Zoneth Sherman Durfee was an American inventor and manufacturer. Throughout his life he was interested in the manufacture of steel. He obtained numerous patents for steel manufacture and iron and steel products.
Background
Zoneth Sherman Durfee was born at New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. His parents were Thomas and Delight (Sherman) Durfee, were members of the Free Will Baptist Church and had resided in Fall River, Massachusetts, before moving to New Bedford in the early part of 1831.
Education
Durfee was educated at Friends’ Academy, New Bedford. In early youth he learned the blacksmith’s trade and later was associated with his father and uncle in that business.
Career
Becoming interested in the process of manufacturing steel directly from pig iron, the invention of Joseph Dixon, Durfee, sponsored by New Bedford capitalists, undertook investigations of the various processes for the manufacturing of iron and steel which led him to believe that William Kelly of Eddyville, Kentucky, was the real inventor of the “Bessemer process’’ instead of Henry Bessemer of England who had claimed the invention. On the basis of this belief, Durfee, in partnership with Capt. E. B. Ward of Detroit, Michigan, obtained control of Kelly’s patents in 1861.
In 1861 he went to Europe to study the Bessemer process and to purchase, if possible, Bessemer’s rights in the United States. He failed to accomplish the latter object, and on his return home organized a company to protect the use of the Kelly patents. Ward and Durfee, in 1862, invited William F. Durfee a cousin of Z. S. Durfee, to assist in erecting an experimental plant at Wyandotte, Wayne County, Michigan, for the manufacturing of pneumatic steel; and in May 1863 they and their partners organized the Kelly Pneumatic Process Company, Kelly retaining an interest in any profits the company might make.
During his first visit to England (1861), Durfee had become familiar with the invention of Robert Mushet for using spiegeleisen as a recarburizing agent (patent granted in England, 1856; United States, 1857) and was convinced that it was essential to the “successful conduct of the Kelly and Bessemer processes. ” In 1863 he was sent to England to secure control of Mushet’s patent in the United States, and procured an assignment on October 24, 1864. While Durfee was in England, the experimental works at Wyandotte made its first blow, in September 1864, under the supervision of William F. Durfee—the first Bessemer steel made in the United States.
In 1865 a plant at Troy, New York, built by Alexander L. Holley, began to manufacture steel under Bessemer’s patents, and the following year the two interests were combined in the Pneumatic Steel Association, a joint stock company organized under the laws of the State of New York, in which was vested the ownership of the patents of both Kelly and Bessemer. Of this company Durfee was made secretary and treasurer, and he held the office until his death in 1880. He is said to have been, also, for a time “previous to 1868, superintendent of the steel works of Winslow & Griswold” located at Troy, New York. He guarded Kelly’s business interests and did more, perhaps, than any other person to get the rights of Kelly recognized in the United States. He was always held in the highest esteem by Kelly. He obtained numerous patents for steel manufacture and iron and steel products, sixteen of which are recorded in The Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office between 1862 and 1876. His work was prematurely ended in his fiftieth year, when he died of paralysis at the Butler Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island.