Sir Henry Bessemer FRS (19 January 1813 – 15 March 1898) was an English inventor. His steel-making process was the most important method for making steel in the nineteenth century for nearly 100 years. He helped make the town of Sheffield, called the "Steel City," a major industrial center.
Bessemer worked to lower the cost of making steel for military weapons. He created a system that used air blown through molten pig iron to remove impurities. This made steel easier, faster, and cheaper to produce, which changed structural engineering. Bessemer was one of the most important inventors of the Second Industrial Revolution. He made at least 128 inventions related to iron, steel, and glass. Unlike many inventors, he completed his own projects and earned money from their success. In 1879, he was knighted for his contributions to science and became a fellow of the Royal Society.
Father: Anthony Bessemer
Bessemer's father, Anthony, was born in London into a Huguenot family and moved to Paris at about 21 years old. He was an inventor who worked for the Paris Mint and created a machine for making medallions that could produce steel dies from a larger model. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences for his improvements to the optical microscope when he was 26 years old. He was forced to leave Paris because of the French Revolution and returned to Britain, where he invented a process for making gold chains. This invention was successful and allowed him to buy a small estate in the village of Charlton, near Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where Henry was born. As Henry Bessemer later said, he was given his name by his godfather, Henry Caslon, who worked as a punchcutter and employed his father.
Early inventions
Bessemer earned his first wealth by creating six steam-powered machines to make bronze powder, which was used in gold paint. At that time, bronze powder was only produced in Nuremberg. Bessemer studied the Nuremberg bronze powder, then copied and improved it so it could be made in large amounts using a production line. This was an early example of copying and improving an existing product.
The process was kept secret, and only members of Bessemer’s immediate family could enter the factory. The hand-made Nuremberg powder sold in London for £5.60 per pound; Bessemer lowered the price to £0.12 per pound. The money he made from selling the paint helped him fund his other inventions.
Bessemer patented a method for creating a continuous ribbon of plate glass in 1848, but the method was not successful in business. He gained experience designing furnaces, which later helped him develop his new steel-making process.
Bessemer process
Henry Bessemer became interested in solving a problem with steel production while trying to improve gun construction. From 1850 to 1855, he worked on creating affordable steel for weapons and patented his method. However, William Kelly, an American inventor in Kentucky, received a patent in 1857, which made Bessemer’s 1855 patent in the United States less valid.
On August 24, 1856, Bessemer described his method at a meeting of the British Association in Cheltenham. He called his presentation "The Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel." His process was later published in The Times. The Bessemer process used oxygen from air blown through molten pig iron to remove impurities and create steel. James Nasmyth had been working on a similar idea before this. After hearing Bessemer speak, Nasmyth stopped his project because he still had problems with his method. Bessemer later offered Nasmyth one-third of the value of his patent, but Nasmyth refused because he was about to retire.
Many industries struggled because they relied on cast iron and wrought iron, which were not as strong as steel. Cast iron was dangerous, as seen in accidents like the Dee Bridge disaster in 1847, the Wootton Bridge collapse, and the Bull Bridge accident in 1860. Similar problems happened again in the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 until cast iron structures were replaced with steel. Wrought iron was more reliable and had fewer failures.
At the time, the Bessemer process was very important because it made steel production cheaper, leading to steel replacing cast iron and wrought iron in many uses. Bessemer licensed his patent to five ironmakers, but they had trouble making high-quality steel. A Swedish ironmaker named Göran Fredrik Göransson succeeded first by using purer charcoal pig iron from Sweden. His results inspired Bessemer to try using purer iron from Cumberland hematite, but he still had limited success because controlling the carbon content was difficult.
Robert Forester Mushet, who worked at Darkhill Ironworks in the Forest of Dean, tested thousands of methods. He discovered that removing almost all carbon from iron and then adding exact amounts of carbon and manganese in the form of spiegeleisen improved the quality of the steel. This made the steel easier to shape.
When Bessemer tried to encourage others to use his improved method, he faced rejection. Eventually, he built steelworks in Sheffield with business partners like W & J Galloway & Sons. At first, production was small, but over time, the company grew and began selling steel at lower prices than competitors. This led to many companies applying for licenses to use his process, and Bessemer earned more than a million pounds in royalties.
However, Mushet received no money for his contributions. By 1866, he was poor and in poor health. His 16-year-old daughter, Mary, traveled to London to confront Bessemer, arguing that his success was based on her father’s work. Bessemer agreed to pay Mushet an annual pension of £300 for over 20 years, possibly to avoid legal action.
Bessemer also operated steelworks in Greenwich, London, near the River Thames, starting around 1865.
W. M. Lord noted that Sir Henry Bessemer was unusual because he turned his invention into a practical success and made money from it. In many cases, inventors did not profit from their ideas, and others benefited instead.
Other inventions
Bessemer was a well-known inventor who held at least 129 patents between 1838 and 1883. These patents covered many areas, including military weapons, tools for printing stamps with raised designs, a machine to remove sugar from sugar cane, and inventions related to iron, steel, and glass. Details about these inventions are written in his own book about his life.
After experiencing seasickness in 1868, Bessemer designed a passenger steamship called the SS Bessemer, also known as the "Bessemer Saloon." This ship had a cabin on special supports that kept it level, even in rough seas, to help passengers avoid seasickness. The system used water pressure controlled by someone watching a level to stay balanced. A model of the ship and a test version built in his garden in London worked well, but the ship was never tested properly on the ocean. During its first trip, the ship damaged part of a pier in Calais, which caused investors to lose trust. The ship was then taken out of service.
In 1857, Bessemer received a patent for a method of casting metal between rollers that spun in opposite directions. This idea was an early version of modern continuous casting processes. Today, his original concept is still used in the direct continuous casting of steel strip.
Death
Bessemer died in March 1898 in Denmark Hill, London. He is buried in West Norwood Cemetery, located in London SE27. Other important Victorians, such as Sir Henry Tate, Sir Henry Doulton, and Baron de Reuters, are also buried in the same cemetery.
Honours and legacy
In 1879, Queen Victoria gave Henry Bessemer a special title because of his work in science. That same year, he became a member of the Royal Society. In 1891, the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland gave him a special membership. In 1894, he was chosen as an International Member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1895, he became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Kelham Island Industrial Heritage Museum in Sheffield keeps an early example of a Bessemer converter for people to see.
A school in Hitchin was named after Bessemer. When the school was torn down in the 1980s, the new road built there was named Bessemer Close in 1995. Bessemer Way in Rotherham is also named after him. In 2009, a pub in Sheffield called "The Fountain" was renamed "The Bessemer" to honor Henry Bessemer, who helped shape Sheffield’s growth. A pub in Workington, Cumbria, is now also named after him.
In 2002, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) was created by combining older groups, including the Iron and Steel Institute, which Bessemer led from 1871 to 1873. During his time, the Iron and Steel Institute started the Bessemer Gold Medal. Today, IOM3 still gives this medal each year to people who have done important work in the steel industry. Recent winners include Indira Samarasekera.
English engineers felt sad that Bessemer did not receive more recognition from his own government. They noted that in the United States, where the Bessemer process was widely used, eight cities or towns were named after him.