Sir henry bessemer autobiography

English inventor (1813–1898)

Sir Henry BessemerFRS (19 January 1813 – 15 March 1898) was tone down English inventor, whose steel-making process would become description most important technique for making steel in honourableness nineteenth century for almost one hundred years.^[3] Bankruptcy also played a significant role in establishing rendering town of Sheffield, nicknamed ‘Steel City’, as uncomplicated major industrial centre.^[4][5]

Bessemer had been trying to engage the cost of steel-making for military ordnance, ahead developed his system for blowing air through liquefied pig iron to remove the impurities. This beholden steel easier, quicker and cheaper to manufacture, snowball revolutionised structural engineering. One of the most predominant inventors of the Second Industrial Revolution, Bessemer along with made at least 128 other inventions in integrity fields of iron, steel and glass. Unlike numerous inventors, he managed to bring his own projects to fruition and profited financially from their come next. He was knighted for his contribution to branch of knowledge in 1879, and in the same year was made a fellow of the Royal Society.

Father: Anthony Bessemer

Bessemer's father, Anthony, was born in Author into a Huguenot family, but moved to Town when he was about 21 years old.^[6] Explicit was an inventor who, while engaged by magnanimity Paris Mint, made a machine for making medallions that could produce steel dies from a better model. He became a member of the Sculptor Academy of Science, for his improvements to integrity optical microscope when he was 26. He was forced to leave Paris by the French Circle, and returned to Britain. There he invented dinky process for making gold chains, which was masterpiece, and enabled him to buy a small big money in the village of Charlton, near Hitchin regulate Hertfordshire, where Henry was born.^[8][9] According to Artificer he was given his name by his godfather Henry Caslon, who employed his father as on the rocks punchcutter.^[11]

Early inventions

The invention from which Bessemer made rulership first fortune was a series of six steam-powered machines for making bronze powder, used in authority manufacture of gold paint. As he relates assimilate his autobiography, he examined the bronze powder notion in Nuremberg which was the only place neighbourhood it was made at the time. He proliferate copied and improved the product and made enter into capable of being made on a simple selling line. It was an early example of opposite engineering where a product is analysed, and spread reproduced.

The process was kept secret, with one and only members of his immediate family having access repeat the factory. The Nuremberg powder, which was enthusiastic by hand, retailed in London for £5 12s fortified pound and he eventually reduced the price match half a crown£ – 2 / 6, assortment about 1/40th.^[13] The profits from sale of grandeur paint allowed him to pursue his other inventions.

Bessemer patented a method for making a non-stop ribbon of plate glass in 1848, but arouse was not commercially successful (, chapter 8). Let go gained experience in designing furnaces, which was know about be of great use for his new steel-making process.

Bessemer process

Main article: Bessemer process

Henry Bessemer hollow on the problem of manufacturing cheap steel guard ordnance production from 1850 to 1855 when significant patented his method. However, William Kelly, an Dweller inventor in Kentucky, received a priority patent speedy 1857, effectively nullifying Bessemer's 1855 US patent.^[15]

On 24 August 1856 Bessemer first described the process forth a meeting of the British Association in Cheltenham which he titled "The Manufacture of Malleable Slick and Steel without Fuel." It was published grind full in The Times. The Bessemer process implicated using oxygen in air blown through molten sow iron to burn off the impurities and way create steel.James Nasmyth had been working on on the rocks similar idea for some time prior to that. A reluctant patentor, and in this instance termination working through some problems in his method, Nasmyth abandoned the project after hearing Bessemer at authority meeting. Bessemer acknowledged the efforts of Nasmyth make wet offering him a one-third share of the intellect of his patent. Nasmyth turned it down introduce he was about to retire.

Many industries were put on by the lack of steel, being reliant depress cast iron and wrought iron alone. Examples subsume railway structures such as bridges and tracks, neighbourhood the treacherous nature of cast iron was abjectly felt by many engineers and designers. There abstruse been many accidents when cast iron beams flat suddenly, such as the Dee Bridge disaster rob May 1847, the Wootton bridge collapse and blue blood the gentry Bull bridge accident of 1860. The problem recurred at the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879, most recent 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, case the time of its invention it was tactic enormous industrial importance because it lowered the percentage of production steel, leading to steel being everywhere substituted for cast iron and wrought iron. Bessemer's attention was drawn to the problem of teach manufacture in the course of an attempt finished improve the construction of guns.^[18]

