Editing Henry Bessemer

{{Short description|English inventor (1813–1898)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=June 2020}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix = Sir
| name        = Henry Bessemer 
| image       = Henry Bessemer 1890s2.jpg
| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FRS}}
| image_size  =
| caption     = Bessemer {{circa|1890s}}
| birth_name  = Henry Bessemer
| birth_date  = {{Birth date|1813|1|19|df=y}}
| birth_place = [[Charlton, Hertfordshire]], England<ref>[http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jan/bessemer.html Sir Henry Bessemer Inventor & Engineer] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130119102918/http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jan/bessemer.html |date=19 January 2013 }}. Lucidcafe.com (24 November 2014). Retrieved on 1 July 2015.</ref>
| death_date  = {{Death date and age|1898|3|15|1813|1|19|df=y}}
| death_place = London, England
| occupation  = Engineer and inventor
| known_for   = Development of the [[Bessemer process]] for the manufacture of steel
| awards      = [[Albert Medal (Royal Society of Arts)|Albert Medal]] {{small|(1872)}}
|signature=Henry Bessemer signature.PNG
}}

'''Sir Henry Bessemer''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FRS|FIES|size=100%}} (19 January 1813 – 15 March 1898) was an English inventor, whose [[Bessemer process|steel-making process]] would become the most important technique for making [[steel]] in the nineteenth century for almost one hundred years.{{sfn|Misa|1995}}<ref>Newton, David E. Chemistry of New Materials. New York: Facts on File, 2007. Print.</ref> He also played a significant role in establishing the town of [[Sheffield]], nicknamed ‘Steel City’, as a major industrial centre.<ref>{{cite news |title=Sheffield |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Sheffield-England |access-date=25 February 2019 |work=Encyclopaedia Britnannica}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Made in Great Britain, Series 1, Steel |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bpz4ks |access-date=28 March 2019 |agency=BBC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328125550/https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bpz4ks |archive-date=28 March 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Bessemer had been trying to reduce the cost of steel-making for military ordnance, and developed his system for blowing air through molten pig iron to remove the impurities. This made steel easier, quicker and cheaper to manufacture, and revolutionised structural engineering. One of the most significant inventors of the [[Second Industrial Revolution]], Bessemer also made at least 128 other inventions in the fields of iron, steel and glass. Unlike many inventors, he managed to bring his own projects to fruition and profited financially from their success. He was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] for his contribution to science in 1879, and in the same year was made a fellow of the [[Royal Society]].

==Father: Anthony Bessemer==
Bessemer's father, [[Anthony Bessemer|Anthony]], was born in London into a [[Huguenot]] family, but moved to [[Paris]] when he was about 21 years old.<ref name="JPHS">{{cite journal|title=A. Bessemer's Specimen of Printing Types, 1830|journal=Journal of the Printing Historical Society|year=1969|volume=5}}</ref> He was an inventor who, while engaged by the Paris Mint, made a machine for making medallions that could produce steel dies from a larger model. He became a member of the [[French Academy of Sciences]],{{sfn|Jeans|1884|pp=12–13}} for his improvements to the optical microscope when he was 26. He was forced to leave Paris by the [[French Revolution]], and returned to Britain. There he invented a process for making gold chains, which was successful, and enabled him to buy a small estate in the village of [[Charlton, Hertfordshire|Charlton]], near [[Hitchin]] in [[Hertfordshire]], where Henry was born.<ref>{{cite news|title=Charlton House in England, Hitchin|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/periodproperty/9821880/Homes-for-sale-with-blue-plaques.html?frame=2460183|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130130065456/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/periodproperty/9821880/Homes-for-sale-with-blue-plaques.html?frame=2460183|url-status=dead|archive-date=2013-01-30|newspaper=Daily Telegraph}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Chartered Mechanical Engineer: The Journal of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Volume 12|page=519|year=1954|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tVhVAAAAYAAJ|access-date=8 October 2018}}</ref> According to Bessemer he was given his name by his godfather [[Caslon Type Foundry|Henry Caslon]], who employed his father as a [[punchcutting|punchcutter]].{{sfn|Bessemer|1905|p=6}}<ref name="1880 Printing Times and Lithographer">{{cite journal |title=Sir Henry Bessemer's Connection with Printing |journal=The Printing Times and Lithographer |date=1880 |pages=226–7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h3ZQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA226 |access-date=11 February 2019}}</ref>

==Early inventions==
The invention from which Bessemer made his first fortune was a series of six steam-powered machines for making [[bronze powder]], used in the manufacture of gold paint. As he relates in his autobiography,{{sfn|Bessemer|1905}} he examined the bronze powder made in [[Nuremberg]] which was the only place where it was made at the time. He then copied and improved the product and made it capable of being made on a simple production line. It was an early example of [[reverse engineering]] where a product is analysed, and then reproduced.

