Henry Bessemer Quotes

• We fixed on No. 4, Queen Street Place, for our City offices, and it was from there that so many of my patented inventions were dated.

  Henry Bessemer

• The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

  Henry Bessemer

• On March 4th, 1830, I arrived in London, where a new world seemed opened to me.

  Henry Bessemer

• It is true I had been successful on a small scale in overcoming one of the main difficulties in the new process, but there was still much to invent, and much that at that period I necessarily knew nothing about.

  Henry Bessemer

• In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone.

  Henry Bessemer

• I was quite unable to make any white metal alloy hard enough to be made into powder by my machinery.

  Henry Bessemer

• I had now arrived at my seventeenth year, and had attained my full height, a fraction over six feet. I was well endowed with youthful energy, and was of an extremely sanguine temperament.

  Henry Bessemer

• I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right.

  Henry Bessemer

• I fear this little episode does not speak very favourably for my business capacity in those early days, for I certainly ought to have made much more than I did by this really important invention.

  Henry Bessemer

• At this period the enthusiasm of the amateur was fast giving way to a more steady commercial instinct, and I let no opportunity slip of improving my position, but I felt that I was still labouring under the disadvantage of not having acquired some technical profession.

  Henry Bessemer

Henry Bessemer (10)

Birth:	19th January, 1813
Death:	15th March, 1898
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Inventor

About

Sir Henry Bessemer was born in Charlton, Hertfordshire, England. He was an English engineer and inventor, whose steelmaking process would become the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century. He also established the town of Sheffield as a major industrial centre. He had been trying to reduce the cost of steelmaking for military ordnance, and developed his system for blowing air through molten pig iron to remove the impurities. This made steel easier, quicker and cheaper to manufacture, and revolutionised structural engineering. He also made over 100 other inventions in the fields of iron, steel and glass.

Related Authors

• John Robert Gregg
• Andy Hertzfeld
• Charles Proteus Steinmetz
• Robert Boyle
• Eli Whitney
• Pope Sylvester II
• Erasmus Darwin
• Brian Walker
• Douglas Engelbart
• John Harington

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 22nd December

Births

• 1908 - Max Bill
• 1861 - Sara Jeannette Duncan
• 1970 - Ted Cruz
• 1889 - B. Carroll Reece
• 1948 - Martin Yan

Deaths

• 1987 - Sir Henry Thomas Cotton
• 1998 - Virginia Graham
• 2001 - Lance Loud
• 1899 - Dwight L. Moody
• 1989 - Samuel Beckett