Several Pennsylvania iron masters experimented with anthracite in their furnaces with limited success, and Josiah White and Erskine Hazard also failed in 1826 at a furnace in Mauch Chunk despite seeing the potential value for their anthracite business. By 1837, Welsh furnace owner George Crane and his ironmaster David Thomas had successfully combined anthracite coal with the hot-blast technique at Yniscedwyn, Wales. After Hazard and his son traveled there in late 1838, they hired Thomas to come to Pennsylvania. The Lehigh Crane Iron Company, formed by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, bought nine acres along the canal at Lock 36 near Biery's Bridge, now Catasauqua, where strong water power could drive a waterwheel for Thomas's hot-blast blowing engines. The furnace was completed in 1840, and on July 4 of that year it produced its first cast of about four tons of iron. Although Thomas's furnace at Biery's Bridge was not the first in the United States to make iron with anthracite coal, his long experience and attention to detail made it the first technological and commercial success, allowing large quantities of high-quality iron to be made quickly and signaling the beginning of the industrial revolution in America. Furnace No. 1 at the Lehigh Crane Iron Works was built of limestone, stood 45 feet high, and had a 12-foot chimney. A water-powered elevator carried coal, iron ore, and limestone to the top of the furnace. A water wheel 12 feet in diameter and 24 feet long, driven by Lehigh Canal water diverted into a channel with an 8-foot drop, turned gears that moved beams on a frame to drive the blowing cylinders. Those cylinders, five feet in diameter with a 6-foot stroke, forced air through ovens in small buildings beside the furnace. The air, heated to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, was then blown into the furnace, where burning anthracite raised the temperature to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit, and molten iron was tapped from the bottom and guided into channels of wet sand on the casting floor.