The process was kept secret, with only members of his immediate family having access to the factory. The Nuremberg powder, which was made by hand, retailed in London for £5&nbsp;12[[£sd|s]] per pound and he eventually reduced the price to [[Half crown (British coin)|half a crown]] {{nowrap|£ – 2 / 6}}, or about 1/40th.<ref>{{cite magazine
  | title = Famous Inventors – Sir Henry Bessemer
  | magazine = The Meccano Magazine
  | page = 130
  | date =April 1942}}
</ref>
The profits from sale of the paint allowed him to pursue his other inventions.

Bessemer patented a method for making a continuous ribbon of [[plate glass]] in 1848, but it was not commercially successful (,{{sfn|Bessemer|1905}} chapter 8). He gained experience in designing furnaces, which was to be of great use for his new steel-making process.

==Bessemer process==
{{Main|Bessemer process}}
[[Image:ConverterB.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Bessemer converter]]
Henry Bessemer worked on the problem of manufacturing cheap [[steel]] for ordnance production from 1850 to 1855 when he patented his method.{{sfn|Boylston|1936|p=213}} However, [[William Kelly (inventor)|William Kelly]], an American inventor in Kentucky, received a [[Priority right|priority patent]] in 1857, effectively nullifying Bessemer's 1855 US patent.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/kelly-iron.html|title=Kelly Pneumatic Iron Process|website=American Chemical Society|accessdate=20 January 2024}}</ref>

On 24 August 1856 Bessemer first described the process to a meeting of the [[British Association]] in Cheltenham which he titled "The Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel." It was published in full in ''[[The Times]]''. The [[Bessemer process]] involved using oxygen in air blown through molten pig iron to burn off the impurities and thus create steel.{{sfn|Boylston|1936|pp=218–219}} [[James Nasmyth]] had been working on a similar idea for some time prior to this. A reluctant patentor, and in this instance still working through some problems in his method, Nasmyth abandoned the project after hearing Bessemer at the meeting. Bessemer acknowledged the efforts of Nasmyth by offering him a one-third share of the value of his patent. Nasmyth turned it down as he was about to retire.{{sfn|Lord|1945}}
[[File:Bessemer 5180.JPG|right|thumb|Bessemer converter, [[Kelham Island Museum]], [[Sheffield]], England in 2010]]

Many industries were constrained by the lack of steel, being reliant on [[cast iron]] and [[wrought iron]] alone. Examples include railway structures such as bridges and tracks, where the treacherous nature of cast iron was keenly felt by many engineers and designers. There had been many accidents when cast iron beams collapsed suddenly, such as the [[Dee Bridge disaster]] of May 1847, the [[Wootton bridge collapse]] and the [[Bull bridge accident]] of 1860. The problem recurred at the [[Tay Bridge disaster]] of 1879, and failures continued until all cast iron under-bridges were replaced by [[steel]] structures. Wrought iron structures were much more reliable with very few failures.

Though this process is no longer commercially used, at the time of its invention it was of enormous industrial importance because it lowered the cost of production steel, leading to steel being widely substituted for [[cast iron]] and [[wrought iron]]. Bessemer's attention was drawn to the problem of steel manufacture in the course of an attempt to improve the construction of guns.<ref name=EB1911/>

===Implementation===
Bessemer licensed the patent for his process to five [[ironmaster]]s, but from the outset, the companies had great difficulty producing good-quality steel.{{sfn|Bessemer|1905|p=172}} Mr [[Göran Fredrik Göransson]], a Swedish ironmaster, using the purer charcoal [[pig iron]] of that country, was the first to make good steel by the process, but only after many attempts. His results prompted Bessemer to try a purer iron obtained from [[Cumberland]] [[hematite]], but even with this he had only limited success<ref name=EB1911/> because the quantity of carbon was difficult to control. [[Robert Forester Mushet]] had carried out thousands of experiments at [[Darkhill Ironworks]], in the [[Forest of Dean]], and had shown that the quantity of carbon could be controlled by removing almost all of it from the iron and then adding an exact amount of [[carbon]] and [[manganese]], in the form of [[spiegeleisen]]. This improved the quality of the finished product and increased its malleability.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Mushet, Robert Forester}}</ref><ref name="fweb.org.uk">[http://www.fweb.org.uk/Dean/towns/colefordproject/people/mushet.html Coleford, Towns in the Forest Of Dean ForestWeb (fweb) – Virtual guide to the Royal Forest Of Dean] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120822112307/http://www.fweb.org.uk/Dean/towns/colefordproject/people/mushet.html |date=22 August 2012 }}. fweb. Retrieved on 1 July 2015.</ref>{{sfn|Anstis|1997}}

