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Lock & Whitfield (photographer), 'Sir Henry Bessemer', Woodbury print in 'Men of Mark', c. 1876 - in or before 1881. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-F-2001-7-235E-29 (Public Domain). Cropped and downscaled. · Photographic portrait of Sir Henry Bessemer by the London studio Lock & Whitfield (named on the print), reproduced by the Woodbury photomechanical process as a plate in the portrait volume 'Men of Mark' (text by Thompson Cooper), page 29, held by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (object number RP-F-2001-7-235E-29, 'Portret van Henry Bessemer'), dated by the museum c. 1876 - in or before 1881. The printed caption under the plate and the facing biography name the sitter. The file is the portrait oval cropped from the museum's double-page scan (7162 x 4570 pixels; crop 1440 x 1780) and downscaled to 971 x 1200 with no upscaling. · Public Domain Mark 1.0 and CC0 as stated in the Rijksmuseum's own item record; the photograph was made and published in London in the 1870s (public domain by age)
inventor · 19th Century
Henry Bessemer
1813–1898
Known For
engineeringtechnologicalindustrialinnovation
Not yet included in personality matching — the documented evidence doesn't yet cover enough of the personality model. Everything else on this page is fully available.
Trait Constellation
Key Achievements
British engineer and inventor whose converter process, announced in 1856, made steel in bulk by blowing air through molten pig iron; one account puts the price fall from about 50-60 pounds a tonne to 6-7. The process needed Mushet's spiegeleisen addition, and later Gilchrist and Thomas's basic lining for phosphoric iron, to work reliably.
After early licensees failed to make the process work, he set up his own steelworks company in Sheffield in 1859 and licensed the process more widely; his steelmaking royalties exceeded one million pounds.
A prolific inventor whose about 120 patent specifications range from bronze-powder machinery and a stamp against forgery to sugar and glass processes; he was Iron and Steel Institute president (1871-73), was knighted and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879, and gave his name to the Institute's Bessemer Gold Medal.
Moments That Reveal Them
By his own account, when the ironmasters who had paid for licences to his process could not make it work, he bought the licences back and set out to prove it commercially at his own works in Sheffield rather than argue the matter in the press.
This is consistent with an inventor who answered a public setback by continuing to develop the process rather than withdrawing it. Persistence
When Robert Mushet's agent asked for a licence for his manganese patents, Bessemer refused, invited Mushet to test the matter in court, and later paid him an annuity of 300 pounds, which a museum blog suggests may have been to avoid troublesome litigation.
This is consistent with someone who met a priority dispute head-on and also bought peace when it suited him. Conflict Tolerance
Turning Points
Having announced the process in 1856 and seen licensees fail to make good steel from it, he moved from selling licences to making steel himself, founding Henry Bessemer and Company in Sheffield in 1859.
This is consistent with an inventor who turned a patented idea into an operating business rather than leaving its exploitation to others. Opportunity Sensing
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Sources
- Henry Bessemer (Q310201), verified live via the Wikidata API (2026-11-04): English label 'Henry Bessemer', description 'British engineer (1813-1898)', Korean label 헨리 베서머, born 19 January 1813, died 15 March 1898, citizenship United Kingdom. Orientation only; not used as support for any row.
- Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), 'Steel heroes' guide (1 February 2019), entry on Sir Henry Bessemer 1813-1898, read in full. CANONICAL SIGNIFICANCE SOURCE: his main contribution was the Bessemer process, the discovery after about ten years of experiments that blowing a blast of air through molten pig iron converts it to steel, which increased steel production 200-fold and cut its price by a factor of 12; royalties from the steelmaking patents exceeded 1 million pounds; he was President of the Iron and Steel Institute 1871-3, instituted the Bessemer Gold Medal in 1873, was knighted and elected FRS in 1879; the specifications of his 120 inventions fill 9 volumes. The same page profiles Mushet (spiegeleisen, 1848 experiments; Bessemer Gold Medal 1876) and Thomas and Gilchrist (basic lining to reduce phosphorus) as the people who fixed the process. Institutional guide by the professional body of the industry; celebratory in tone but it names Bessemer's co-contributors.
