Portrait of Henry Bessemer

People/engineer, scientist

Henry Bessemer

Henry Bessemer (1813–1898), engineer, scientist, from United Kingdom. Linked to iron ore.

The lucky break

Read his paper On the Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel at the 1856 Cheltenham meeting of the British Association, and the success of his experiments drew wide attention.1,2,3

The downfall

Early licensees failed to make good steel and the process was nearly written off. Bessemer built his own works at Sheffield in 1859 and showed why they had failed.1,2,3

Legacy

His converter blew air through molten iron to remove carbon and impurities. The Sheffield works became profitable about ten years after opening. He was knighted in 1879.1,2,3

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1856Bessemer announces his steelmaking process4
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Where next

Events

DiscoveredBessemer announces his steelmaking processHe blew air through molten iron and made steel cheap.1

Sources

  1. Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement: Bessemer, Henry Wikisource (public domain source text)
  2. Wikidata item Q310201
  3. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons
  4. Henry Bessemer (collection people record) Science Museum Group

Pictures on this page: Henry Bessemer 1890s2.jpg, Unknown (Mondadori Publishers) (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Pictures: Kirunavaara gruva, Kiruna., Fotograf okänd, / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Mijnramp Bois du Caizier, Marcinelle, België. Schacht, Rossem, Wim van / Anefo / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); NASA's ASTER Shows Brazilian City After Dam Disaster, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).