the same process. There ensued a pitched battle over

 patent rights, but, meantime, cheap steel had come to

 the United States. First produced commercially on an

 experimental basis in 1864, by 1867 steel was being made

 into rails and being sold at $166 per ton. Ten years

 later the price had dropped to $45 per ton.2

 Steel had entered the scene at a most opportune

 time (although probably not altogether by coincidence

 since experiments in the production of iron and steel

 had been vigorously conducted for many years). Vast

 iron deposits in Michigan's Upper Peninsula just

 recently had been discovered and even greater deposits

 in Northern Minnesota would soon come to light.

 Significant advancements had been made in measuring and

 working materials with precision. A spirit of change

 and progress had gripped the people. The wealth of great

 portions of the immense new land remained to be tapped

 and large expanses of land waited to be crossed by steel

 rails.

 Also important to the new technology, primarily

because of its electrical properties, was copper.

Although electricity was not used widely in 1860, the

properties of electricity, which was to become the

wonder of the new age, were not unknown by ary means;

experiments in the use of electricity for producing


 28Ibid., p. 193.