A form of apparatus often used for testing specimens of steel consists of a small electric furnace in which to heat the specimen, and a special thermo-couple pyrometer (see  Pyrometers ) for indicating the range of temperatures through which the steel passes.
Where the American Civil War Began. Decades of growing strife between North and South erupted in civil war on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on this Federal fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later. Union forces would try for nearly four years to take it back.
In North America, the first civil war amongst Europeans, as a shooting war, started on April 19,1775, when rebellious British subjects in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay mixed it up with British troops at Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy and Cambridge.