Inventor and engineer, born in Charlton, Hertfordshire, SE England, UK. A self-taught man, he learned metallurgy in his father's type foundry, and made numerous inventions. In 18556, in response to the need for guns in the Crimean War (18536), he took out a series of patents covering an economical process in which molten pig-iron can be turned directly into steel by blowing air through it in a tilting converter (the Bessemer process). He established a steelworks at Sheffield in 1859, specializing in guns and, later, steel rails. He was knighted in 1879.
Bessemer process
Throughout his life, Bessemer was a prolific inventor, but his name is chiefly known in connection with the Bessemer process for the manufacture of steel. Bessemer's attention was drawn to the problem of steel manufacture in the course of an attempt to improve the construction of guns. But Bessemer was fortunate enough to maintain them intact without litigation, though he found it advisable to buy up the rights of one patentee, while in another case he was freed from anxiety by the patent being allowed to lapse in 1859 through non-payment of fees. His results prompted Bessemer to try the purer iron, obtained from Cumberland hematite, but even with this he did not meet with much success, until Robert Mushet showed that the addition of a certain quantity of spiegeleisen had the effect of removing the difficulties.
Whether or not Mushet's patents could have been sustained, the value of his procedure was shown by its general adoption in conjunction with the Bessemer method of conversion. this Bessemer proved in 1865, by exhibiting a series of samples of steel made by his own process alone. In 1866, Bessemer provided finance for Zerah Colburn, the American locomotive engineer and journalist, to start a new weekly engineering newspaper called Engineering, and based in Bedford Street, London. Prior to the launch of Engineering, Colburn, through the pages of The Engineer, had given support to Bessemer's work on steel and steelmaking.
The pecuniary rewards of Bessemer's great invention came to him with comparative quickness; �
Other inventions
The invention from which he made his fortune was a machine for making fine brass powder which was used as a 'gold' paint.
Among Bessemer's numerous other inventions, not one of which attained a tithe of the success or importance of the steel process, were movable dies for embossed stamps, sugar machinery, and a ship which was to save her passengers from the miseries of mal de mer. This last had her saloon mounted in such a way as to be free to swing relatively to the boat herself, and the idea was that this saloon should always be maintained steady and level, no matter how rough the sea. For this purpose hydraulic mechanism of Bessemer's design was arranged under the control of an attendant, whose duty it was to keep watch on a spirit-level, and counteract by proper manipulation of the apparatus any deviation from the horizontal that might manifest itself on the floor of the saloon owing to the rolling of the vessel.
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.
Bessemer was the first to patent a method for making float glass, in 1848, but it was not commercially successful.
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