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.”