Who Is Henry Bessemer?

Henry Bessemer was the son of Anthony Bessemer, an inventor who created a new way to craft gold chains.(lemelson.mit.edu) The discovery of this method allowed the Bessemer family to move to England,(lemelson.mit.edu) where Henry was born. Young Henry was a protégé of his father. At the age of 17, Henry revolutionized the way that stamps were dated, leading to vast financial savings for the postal service.(lemelson.mit.edu) This successful endeavor inspired Henry to live a life of invention and discovery. Over the course of his career, he patented over 100 inventions including a sugar crusher. a dating system for stamps, and the Bessemer Converter. As a result of these market innovations and patents, Henry faced almost no adversity due to the …show more content…
Scholars theorized and speculated Bessemer did not truly invent the process but instead he stole the idea from someone else and refined it for his own benefit.(lemelson.mit.edu) Nonetheless, his work was just as valid because it was one of the key contributing factors to the industrial revolution. It allowed thousands of tons of high quality steel to be produced and delivered in a single day. To this day, Bessemer-Converter-inspired machines are the basis for making many steel products found in every household today.(lemelson.mit.edu) Robert Durrer was the first modern engineer to advance the Bessemer converter with one slight modification - instead of blowing air it blew in pure oxygen leading to far purer steel.(tc.umn.edu) Eliminating nitrogen found in atmospheric air was the major improvement. It is important to highlight that Bessemer did not invent the high quality steel produced from his machinery. Steel of the similar caliber was produced by Viking blacksmiths to craft extremely durable and effective swords centuries before