1898 - Technology

Technology

Philadelphia engineers Frederick Winslow Taylor, 43, and Maunsel White, 43, of the 41-year-old Saucona Iron Company (it will become Bethlehem Steel Co. next year) develop the Taylor-White process for heat-treating highspeed tool steels, increasing cutting capacities of blade edges by 200 to 300 percent (see Taylor, 1911).

A pilot plant to produce viscose rayon yarn that can be woven and dyed opens at Kew, Surrey, England (see Cross, Bevan, 1892). English inventor C. H. Stearn patents a viscose filament produced by treating wood pulp with caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) (see Courtalds, 1905; Little, 1902).

Engineer-inventor Sir Henry Bessemer dies at Bessemer Grange, Denmark Hill, London, March 15 at age 85, having made a fortune from the Kelly-Bessemer blast-furnace method of making steel directly from molten pig iron; adding machine inventor William S. Burroughs dies at Citronelle, Alabama, September 14 at age 43.