BESSEMER, SIR Henry, English inventor: b. Charlton, Hertfordshire, 19 Jan. 1813; d. London, 15 March 1898. He received mechani cal training at an early age in the type foundry of his father, a French artist, and going to London at 18 began his career as a modeler and designer. His earliest invention was an im proved method of stamping deeds which the revenue office straightway adopted without giving him any compensation therefor. Late in life he brought the matter to the attention of the government and was then knighted (1879) in aclmowledgment of his services in this par ticular. His inventive ability was next turned to the production of a new method of making bronze-powder or °gold° paint, as it was called, which proved a commercial success, and subse quent inventions .of his were machines for making Utrecht velvet and improvements in type-casting machinery. At the time of the war in the Crimea he designed a projectile in tended to revolve in its flight, but as the cannon of that day were not strong enough to permit of its use, he went on experimenting in Paris under the patronage of Louis Napoleon till he had secured a much improved kind of cast iron. This, however, did not fully satisfy him and he continued at work refining the iron until steel was produced. He took out patents for this invention in 1855, but persevered in experiments till at his London bronze factory steel ingots had been manufactured which could be rolled into rails without hammering. When this pro cess had become fully developed the Bessemer Steel Works were built in Sheffield, where, be sides employing a large number of workmen in steel manufacture, many others were trained for similar work in factories all over the world. On 13 Aug. 1856, he read before the British Association at Cheltenham a paper dealing with the invention which has made his name famous °The Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steei without Fuel.° This was ti new and cheap
process of rapidly malcing steel from pig-iron by blowing a blast of air through it when in a state of fusion, so as to clear it of all carbon, and then adding just the requisite quantity of carbon to produce steel— a process which has introduced a revolution in the steel-making trade, cheap steel being now made in vast quan tities and used for many purposes in which its price formerly prohibited its application. At the Birmingham meeting in 1865 he read a second paper °On the Manufacture of Cast Steel, Its Progress and Employment as a Sub stitute for Wrought Iron.° The Bessemer pro cess not only stimulated the growth of the steel industry but greatly reduced the cost of manu facture and rendered steel available for rails and general engineering work. Bessemer was also the originator of a method still in use for compressing into a solid block the graphite em ployed in the manufacture of lead pencils of a system of rollers for embossing and pnnting paper, and of improvements in telephones. In 1859 he received the Telford Medal of the In stitute of Civil Engineers, and in 1872 the Al bert Medal of the Society of Arts. He was president of the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, 1871-73, and in 1879 became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In the United States eig.ht localities and one railway bear his name. Bessemer was an honorary member of many foreign scientific and engineering so cieties, among which was the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Before the latter, in December 1896, he presented a paper entitled °The Origin of the Bessemer Process,0 printed in its 'Transactions.>