Sir Henry Bessemer

Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) was an English civil engineer and inventor, born at Charlton, Herts. Of his many inventions the chief is the process called the Bessemer process that is named after him. It was the first successful method of making steel in quantity at low cost. It was a process "of converting pig-iron into steel at once by blowing a blast of air through the iron while in fusion till everything extraneous is expelled, and only a definite quantity of carbon is left in combination." The process revolutionised the iron and steel trade all over the world, leading, as had been calculated, to the production of thirty times as much steel as before by the first decade of 20th century, and at one-fifth of the cost per ton.