IR museum Discriptive Journal

Dear Diary,

As my first journal entry, I’ll have to start with the beginning of my life. It wasn’t pleasant, but then again, it still isn’t…
Starting at the age of four, my child hood was tough and ruined. My father had passed away leaving me, my younger sister Sarah, and a sick mother behind to go on with our lives. My mother’s sickness only got worse and she was sent to the London hospital soon after my father’s death. The worst thing my sister and I needed was another family member passing away. We prayed, wishing God to let us have her back healthy. We didn’t pray hard enough. She only got worse, and her sickness was soon incurable. The hospital could only keep her in for a few more days! Or we would have to pay for more hospitality. I had no experience of making money just yet. The following week; she passed away, leaving me, a five year old, to take care of my younger sister, a two year old. We couldn’t afford to live the way we had used to live, and so I was forced to work, to be able to pay my bills. I would be taken to the country, fed well, paid well, and eat well. The government even said that my sister would be in a care home, and she would be treated just as well as I was. I was more than lucky, to work and get a reward for it, so I accepted the generous offer. Days later, a group of boys my age, and myself were taken out of the country and sent to an immense steel factory. The owner studied us with a close eye and soon enough, they scurried us away to work with machines we knew nothing about. We were not instructed on how to handle machines, but forced to, even then. When we made a wrong move, we were spat at. The rooms were hot, and dark. The work was exhausting and the nights were damp and cold. Working in steel mills was anything but generous. The owners were greedy and everything was for them. Pay days never seemed to arrive. New batches of young boys were brought into the country to suffer the same way like we did, and they were enlightened to have a perfect life planned ahead for them. Dinner was cucumber soup and nothing better. Around 20 boys were forced to sleep in a tiny room made out of stones and a small door which was locked to prevent escapes. I had flashbacks of my life with my family and sister. To only think that now, I am stuck in a stone room with boys I just met. I wished factories didn’t start, and us kids were not forced to work. Everyday, a child seemed to injure themselves terribly and wouldn’t be taken care of. Death was no issue. Everyday a new batch of boys was delivered thus, plenty of new workers ready to work themselves to bits. Sometimes molten rock burned poured on to us, and burnt us badly on our hands. Sometimes machines had poisonous explosions. And sometimes, they crashed on to us. If we didn’t get injured that way, we would get killed slowly. The coal dust hanging in the lungs, cause a lifelong disease. Years past by; and I managed to survive, even though, I had injured myself quite a few times, I took care of myself, with the help of my friends here and then. I never got to see my sister again, and I didn’t even know if she was out there, living. If what the government said was true, I doubted it. I was told to have a life of care and respect, and what I got was the opposite. Soon I made my way out. Children were they’re only productive workers because they fit well to crawl under the machines to fix them. Till now, and forever on, I’ll have terrible memories to look back to. And a future with a life disease.
-Patrick J.

IR museum News Article

BESSEMER RECIEVES CREDIT FOR KELLY’S WORK.

An American Citizen William Kelly introduced to the community, an idea on how to create steel. Kelly unfortunately resulted in Bankruptcy due to financial problems, and is now forced to sell his patent. His patent “blowing air through molten rock to reduce impurities” seeks its buyer. Not so long ago, Henry Bessemer, our British inventor, purchased this patent and is currently building onto the idea. He is making minor changes to increase the level of creating successful steel. Bessemer, for building on with what Kelly left, naturally became known. His name later on was used for this process.

William Kelly was born in Pennsylvania. In 1846, he purchased an iron manufacturing company, and changed its original name, Eddyville iron-work, to Kelly & Company. He started his experiments by air-boiling, which is the process of blowing air through molten iron to reduce the carbon content.

William Kelly was educated in metallurgy, during his college. At the same time, Henry Bessemer received little education on metallurgy from his father. Henry Bessemer was known for other useful inventions, such as railway operation, and sugar refining. He had very limited education on metallurgy then, but he was able to build a working converter on creating steel. It was called the Bessemer’s converter.

Soon after Bessemer’s converter went Public, the people took it that Bessemer had come up with the idea and manufactured this converter all on his own, with no outside help. The story is now uncovered. Bessemers’ help and kick off, William Kelly, is well as much part of the process. Bessemer’s name was used for the process and naturally, so was its converter. Kelly, unknown, spent the rest of his life manufacturing axes, and working in banking.

