Henry Bessemer: Making Steel from Iron

He was a grade-school dropout who grew up in a small country town. But Henry Bessemer would become one of the richest men in London and would help lay the foundation for the Industrial Revolution. As a youth, Henry discovered a natural talent for making things out of metal, including machines of all kinds. In all, Bessemer was credited with over 100 inventions. None was as important as the Bessemer process, a method to cheaply produce steel out of iron. Steel’s light weight and strength made it the perfect building material for everything from buildings to railroad tracks. This is the story of how a quiet, unschooled young man became one of the greatest inventors of the nineteenth century.