Henry Bessemer Facts
Henry Bessemer Facts
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| Interesting Henry Bessemer Facts: |
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| Henry was born in Charlton, son of successful inventor Anthony Bessemer. |
| Henry Bessemer's earliest successful invention was a complex steam-driven machine for making the bronze powder used in gold paint. |
| The only place bronze powder had been available was Nuremberg, Germany and it was very expensive. |
| The new Bessemer process made the manufacture of bronze powder cheaper and simpler and reduced the price to 1/40th of its previous cost. |
| From 1850 to 1855 Bessemer worked on the problem of making cheap steel for use in various industries. |
| Prior to the Bessemer process, steel was prohibitively expensive to produce and many industries had to rely on cast iron which was much less strong. |
| There had been many railway bridge disasters when cast iron bridge supports simply collapsed. |
| On 24 August 1856 Bessemer reported his process to the British Science Association in a paper titled "The Manufacture of Iron without Fuel. |
| The Bessemer process forced air through melted iron which raised the temperature, burned off the impurities and removed carbon which simplified the manufacture of steel. |
| Because Bessemer was unable to persuade existing iron companies to use his method, he and his partners built their own enormously profitable iron works in Sheffield, England. |
| From 1838 to 1883 Bessemer held 129 patents for his various inventions including for movable dies for embossed government stamps, a device to extract sugar from sugar and a machine to polish diamonds. |
| In 1868 he designed a gimbaled device for passenger ships to keep them level during rough seas but it was never put into actual use. |
| In 1857 he obtained a patent for a machine to roll steel and his original idea is still in use. |
| In 1879 Bessemer was knighted for his contributions and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. |
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