Revolution

Sir Henry Bessemer toyed with the notion, other inventors dreamed of it; last week it became a reality. In Beaver Falls, Pa., steelworkers poured molten metal into a mold, watched the melt slowly make its way down a 75-ft. tower, to be cooled, cut and ejected as a steel billet ready to be shipped. Commercial steel had at last been cast from molten to semi-finished state in one continuous process.

Continuous casting (the process is still unnamed) bypasses the cumbersome and expensive system which steelmen use to cast ingots, reheat and mold their steel.

By eliminating special "blooming" mills (where steel is rolled in clothes-wringer-like machines) and the conveyer tables to feed them, continuous casting will make a drastic cut in the cost of every ton of steel produced. Eventually, it may also decentralize the industry, giving each region its own steel mills, for the machines are relatively cheap to build, and easy to house.

To many a steel buyer whose bill was upped when the Supreme Court outlawed the basing point system (TIME, May 10), continuous casting looked like a lifesaver.

His first question: When will the revolution come? Not even the owners know.

The continuous caster is the offspring of a marriage between a steel producer and a user. Cleveland's Republic Steel Corp. did the first research, then got the boiler-making Babcock & Wilcox Co. to solve the enigma of high-speed transfer of heat. Republic, which has millions tied up in conventional equipment, holds that the revolution is still far off, but has agreed to license the process to anyone who wants it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.