biography
| name: |
Bessemer, Sir Henry
|
pronunciation:
[besemer]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1813–98)
|
| biography:
| Inventor and engineer, born in Charlton, Hertfordshire, SE England, UK. A self-taught man, he learned metallurgy in his father's type foundry, and made numerous inventions. In 1855–6, in response to the need for guns in the Crimean War (1853–6), he took out a series of patents covering an economical process in which molten pig-iron can be turned directly into steel by blowing air through it in a tilting converter (the Bessemer process). He established a steelworks at Sheffield in 1859, specializing in guns and, later, steel rails. He was knighted in 1879. |
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