-SA
(Sabei Aung)

1870 stock market feedback

I didn't think that i was the best entrepreneur but i made more money than what i had in the start which is $80. It was really easy to sell things, but buying things that was in high demand was really hard. Mr.Coyle's phrase "you have to spend money to make money" is absolutely one of those phrases that i have to totally agree with. You MUST buy stock, to sell it. A lot of it has to do with luck too. Educated guesses are extremely useful too, because for the great northern railroad, it started off really low, and each stock was very cheap. So i bought about six Northern Railroad's and did not sell until i got the price i wanted. I bought it for really low, but when the stock prices changed, i sold it for really high. This is when another one of Mr.Coyle's phrase "buy low, and sell high" comes in. When stocks are being sold for really low, you might as well buy it because even at the end when the stock prices are low, you can just sell them, and still make SOME sort of profit. The Comstock silver had very low stock prices, so i just bought more, and at the end, it raised quite an amount.
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" That metaphor could me a lot of things, but one of them is PROBABLY don't buy the same things. It's okay to buy about 6 of the same thing, but don't don't buy just all the same thing. Don't spend ALL your money on the same stock because if that doesn't make good money, then you will not gain profit.

Feed back Sept 10th.

I think after getting the Socratic seminars done, I've accomplished one of my goals. It was to 'participate' in the class
discussions a lot more, and now i feel much more comfortable. I think i wasn't as comfortable in the first because we were
all new to class, and we were getting the feel of the class room more, so we must've been less comfortable.Another one of
my goals were to improve my writing skills. And i have in many ways. Just recently, our homework for writing in interviews,
was a tough writing piece, and unless we were very detailed and descriptive, it wouldn't have gotten a good peer edit score.
Time HAD to be taken, to write these pieces, and i did. It took me time, to think and i had to revise over and over again.
Now, i even have some pointers of how to make writing much more effective and interesting for the reader. Over all, yes, I've
met my goals i little more, but there's always room for improvement.



Pros and cons for the industrial revolution.

Pros:
1. Countries became much more productive.
2. The common people had access to much more products, and not only the rich had to be able to afford buying these products.
3. Much more people were educated.
4. Gave a lot of work opportunities.

Cons:
1. There was a lot of pollution.
2. Good quality products were rare.
3. The use of natural recourses increased.
4. It endangered the lives of many younger children.

Sir Henry Bessemer Interview

Ready to roll, Sir Henry Bessemer leaned back into the sofa, settling in for a short interview about his life’s great achievements and inventions!

An English man, Henry Bessemer was born in England January 19th, 1813. “I chose to take the same paths my farther took.” He admitted. Bessemer’s farther, Anthony Bessemer was an inventor of a machine that led him to his fortunes.
Henry Bessemer first went public and titled the idea “Manufacture of iron without fuel.”

A skilled engineer and inventor, Henry Bessemer had introduced to us the first economical industrial process for the mass-production of steel. His invention then, helps us now and will help the future generations. I even had a strong feeling that he had grown up from a young boy into an enthusiastic engineer. “After leaving school, I begged my father to let me remain at home, and learn something of practical engineering.”

His name Bessemer was chiefly known in association with the “Bessemer’s process”. The famous process for manufacturing steel had help Britain, for before this process, they had no practical method of reducing the carbon content of pig iron. He admitted, “It is true I had been successful on a small scale in overcoming one of the main difficulties in the new process, but there was still much to invent, and much that at that period I necessarily knew nothing about.”

The Bessemer’s process was to manufacture steel by blowing compressed air through molten iron, to burn out excess iron and impurities. Bessemer had manufactured steel from molten pig iron. The heat of the oxidation increases the temperature of the mass and keeps the molten iron, molten during the operation. Bessemer’s process included its own machine, naturally called the Bessemer converter (a machine that holds about 8 to 30 tons of molten iron). The wide end of the converter is through where air is forced upward the converter during the process. The way Bessemer manufactured steel had topped the other techniques before. Ever since Bessemer had introduced this to England, it had been used through out the nation. For one to come up with a brilliant idea like this, time must have been involved. “My life at this time was pretty much one of hard work and steady attention to business, from which I could only snatch short intervals.”

The Net Effect of The Industrial Revolution

Negative.

• The lives of the factory workers were not very good, because it was dirty and also dangerous.
• There were death and serious injuries involved.
• The working hours for all the workers were a very long time, and there were not much income for them.
• Children were forced to work because they were small and could go to fix things under working machines.

Positive.

· Families got money, and houses to live in.

· For the supplies, the other people got more to buy and use for their daily household jobs.

· Products have been produced in mass production and in a commodity.

· Instead of the child going to work alone to work for the family, all the family got to do their work together.

· Lives would run by clocks, so people could get to work on time.