Astonished and delighted, after two years and a half of labor, Bessemer at once took out a patent; and the following week, by request, Aug. 11, 1856, read a paper before the British Association, on "The manufacture of malleable iron and steel without fuel." There was great ridicule made beforehand. Said one leading steel-maker to another. "I want you to go with me this morning. There is a fellow who has come down from London to read a paper on making steel from cast-iron without fuel! Ha! ha! ha!"
The paper was published in the "Times," and created a great sensation. Crowds hastened to Baxter House to see the wonderful process. In three weeks Mr. Bessemer had sold one hundred thousand dollars worth of licenses to make steel by the new and rapid method. Fame, as well as great wealth, seemed now assured, when lo! in two months, it being found that only certain kinds of iron could be worked, the newspapers began to ridicule the new invention, and scientists and business men declared the method visionary, and worse than useless.
Mr. Bessemer collected a full portfolio of these scathing criticisms; but he was not the man to be disconcerted or cast down. Again he began the labor of experimenting, and found that phosphorus in the iron was the real cause of the failure. For three long years he pursued his investigations. His best friends tried to make him desist from what the world had proved to be an impracticable thing. Sometimes he almost distrusted himself, and thought he would give up trying, and then the old desire came back more strongly than ever. At last, success was really assured, but nobody would believe it. Every one said, "Oh, this is the thing which made such a blaze two or three years ago, and which was a failure."
Mr. Bessemer took several hundredweight of the new steel to some Manchester friends, that their workmen might try it, without knowing from whence it came. They detected no difference between this which cost thirty dollars a ton, and what they were then using at three hundred dollars a ton.
But nobody wanted to buy the new steel. Two years went by in this fruitless urging for somebody to take up the manufacture of the new metal. Finally, Bessemer induced a friend to unite with him, and they erected works, and began to make steel. At first the dealers would buy only twenty or thirty pounds; then the demand steadily increased. At last the large manufacturers awoke to the fact that Bessemer was underselling them by one hundred dollars a ton, and they hastened to pay a royalty for making steel by the new process.
But all obstacles were not yet overcome. The Government refused to make steel guns; the shipbuilders were afraid to touch it; and when the engineer of the London and North-western Railway was asked to use steel rails, he exclaimed, excitedly, "Mr. Bessemer, do you wish to see me tried for manslaughter?" Now, steel rails are used the world over, at the same cost as iron formerly, and are said to last twenty times as long as iron rails.
Prejudice at last wore away, and in 1866, the "Bessemer process," the conversion of crude iron into steel by forcing cold air through it for fifteen or twenty minutes, was bringing to its inventor an income of five hundred thousand dollars a year! Fame had now come, as well as wealth. In 1874, he was made President of the Iron and Steel Institute, to succeed the Duke of Devonshire. The Institute of Civil Engineers gave him the Telford Gold Medal; the Society of Arts, the Albert Gold Medal. Sweden made him honorary member of her Iron Board; Hamburg gave him the freedom of the city; and the Emperor of Austria conferred upon him the honor of Knight Commander of the Order of Francis Joseph, sending a complimentary letter in connection with the jewelled cross and circular collar of the order. Napoleon III. wished to give him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, but the English Government would not permit him to wear it; the Emperor therefore presented him in person with a gold medal weighing twelve ounces. Berlin and the King of Wurtemburg sent him gold medals. In 1879 he was made Fellow of the Royal Society, and the same year was knighted by Queen Victoria. In 1880 the freedom of the city of London was presented to him in a gold casket; the only other great discoverers who have received this distinction being Dr. Jenner, who introduced vaccination, and Sir Rowland Hill, the author of penny postage. In the United States, which gives no ribbons or decorations, Indiana has appropriately named a flourishing town after him.
It is estimated that Sir Henry Bessemer's one discovery of making steel has saved the world, in the last twenty-one years, above five thousand million dollars.
When his patent expired in 1870, he had received in royalties over five million dollars. In his steel works at Sheffield, after buying in all the licenses sold in 1856, when the new process seemed a failure, the profits every two months equalled the original capital, or in fourteen years the company increased the original capital eighty-one times by the profits.
How wise it proved that the country lad did not obtain the permanent position of superintendent of stamps, at three thousand dollars a year!