When Bessemer tried to induce makers to take up his improved system, he met with general rebuffs and was eventually driven to undertake the exploitation of the process himself. He erected steelworks in [[Sheffield]] in a business partnership with others, such as [[W & J Galloway & Sons]], and began to manufacture steel. At first the output was insignificant, but gradually the magnitude of the operations was enlarged until the competition became effective, and steel traders generally became aware that the firm of Henry Bessemer & Co. was underselling them to the extent of UK£10–£15 a ton. This argument to the pocket quickly had its effect, and licences were applied for in such numbers that, in royalties for the use of his process, Bessemer received a sum in all considerably exceeding a million pounds sterling.<ref name=EB1911>{{EB1911|wstitle=Bessemer, Sir Henry|volume=3|page=823|inline=1}}</ref>

However Mushet received nothing and by 1866 was destitute and in ill health. In that year his 16-year-old daughter, Mary, travelled to London alone, to confront Bessemer at his offices, arguing that his success was based on the results of her father's work.{{sfn|Bessemer|1905}} Bessemer decided to pay Mushet an annual pension of £300, a very considerable sum, which he paid for over 20 years, possibly with a view to keeping the Mushets from legal action.{{sfn|Bessemer|1905}}

Bessemer also had works in [[Greenwich]], London, adjacent to the River Thames, from about 1865.<ref name="Mills-Aug2009">{{cite news |last1=Mills |first1=Mary |title=Bessemer in Greenwich |url=https://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com/2009/08/bessemer-in-greenwich.html |access-date=19 January 2021 |work=Greenwich Industrial History |date=8 August 2009}}</ref>

W.&nbsp;M. Lord has said with regard to this success that "Sir Henry Bessemer was somewhat exceptional. He had developed his process from an idea to a practical reality in his own lifetime and he was sufficiently of a businessman to have profited by it. In so many cases, inventions were not developed quickly and the plums went to other persons than the inventors."{{sfn|Lord|1945}}

==Other inventions==
[[File:Portrait of 'Steel' (4671260).jpg|thumb|left|upright|Captioned "Steel", caricature of Bessemer by [[Leslie Ward]] in ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', 6 November 1880]]

Bessemer was a prolific inventor and held at least 129 patents, spanning from 1838 to 1883. These included military ordnance, movable dies for embossed postage stamps, a screw extruder to extract sugar from sugar cane, and others in the fields of iron, steel and glass. These are described in some detail in his autobiography.

After suffering from seasickness in 1868, he designed the [[SS Bessemer|SS ''Bessemer'']] (also called the "Bessemer Saloon"), a passenger steamship with a cabin on [[gimbal]]s designed to stay level, however rough the sea, to save her passengers from seasickness. The mechanism – hydraulics controlled by a steersman watching a spirit level – worked in model form and in a trial version built in his garden in Denmark Hill, London. However, it never received a proper seagoing test as, when the ship demolished part of the Calais pier on her maiden voyage, investor confidence was lost and the ship was scrapped.<ref>[http://www.history.rochester.edu/ehp-book/shb/hb20.htm The Bessemer Saloon Steam-Ship] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071227134724/http://www.history.rochester.edu/ehp-book/shb/hb20.htm |date=27 December 2007 }}, Chapter XX, ''Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S. An Autobiography'', [http://www.history.rochester.edu/ehp-book/shb/ online at University of Rochester] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051003224130/http://www.history.rochester.edu/ehp-book/shb/ |date=3 October 2005 }}</ref>

=== Continuous casting ===
Bessemer also obtained a patent in 1857 for the casting of metal between contrarotating rollers – a forerunner of today's [[continuous casting]] processes and remarkably, Bessemer's original idea has been implemented in the direct continuous casting of steel strip.

==Death==
[[File:Grave of Henry Bessemer at West Norwood Cemetery (02).jpg|thumb|Headstone of Sir Henry Bessemer, West Norwood cemetery]]
Bessemer died in March 1898 at [[Denmark Hill]], London. He is buried in [[West Norwood Cemetery|West Norwood cemetery]],
London SE27. Other influential Victorians such as [[Henry Tate|Sir Henry Tate]], [[Henry Doulton|Sir Henry Doulton]] and [[Paul Reuter|Baron de Reuters]] are buried in the same cemetery.

