pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 7)
of larger blast furnaces and more powerful blowing engines
capable of blowing more cubic feet of air into the furnace per
minute. During the late 1870s and early 1880s further advances
were made at the Edgar Thomson Works when regenerative hot blast
stoves were introduced for the purpose of creating hotter blasts
to the furnace. The introduction of the new technology increased
daily production from not more than fifty tons per day at a
single furnace to an average of 330 tons per day in 1890. Yet
the full potential of the new developments could not be realized
because the delivery of raw materials to the furnace continued to
be a manual operation.
In order to take full advantage of the potential offered by
these innovations, Marvin A. Neeland, superintendent of
engineering at the Duquesne Works, designed the industry's first
automatic raw materials storage, handling, and delivery system
for blast furnaces. The system, which employed the coordinated
use of an ore storage yard, ore stocking bridges, a stocking
trestle, a stockhouse, and bucket charging facilities to the
furnace, quickly proved its worth. Each of the four Duquesne
furnaces regularly produced more than 600 tons of iron per day.
At the same time, labor costs were cut by 50 percent. As a
result of this success, contemporary blast furnace experts soon
labeled the innovation the "Duquesne Revolution," and it became
the prototypical design for blast furnace plants in the
industry. 4
"Bridge, The Inside Historyr 180-1; "The Duquesne Furnace
Plant of the Carnegie Company, Limited," The Iron Age 59(March 25,
18 97): 4-11; "The Duquesne Furnaces of the Carnegie Steel Co.
Ltd.," The Iron Trade Review 30(March 25, 1897): 7-10; "The New
Blast Furnaces at the Duquesne Works," The Engineering and Mining
Journal 15(April 10, 1897): 355-8; Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in
Nineteenth Century America: An Economic Inquiry (Cambridge: 1964),
157-163; James Gayley, "The Development of American Blast Furnaces
with Special References to Large Yields," Transactions of the
American Institute of Mining Engineers 19(1891): 936-7; E. C.
Potter, "Review of American Blast Furnace Practice," Transactions
of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 23(1893): 370-1;
William P. Shinn, "The Genesis of the Edgar Thomson Blast
Furnaces, " Transactions of the American Institute o_f Mining
Engineers 19(1891): 676-8; Wall, Andrew Carnegie,, 324; William T.
Hogan, Productivity in the Steel Industry: 1920 - 1946 (New York:
1950), 34-5; Axel Sahlin, "The Handling of Material at the Blast
Furnace," Transactions of the American Institute of Mining
Engineers 27(1897): 3, 11; John Birkinbine, "Twenty-Five Years of
Engineering Progress in the Iron Industry," The Iron Trade Review
34 (November 14, 1901): xxiii; Harold C. Livesay, Andrew Carnegie
and the Rise of Big Business (Boston: 1975), 150; J. E. Johnson