BESSEMER, SIR HENRY (1813-1898), English engineer, was born on Jan. 19, 1813, at Charlton, in Hertfordshire. Throughout his life he was a prolific inventor, but his name is chiefly known in connection with the Bessemer process for the manufacture of steel. It has been of enormous industrial importance, since it effected a great cheapening in the price of steel. Bessemer's attention was drawn to the problem of steel manufacture in the course of an attempt to improve the con struction of guns. His process was the decarbonization of cast iron by forcing a blast of air through the mass of metal when in the molten condition. Thus he was able to convert melted cast iron into malleable iron in a perfectly fluid state. The first pub lic announcement of the process was made at the Cheltenham meeting of the British Association in 1856. He erected steelworks in Sheffield to develop the process. At the outset he had found great difficulty in making steel by his process—in his first licenses to the trade iron alone was mentioned. Experiments he made with South Wales iron were failures because the product was devoid of malleability. Robert Mushet showed that the addition of a cer tain quantity of spiegeleisen (see IRON AND STEEL) had the effect of removing the difficulties. The value of Mushet's procedure was shown by its general adoption in conjunction with the Besse mer method of conversion but Bessemer proved it not essential by showing, in 1865, samples of steel made by his own process. Bessemer became F.R.S., and received a knighthood in 1879. He died at Denmark hill, London, on March 15, 1898.
See an Autobiography with concluding chapter by Sir Henry's son, H. Bessemer (1924) ; R. F. Mushet, The Bessemer-Mushet process (1883).