Bessemer’s Early Achievements.

In 1855 Henry Bessemer began to change the face of the civilized world as he perfected his process for steel-making. The story of his struggles, defeats and eventual triumph is told in his autobiography published in London by Engineering.[35] From that book the publishers have permitted the following pages to be drawn. As a boy Henry Bessemer had a strong mechanical turn, amusing himself with a lathe at an age when lads usually prefer marbles or tag. In his youth there was a clear promise of inventive faculty, plainly inherited from his father, Anthony Bessemer, and naturally pursuing the lines of paternal interests. Mr. Bessemer, senior, manufactured type of particular durability; this quality his son discovered due to additions of a little tin and copper to the ordinary alloy. It was in this field of alloying that young Bessemer took his next step as an inventor, foreshadowing the tremendous feat he was in due time to accomplish. He busied himself as an engraver of rollers for embossing paper; in cutting their deeply incised lines there was a tendency in curves to drag or blur the surface of the metal. After several unsuccessful attempts he produced an alloy of tin and bismuth free from this fault.

[35] “Sir Henry Bessemer: an Autobiography.” Offices of Engineering, 36 Bedford St., Strand, London, 1905. 16 shillings.

Soon afterward Bessemer’s attention was directed to the bronze powders sold at high prices to printers and decorators. These powders were produced by hand in Germany by processes so laborious as to make the cost enormous. Examining the material with a powerful microscope Bessemer was convinced that he could dispense with hand labor, and turn out a powder of equal quality at nominal expense. His machinery for this purpose proved a success and laid the foundation of his fortune; unpatented and worked in secret for thirty-five years, it yielded him a huge profit indispensable for the costly experiments he had ever in hand. Naturally enough his fame as a man of ingenuity was promptly noised abroad, and his talents were next invoked for a much-needed improvement of sugar-cane milling. The moment that Bessemer saw a cane-mill at work he placed his finger on the chief cause of its wastefulness. He noticed that the cane was squeezed between two rollers for only a second, a period so short that the cane at once re-expanded and re-absorbed much juice. He forthwith designed a press, on much the same principle as a hydraulic press, which subjected the cane to severe pressure for two and a half minutes, until every drop of juice had left the fibres, almost doubling the output of the old machinery. For success in this task Bessemer declares himself indebted to a golden ignorance. He says: “I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem under consideration, inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the too-general belief that whatever is, is right. Hence I could, without check or restraint, look the question steadily in the face, weigh without prejudice or preconceived notions, all the pros and cons, and strike out fearlessly in an absolutely new direction if thought desirable.”

But in his case ignorance in one field was joined to knowledge in many another field, and there he found weapons wherewith to surmount an old difficulty at a quarter never assaulted before. He continues: “The first bundle of canes I ever saw had not arrived from Madeira a week before I had settled in my own mind certain fundamental principles, which I believed must govern all attempts to get practically the whole juice from the cane; but, of course, there were many circumstances that rendered it necessary to modify first principles, having reference to cost of construction, lightness for easy transit across country, freedom from necessity for repairs, and the like.”

The Late SIR HENRY BESSEMER
of London.