Story of an Inventor

For more than 200 years steelmakers fashioned strips and sheets by drawing hot ingots through rolling mills, then laboriously smoothing and polishing the rough surfaces. In 1921 young, blond, solidly-built Abram Peters Steckel, engineering student, watched sweating men in a wire plant reduce cold rods to thin wire by successive draws through rollers and dies. Mechanically-minded Steckel thought the same idea could be used in reducing steel strips and sheets. He built a crude cold-rolling mill in a friend's garage, went broke.

Then a friend named Venice Lamb, attorney, put up some money, helped him build a better mill. In 1923 and 1924 Steckel borrowed more money, took out five patents. In 1926 Cold Metal Process Co. was set up with Steckel president, $100,000 capital.

Steelmen first regarded Steckel's invention as foolish. But Cold Metal Process revolutionized the industry, made possible the production of sheets and strips at 900 to 1.200 feet a minute compared to 140 feet before. C. M. P. prospered, first by rolling sheets for customers, later by building mills, then by licensing. But not everybody who cold-rolled dealt with C. M. P. In February 1934 American Sheet and Tinplate Co. (U. S. Steel subsidiary) was sued for patent infringement, lost in the Supreme Court in October 1938.

Meanwhile, Inventor Steckel was having his own troubles. Inventorlike, he clashed with his financial backers, by 1933 was just a director of C. M. P., owning 20% of outstanding stock. He went to law against his associates, lost a long, costly, acrimonious suit.

But last week Steckel's outlook brightened. The Court's special master ordered Big Steel to pay C. M. P. $3,850,000 royalties. Even after the lawyers are paid, the inventor's share should be enough to pay the mortgage on his home in Youngstown, Ohio, satisfy the creditors who have haunted him for five years.

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