==Honours and legacy==
Bessemer was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] by [[Queen Victoria]] for his contribution to science on 26 June 1879, and in the same year was made a fellow of the [[Royal Society]].{{refn|{{London Gazette|issue=24739|page=2406|date= 1 Jul 1879}}{{efn|Coincidentally, on the same page of the London Gazette there is the knighting of [[Thomas Bouch]] who the following December became infamous worldwide as the designer and railway engineer of the Tay Bridge.}}}} An honorary membership was conferred on Bessemer by the [[Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland]] in 1891.<ref>[http://www.iesis.org/honorary-fellows.html IESIS Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland]. Iesis.org. Retrieved on 1 July 2015.</ref> He was elected an International Member of the [[American Philosophical Society]] in 1894.<ref>{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Henry+Bessemer&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2024-03-28 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref> In 1895, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060618085806/http://amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf |archive-date=2006-06-18 |url-status=live|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=24 June 2011}}</ref> Sheffield's Kelham Island Industrial Heritage Museum maintains an early example of a Bessemer converter for public viewing.

A school was named after him in the town of [[Hitchin]], and when the school was demolished in the 1980s the new road built in its place was named Bessemer Close in 1995. Bessemer Way in [[Rotherham]] is also named in his honour. In 2009, the public house "The Fountain" in Sheffield city centre was renamed "The Bessemer" in homage to Henry Bessemer, who had a huge impact on the [[Steel City]]'s development. In Workington, Cumbria, the local Wetherspoons pub is now named after him.

In 2002 the [[Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining]] (IOM3) was established from mergers encompassing historical organisations including the [[Iron and Steel Institute]], of which Bessemer was president from 1871 to 1873; the latter organisation instituted the [[Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining#Awards|Bessemer Gold Medal]] under his tenure. IOM3 still recognises Bessemer's legacy with an annual award of the medal for outstanding services to the steel industry; recent recipients include [[Indira Samarasekera]].

That a man who did so much for industrial development did not receive higher recognition from his own government was a source of deep regret for English engineers, who alluded to the fact that in the United States, where the Bessemer process found much use, eight cities or towns bore his name.<ref>{{NIE|wstitle=Bessemer, Henry|year=1905|inline=1}}</ref>

==Notes==

{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Sources==

{{refbegin|30em}}
*{{cite book
| publisher = Albion House
| isbn      = 978-0951137147
| last      = Anstis
| first     = Ralph
| title     = Man of Iron, Man of Steel: Lives of David and Robert Mushet
| date      = 1997
| page      = 140
}}
*{{cite book
| last1      = Bessemer
| first1     = Henry
| title      = Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S.: an autobiography; with a concluding chapter
| date       = 1905
| location   = London
| url        = https://archive.org/details/sirhenrybessemer00bessuoft
| publisher  = [[Engineering (magazine)|Engineering]]
}}
*{{cite book
| publisher = Wiley
| last      = Boylston
| first     = Herbert Melville
| title     = An introduction to the metallurgy of iron and steel
| date      = 1936
}}
*{{cite book
| last1        = Jeans
| first1       = William T.
| author1-link = William Tulloch Jeans
| title        = The creators of the age of steel
| url          = https://archive.org/details/creatorsagestee00tgoog/page/n22
| date         = 1884
| publisher    = Chapman and Hall
}}
*{{cite journal
| title     = The Development of the Bessemer Process in Lancashire, 1856–1900
| first1    = W. M.
| last1     = Lord
| journal   = Transactions of the Newcomen Society
| date      = 1945
| volume    = 25
| pages      = 163–180
| doi       = 10.1179/tns.1945.017
}}
*{{cite book |last1      = Misa
 |first1     = Thomas J.
 |title      = A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America: 1865-1925
 |location   = Baltimore MD
 |publisher  = Johns Hopkins UP
 |date       = 1995
 |isbn       = 978-0801849671
 |url-access = registration
 |url        = https://archive.org/details/nationofsteelmak00misa
}}
{{refend}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category|2=Sir Henry Bessemer}}
* {{OL author}}
* {{Internet Archive author|sopt=t}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bessemer, Henry}}
[[Category:1813 births]]
[[Category:1898 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century British inventors]]
[[Category:Burials at West Norwood Cemetery]]
[[Category:Businesspeople in steel]]
[[Category:English inventors]]
[[Category:English metallurgists]]
[[Category:English people of French descent]]
[[Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society]]
[[Category:Huguenots]]
[[Category:Knights Bachelor]]
[[Category:International members of the American Philosophical Society]]
[[Category:Members of the French Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:People from Hitchin]]
[[Category:People of the Industrial Revolution]]