Fósforo e ferro em Mumford (1934)

The hit-or-miss tactics of the market place pervaded the entire social structure. The leaders of industry were for the most part empirics: boasting that they were “practical” men they prided themselves on their technical ignorance and naivety. Solvay, who made a fortune out of the Solvay soda process, knew nothing about chemistry; neither did Krupp, the discoverer of cast-steel; Hancock, one of the early experimenters with India rubber, was equally ignorant. Bessemer, the inventor of many things besides the Bessemer process [194] of making steel, at first merely stumbled on his great invention through the accident of using iron with a low phosphorus content: it was only the failure of his method with the continental ores that had a high phosphorus content that led him to consider the chemistry of the process. (Mumford 1934:193-4)

MUMFORD, Lewis. 1934. Technique and civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.