Pittsburgh Paper - The Microscopic Structure of Car-Wheel Iron

The study of the microscopic structure of the iron of car-wheels, which it is the aim of this paper to describe, was made at the suggestion of Dr. Dudley, whose paper upon the constitution of cast-irons (page 795 of the present volume) should be read in connection with this one. Although the two wheels referred to in that paper possess nearly an identical ultimate chemical composition, they possess, as Messrs. Dudley and Pease have shown, physical properties so widely different, as to make one of them nearly worthless for the purpose for which it was cast. Considering the chemical similarity, such a marked difference in strength cannot but be very striking, and goes to show how little reliance can be placed upon chemical analysis alone, if not properly interpreted. I say " not properly interpreted," because I believe that very few analyses of iron or steel are thus fairly dealt' with. That an analysis may read so much of one thing and so much of another, tells us very little as to the properties of the metal; for these are determined to a large extent by the conditions and relations in which the elements are present. To the unaided eye the difference between the two wheels under consideration is not striking. The inferior one would be described as light gray, and the other as somewhat darker. Upon careful examination of an etched fragment, however, the difference in structure will be found to be very marked, as may be seen in Figs. 1 and 2 (produced from photographs by the Ives process). It is exceedingly difficult to produce a photograph giving a fair notion of the appearance of the metal under the microscope, so as to give to persons not familiar with microscopical study, a proper appreciation of what a microscopist would consider a decided difference in structure. I would, therefore, urge any one especially interested in this subject, not to depend upon the photographs of others, but to prepare and etch the specimens himself, and then examine them with a good microscope. As is well known, iron possesses the property of uniting with a number of elements, forming products which are either highly intimate mixtures of several substances, or else compounds of an indefinite character. Indeed such mixtures may be regarded as alloys, or as Matthiessen puts it, " solidified solutions of one sub