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Henry Bessemer

Original nameHenry Bessemer

British Inventor, Inventor of the Modern Steelmaking Process (the Bessemer Converter)

Those Who Turned Invention Into Industry · Industry-Builders

The Bessemer Converter ProcessThe Modern Steel IndustryLarge-Scale Cheap Steel Production

Who they are

Henry Bessemer (1813–1898) was a British inventor who in 1856 invented a steelmaking process — the "Bessemer converter process" — that blew air into molten pig iron and used the oxidation reaction to rapidly remove excess carbon and impurities; this process could turn several tons of pig iron into quality steel in a mere twenty minutes, raising efficiency dozens of times over the traditional methods that took days and could only produce small batches, and thereby greatly lowering the cost of steel production. Before this, steel was a scarce material extremely costly for its cumbersome process, used mainly for high-value items such as swords; after the Bessemer process appeared, steel for the first time became economically feasible for large-scale application in heavy industry such as railway rails, bridge structures, building frames, and later shipbuilding, the key material basis for the rapid expansion of heavy industry in the Second Industrial Revolution. Bessemer himself was a prolific inventor holding over a hundred patents in his life, having earlier developed gold-powder printing and improvements to sugar refining and much else wholly unrelated to steelmaking, the steelmaking process being only the most historically influential of his many commercially successful inventions.

Primary sourcesHenry Bessemer’s patent documents (British Patent No. 2321, 1856)

Key stories

Smelting a Batch of Steel in Twenty Minutes

The converter process Bessemer invented, by blowing a strong air stream into the molten pig iron in a huge pear-shaped vessel and using the violent oxidation reaction between the impurities in the iron and the oxygen to generate high heat itself, could smelt a whole batch of several tons of steel in a mere twenty minutes or so, compared with the traditional process that took days to produce a small batch — this leap in efficiency gave steel, for the first time, the economic feasibility of large-scale industrial production.

From Luxury Material to Industrial Cornerstone

Before the Bessemer process appeared, steel, costly for its cumbersome process, was mainly confined to high-value small items such as swords, and large infrastructure such as railway rails still relied mainly on lower-strength wrought iron; after the Bessemer process greatly lowered the cost of steel production, steel rails, steel bridges, and steel-frame buildings for the first time gained the economic feasibility of large-scale spread — the key material precondition for the rapid expansion of heavy-industry infrastructure such as railway networks and skyscrapers in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Relationships

Ally

🌉Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "Bessemer Medal"The "Bessemer Gold Medal" established by the Iron and Steel Institute is still one of the most prestigious awards in the global iron-and-steel metallurgy industry, honoring outstanding contributors to the steel industry.

Appears in

Steam and Iron: The First Industrial RevolutionSteel, Interchangeable Parts, and Vulcanized Rubber

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