Page 109 - MY STORY

We hoped that U.S. Steel could provide the steel alloy

plate to us at no (or reasonable) cost with a plan for us to
share all the engineering data with them.

We knew that if this program went forward, U.S. Steel
was one of the few steel mills in the country that had
furnaces and rolling mills large enough to make the ¾”

plate.

At our first meeting in Pittsburgh, we met with the top

officers of U.S. Steel who seemed really interested in
working with us. The problem, they stated, was that their

research melting furnaces could not make 1000 pound
heats! After a little chuckling on their part, they pointed
out that the smallest heat they could melt was 20 tons
(40,000 pounds), but they thought our offer was an

excellent one and wondered if could use all that material.
They also pointed out that they would use their large plate

rolling facility at the Homestead Works and wondered if
we could handle even one production of six plates of the
thickness which would weigh several tons. We had no

way to handle all that metal or weight and asked if they
would mind cutting the finished plate into smaller pieces
we could handle. They readily agreed and a deal was born

on a handshake.