Bessemer process
Convertidor Bessemer
- Date
- 1856 · confidence high
- Place
- Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Henry Bessemer (with Robert Mushet's improvement)
- People
- 👤 Henry Bessemer1813–1898
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Blowing air through molten pig iron to burn off the carbon and produce steel in twenty minutes instead of days. It cut the price of steel to a sixth and turned it into a mass material.
William Kelly claimed priority in Kentucky (experiments from 1847, US patent 1857). Bessemer experimented in London (St Pancras) and set up the steelworks in Sheffield in 1858; the process only worked well with the addition of Mushet's spiegeleisen and with phosphorus-free ores until Thomas-Gilchrist (1878).
What it led to
- The age of steel: rails, bridges, ships, skyscrapers
- The great steelworks of Sheffield, Pittsburgh (Carnegie) and the Ruhr
- The Second Industrial Revolution
- Steel armaments (Krupp) and the arms race
Built on
- Puddling and rolling1784
- Hot blast1828
- Coke blast furnace
- William Kelly's 'pneumatic' process
Made possible
- Steel rail1857
- Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnace1856-1864
- Gilchrist–Thomas process1877-1878
- Steel-frame skyscraper1885
- Teniente converter (copper)1977
- Siemens-Martin furnace (as a competitor)
- Steel structure for skyscrapers
- Steel cannon