Check out a new beta version of this site

Last living crewman of the first Jones & Laughlin Bessemer Converter

1952

View this item

Last living crewman of the first Jones & Laughlin Bessemer Converter
  • Title
  • Last living crewman of the first Jones & Laughlin Bessemer Converter
  • Creator
  • Judge of Good Pictures
  • Identifier
  • MSP33.B005.F09.I01
  • Source Identifier
  • MSP33.B005.F09.I01
  • Description
  • Caption on the back of the photograph reads, “ON THE SCENE when J&L’s first Bessemer converter was ‘blown in’ in June, 1886, was Tone Braithwaite. Mr. Braithwaite, now 85 years old, looks over a photograph of a Bessemer converter soon to be torn out at J&L’s Pittsburgh Works Division, Southside. After working in J&L’s steel works for 44 years, Mr. Braithwaite retired in 1930. He is the last living of the men who came to J&L to help install its first steel works.” Mr. Braithwaite came from Wales to America in 1882 and joined Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation at the age of 16 as a tuyere setter. Tuyers (pronounced “tweers”) were the holes in the bottom of a Bessemer into which the blast of air was blown, through the molten iron, purifying it into steel. Within a few years Mr. Braithwaite became a “blower.” “We didn’t have any complicated controls or machinery then”, he recalled. “We watched the flame without those smoked glasses they use now, and when the color was right, we shut off the blow and poured the steel.”
  • Genre
  • photographs
  • Subject
  • Braithwaite, Tone.
    Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (Pittsburgh Works)--Employees.
  • Source
  • Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation Collection Photographs, 1864-1953, MSP 33, Library and Archives Division, Senator John Heinz History Center
  • Contributor
  • Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center
  • Collection
  • Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation Photographs
  • Rights Information
  • Copyright Not Evaluated. The copyright and related rights status of this Item has not been evaluated. Please refer to the organization that has made the Item available for more information. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use.
    http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/