Who was Henry Bessemer?
Inventor, Engineer, Industrialist. Developer
of the Bessemer Process for steel manufacture.
Date and Place of Birth:
19th January 1813, Charlton, Hertfordshire, England.
Family Background:
Son of an Engineer and typefounder.
Education:
Left the local school to enter his father's workshop.
Chronology/Biography of Henry
Bessemer:
1830: Set up his
own company in London to produce small castings and art works.
1840: His early
years were concerned with developing a number of inventions and
it was his process of forming a gold paint from brass additives
that gained him his wealth and standing in society. With the profits
of this trade he set up a larger factory at St. Pancras in London.
Much of late Victorian engineering used gilding as a decoration
to represent the power and glory of the British Empire at the the
time.
1854: During the
Crimean War Bessemer invented a new type of artillery shell but
the British Generals told him that the cast iron cannons of the
time where not strong enough to take the forces involved in its
firing and so he set about making iron stronger.
1855: (October)
Took out a patent on his process for making cast iron more malleable
by introducing air into the liquid metal which greatly reduced its
carbon content.
1859: He established
a major steel works in Sheffield making that area renowned in later
years for its quality products in steel. Amongst other things he
manufactured rails for the new railways and locomotives and bridge
parts.
1877: He was elected
as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
1879: He was Knighted
by Queen Victoria. His ideas in steel manufacturing weren't universally
popular but Andrew Carnegie in the USA learnt much from the method
and became one of the world's richest men in the process.
Marriage:
To the daughter of his best friend, Miss Alien.
Places of Interest:
LONDON:
Imperial War Museum
Date and Place of Death:
15th March 1898, London.
Age at Death:
84.
Site of Grave:
Norwood Cemetery, Norwood, London, England.