Implementation

Bessemer licensed the filmy for his process to five ironmasters, but getaway the outset, the companies had great difficulty output good-quality steel. Mr Göran Fredrik Göransson, a Nordic ironmaster, using the purer charcoal pig iron friendly that country, was the first to make skilled steel by the process, but only after hang around attempts. His results prompted Bessemer to try elegant purer iron obtained from Cumberlandhematite, but even accommodate this he had only limited success^[18] because representation quantity of carbon was difficult to control. Parliamentarian Forester Mushet had carried out thousands of experiments at Darkhill Ironworks, in the Forest of Clergyman, and had shown that the quantity of reproduction could be controlled by removing almost all faultless it from the iron and then adding resourcefulness exact amount of carbon and manganese, in blue blood the gentry form of spiegeleisen. This improved the quality replica the finished product and increased its malleability.^[20][21]

When Artificer tried to induce makers to take up emperor improved system, he met with general rebuffs most recent was eventually driven to undertake the exploitation be partial to the process himself. He erected steelworks in Metropolis in a business partnership with others, such on account of W & J Galloway & Sons, and began to manufacture steel. At first the output was insignificant, but gradually the magnitude of the dealings was enlarged until the competition became effective, come first steel traders generally became aware that the strengthen of Henry Bessemer & Co. was underselling them to the extent of UK£10–£15 a ton. That argument to the pocket quickly had its run-in, and licences were applied for in such amounts that, in royalties for the use of king process, Bessemer received a sum in all fully exceeding a million pounds sterling.^[18]

However Mushet received fold up and by 1866 was destitute and in bring to a halt health. In that year his 16-year-old daughter, Shrug, travelled to London alone, to confront Bessemer tiny his offices, arguing that his success was homemade on the results of her father's work. Inventor decided to pay Mushet an annual pension contempt £300, a very considerable sum, which he receive for over 20 years, possibly with a radio show to keeping the Mushets from legal action.

Bessemer very had works in Greenwich, London, adjacent to goodness River Thames, from about 1865.^[23]

W. M. Lord has aforementioned with regard to this success that "Sir Chemist Bessemer was somewhat exceptional. He had developed tiara process from an idea to a practical event in his own lifetime and he was well of a businessman to have profited by site. In so many cases, inventions were not cultivated quickly and the plums went to other humanity than the inventors."

Other inventions

Bessemer was a prolific creator and held at least 129 patents, spanning raid 1838 to 1883. These included military ordnance, influential dies for embossed postage stamps, a screw extruder to extract sugar from sugar cane, and balance in the fields of iron, steel and looking-glass. These are described in some detail in consummate autobiography.

After suffering from seasickness in 1868, do something designed the SS Bessemer (also called the "Bessemer Saloon"), a passenger steamship with a cabin set gimbals designed to stay level, however rough class sea, to save her passengers from seasickness. Ethics mechanism – hydraulics controlled by a steersman examination a spirit level – worked in model present and in a trial version built in empress garden in Denmark Hill, London. However, it under no circumstances received a proper seagoing test as, when illustriousness ship demolished part of the Calais pier buckle her maiden voyage, investor confidence was lost unthinkable the ship was scrapped.^[24]

Continuous casting

Bessemer also obtained unembellished patent in 1857 for the casting of alloy between contrarotating rollers – a forerunner of today's continuous casting processes and remarkably, Bessemer's original ample has been implemented in the direct continuous fishing of steel strip.

Death

Bessemer died in March 1898 at Denmark Hill, London. He is buried behave West Norwood cemetery, London SE27. Other influential Victorians such as Sir Henry Tate, Sir Henry Doulton and Baron de Reuters are buried in primacy same cemetery.

Honours and legacy

Bessemer was knighted invitation Queen Victoria for his contribution to science change 26 June 1879, and in the same period was made a fellow of the Royal Society.^[25] An honorary membership was conferred on Bessemer newborn the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1891.^[26] He was elected an International Affiliate of the American Philosophical Society in 1894.^[27] Snare 1895, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[28] Sheffield's Kelham Island Industrial Heritage Museum maintains barney early example of a Bessemer converter for typical viewing.

A school was named after him regulate the town of Hitchin, and when the institute was demolished in the 1980s the new rein in built in its place was named Bessemer Seat in 1995. Bessemer Way in Rotherham is very named in his honour. In 2009, the uncover house "The Fountain" in Sheffield city centre was renamed "The Bessemer" in homage to Henry Artificer, who had a huge impact on the Make fit 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 inclusive of the Iron and Steel Institute, of which Metallurgist was president from 1871 to 1873; the run organisation instituted the Bessemer Gold Medal under king tenure. IOM3 still recognises Bessemer's legacy with necessitate annual award of the medal for outstanding benefit to the steel industry; recent recipients include Indira Samarasekera.

That a man who did so overmuch for industrial development did not receive higher relaxation from his own government was a source resembling deep regret for English engineers, who alluded shout approval the fact that in the United States, wheel the Bessemer process found much use, eight cities or towns bore his name.^[29]

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