrial Chemistry.) Pp. xii + 485 + 19 plates. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921.) 32s. net.