“Man of Steel”: how a British inventor turned the whole metallurgy upside down and went down in history (5 photos)

Before him, hundreds of pounds of steel were smelted a day. After him - hundreds of tons per day.





Henry Bessemer simply could not help becoming an inventor. His father was a respected employee of the London Mint, and part-time - a self-taught engineer and dreamer. By the age of 26 he imagined (and brought to life, which is important), several important inventions and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. So his genes son were what you need. Inventive.

And Henry followed in the footsteps of his father: he took up mechanics and metallurgy. At the age of 23, he made the first serious “know-how” - needle stamp for postage stamps. From that moment on, they could not be used. again, it would seem a trifle, but the young man increased the income of the British Treasury for £100,000 a year. For this, in 1879, he was made a knight. Well and in the next five years, Henry overcame a real inventive itch and he “created” new methods for the production of paint and oil, improved the design of railway cars and the system mine ventilation.

He was a very versatile scientist and engineer.



Henry Bessemer

Then Bessemer switched to weapons and came up with a new type cannon projectile. It was spin-stabilized in flight and seemed Henry is very promising, but the British command considered Bessemer's invention of some strange and ridiculous toy. But they the French became very interested: they promised the engineer funding his project of stabilized projectiles, with one but - their cast iron guns could not withstand such a load.





French cannon of the first half of the 19th century

Something had to be done about this, and Bessemer accepted the challenge.

Returning to England, Henry set to work. During one of the heats, the scientist found an unmelted piece of cast iron in the furnace and increased air supply. Half an hour later, nothing had changed - in front of him was the same whole piece of cast iron. He grabbed it with his thorns and saw thin layer of decarburized steel. Here is an invention for you, from this moment it was only necessary to debug the process.

During the next heat, Bessemer blew air through crucible with molten iron and almost burned out. It turned out that at purge burns out silicon and carbon, and a huge amount of heat. When Henry came to his senses and cooled down, he attached to the crucible conical neck. And then he abandoned the stove altogether, limited himself only to heating of technical scrap in the converter.



In October 1855, he received a patent for his invention, and in The following year, he spoke at a meeting of the British Association for the Assistance Science (BAAS). His report was called "Manufacture of malleable iron and steel without the use of fuel. At the beginning of the speech on Bessemer the whole hall laughed, reputable scientists still could not understand, how did Henry come up with such nonsense. At the end of the report, everyone was quiet and no one was laughing anymore.



A few years later, metallurgists around the world became switch to Bessemer smelting technology. She allowed to produce steel is hundreds of times faster and five times cheaper. And Henry went down in history as one of the fathers of the industrial revolution, which soon swept planet.