- Sue Mossman, Science Museum Group blog, 'Onward Ever - Sir Henry Bessemer 19.1.1813 - 15.3.1898' (19 January 2013), read in full: his motto summed up one who faced and overcame obstacles; early fortune from a mechanised bronze-powder process kept secret by employing his three brothers-in-law; he presented the steel method to the British Association on 24 August 1856 ('The Manufacture of Iron without fuel') and later said he should have waited until the process was reliable; early poor-quality steel because of phosphorus in the ore, later resolved by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas; Robert Mushet's carbon-control improvements, which Bessemer rejected as claims while agreeing to pay Mushet 300 pounds a year, 'perhaps to avoid troublesome litigation'; difficulty winning acceptance in Britain from the War Office and Admiralty; in 1878 he wrote to The Times and the whole cabinet about his 1833 stamp invention; knighted 1879. Museum curator's blog; sympathetic but it records his setbacks and the Mushet payment.
- Claudia Flavell-While, 'Henry Bessemer - Man of Steel', The Chemical Engineer (1 November 2010), read in full: Bessemer had at least 117 patents spanning iron, steel, sugar, glass and ordnance; his steel work began with the Crimean War artillery problem; an observation that pig iron left in the air blast turned to steel led him to blow air through molten iron even though his foundry workers said the air would cool it; the process was patented in 1855 but ironmasters initially failed to get good steel; Mushet's spiegeleisen addition was the easier fix (first licensed 1865 to Dowlais); he set up Henry Bessemer and Company in Sheffield in 1859; William Kelly had made a similar discovery in the USA; phosphorus was solved by Gilchrist Thomas in 1879; the price of steel fell from 50-60 to 6-7 pounds a tonne. Trade-magazine feature by an IChemE editor; admiring but it records the failures and the other contributors.
- Grace's Guide to British Industrial History, 'Henry Bessemer' page, which reproduces two 1898 obituaries (Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a trade-press obituary) and editorial notes on his autobiography and telescope, read in full for the relevant passages: born 19 January 1813 at Charlton; inventions from a stamp against forgery (1832, knighthood only 46 years later in 1879) and bronze powder (secret kept for forty years) to type-casting, plate-glass rolling, continuous brakes and a repeating gun; the steel process was the result of more than ten years of labour and 'many disheartening failures'; royalties well over a million pounds; his patents were never overturned and he admitted the value of Mushet's spiegeleisen process while the Mushet patents had lapsed in 1859; in later life he made reflecting telescopes. Contemporary obituaries, written by his own professional community, so admiring.
- Dictionary of National Biography (1909) entry on Robert Forester Mushet, reproduced on the Today in Science History site, read in full: the independent counter-voice. Mushet found that adding spiegeleisen to air-blown metal made cast steel and patented it in 1856; his patents lapsed in 1859 through an unpaid stamp duty; the text records that the degree of validity of Mushet's claim is hard to determine because 'the reticence of both parties'; that Bessemer paid Mushet an annuity of 300 pounds for some years but 'invariably refused to pay him royalty', challenged him to bring an action for infringement, and Mushet declined; Mushet himself wrote that Bessemer would probably have made the discovery sooner or later; the Iron and Steel Institute gave Mushet its Bessemer Medal in 1876 with the founder's approval. Published in 1909 for the Dictionary of National Biography; independent of Bessemer, though it quotes both men and a trade writer who argued Bessemer had virtually solved the manganese problem already.
- Henry Bessemer, 'Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S.: An Autobiography' (London: Offices of Engineering, 1905), Internet Archive scan, read in the passages on his entry into metallurgy, the first licences to Dowlais and others, the failure of the licensees and his repurchase of the licences, the Sheffield works, the Mushet dispute and the 300 pounds annual payment. SELF-REPORT: his own account, written near the end of his life and defensive on priority and on Mushet; used only where corroborated or labelled as his own account. Not read in full (about 1,000,000 characters); chapters on the saloon steamship, telescope and later inventions were not read.