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Michael Thomas

Dr. Bedell

CAS 137H

November 4, 2019

The Invention of the Bessemer Process as a Paradigm Shift

Ever since it became economically feasible, there is little argument that steel has been

the main material component of modern society; from how we get around, to the buildings in

which we remain stationary, steel is pervasive in many applications. However, the main qualifier

in that statement, ‘since it became economically feasible,’ is very important to consider. This

occurred when the Bessemer Process was invented. Named after British engineer Sir Henry

Bessemer, this process revolutionized steel production and led engineers across the world to

reevaluate how or whether they used steel in their products after its introduction in 1856

(“Bessemer process”). This change in building techniques led to changes in working conditions

and the rise of labor unions and workers’ rights campaigns. The paradigm shift brought about by

the advent of strong and affordable steel led to a conscious change in the minds of the scientific

and business communities and an unconscious revision in the public’s world view.

Steel has many desirable qualities, which is why it has become so important in a variety

of applications. Its most notable properties are its combination of toughness and hardness. These

terms are used interchangeably in everyday conversation, but in the world of Materials Science

they mean two different things. Hardness is a material’s ability to resist forming cracks, while

toughness is the energy required for that crack to propagate through the material. Neither of these

characteristics on its own is good enough for most structural or intensive applications. A tough

but soft material may eventually succumb to a death-by-a-thousand-cuts type of fate, being filled
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with micro-cracks until they eventually connect together and weaken the material enough for a

failure. Contrarily, a hard material lacking toughness such as glass will fail the first time it gets a

hint of a crack. This combination of relatively high hardness and toughness values is what makes

steel such a unique and desirable material for use in the wide variety of applications that make up

the modern world. In fact, it is a repeating pattern that steel is either more hard and tough than

the materials it replaced for any given application, or that its combination of high hardness and

toughness made a previously impossible application possible (Ramirez).

TECHNOLOGY OF THE BESSEMER PROCESS

Steel production occurred long before the Bessemer Process was invented, but the difference

with the new process is the way the steel is produced which changes some of its properties.

Specifically, this change decreases the carbon content of the steel, making it less brittle and more

tough.

Pre-Bessemer Process. Before the Bessemer Process was invented, most steel was made by a

process called cementation and was called “blister steel”. This steel had high carbon content

compared to Bessemer steel, about 2-5%. This high carbon content made blister steel relatively

brittle and prone to defects. It was made by re-melting cast iron to remove the carbon, the

heating that freshly made wrought iron with charcoal or soot or another carbon source for a

number of days to allow the iron to absorb a specific amount of carbon (Pingriff). This steel was

not widely used for a few reasons, although it was primarily the low rate of manufacture

resulting in high cost prohibiting adoption. However, the brittleness was also a factor in these

decisions.

How the Bessemer Process Works. The Bessemer process makes steel tougher by decreasing the

carbon content and more useful by increasing the production rate. The former is done by
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changing reevaluating how the problem is approached, and the latter is done by reducing the

number of steps. The cementation process took iron with carbon in it, cast iron, and removed all

the carbon to control the amount added back in (Pingriff). The Bessemer Process meanwhile

allows the metallurgical engineers making the steel to simplify the process by thinking instead to

control the amount of carbon removed from the cast iron thus leaving the desired amount

remaining. This is done by pouring molten cast iron into a cauldron lined with packed sand

bricks (SiO2) or another ceramic oxide, and then blasting air through the cauldron (Pingriff).

Both the air and the sand serve the same function and work in similar ways. The sand helps to

scrub some carbon from the molten steel by absorbing it to bond with the already present oxygen

to make CO and CO2. Similarly, blasting air (containing oxygen) through the molten steel causes

the carbon to bond with the oxygen and bubble out as CO and CO2 (Ramirez). The air also

absorbs other carbon impurities such as sulfur and phosphorus which then get bubbled out as

their respective oxides (“The Iron Manufacture…”). This results in a pure steel with a low

carbon content (less than 2%) and almost no other impurities (Pingriff). Bessemer created his

own furnace that could melt more iron at once than previously possible to achieve this pure steel

with economies of scale (Ramirez). These qualities improve the properties of the steel, and

because it is quicker to produce the cost is also lower. The combination of these characteristics

helped push steel into the products it is in today.

ARCHITECTURE INDUSTRY

Humans have been building structures for thousands of years, but over time there have

been many ideological shifts in how these structures are made. While there have been shifts due

to social demands and urbanization, the most important shifts happened because of advances in

construction materials. Through the ages, buildings have gone from being made from mud,
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wood, and straw, to being dominated by manufactured materials such as concrete and the subject

of this piece, steel (“Materials and construction”). The changes brought by changing materials

can best be seen by viewing building heights over time. As materials gain more and more

desirable properties, they are better able to withstand the stresses and forces of having a taller

building. Think about how much force you need to apply to a piece of straw to break it versus a

piece of wood versus a piece of steel. It is for reasons like this that the incredible trend seen in

Figure 1 is possible (“A Brief History…”). The vertical dotted line signifies the invention of the

Bessemer Process, and it is clear that there is at least a correlation with the timing of that and the

meteoric rise in building height since then. However, the relationship extends beyond correlation

World's Tallest Buildings Over Time

2750

2500

2250
Burj Khalifa
2000
Eiffel Tower
Height in Feet

1750 Washington Monument

Lincoln Cathedral
1500

1250

1000

750

500
1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2100
Year (CE)

Fig. 1 - A graph of the heights of the world's tallest buildings and the year they
achieved that title. The decline between the first two buildings is a result of the
first building partially collapsing. Data from Time Magazine.

and into causation, as nearly all the buildings built after the introduction of the Bessemer process

used steel in their construction. The exceptions, as noted in Figure 1, are the Washington
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Monument and the Eiffel Tower. For the Washington Monument, this is because construction

was originally started in 1848, before the Bessemer Process, but postponed due to the Civil War

among other causes (“History & Culture”). The Eiffel Tower, finished in 1888, was the first

metal building to become the world’s tallest, using cast iron. The Chrysler Building, finished in

1929, was the first building on the list using steel, made using the Bessemer Process. Every

record setting building since then has also been built from steel (“A Brief History…”).

Architects the world over found themselves able to use a brand new and exciting material

in steel, and they took advantage of it. In the face of urbanization continuing all through the late

19th century and beyond, new architectural strategies were crucial. This is because city planners

the world over were, and continue to be, looking for ways to optimize existing land use and not

sprawl out their area (Saroglou). Steel buildings became readily accepted figments of cities.

EXTENDED IMPACTS

An important invention does not have an isolated impact, and the repercussions of the

introduction of the Bessemer Process were no exception. Ranging from economic impacts to

government legislation about workers’ rights, these impacts took more than half a century to

reveal themselves.

Economic Impacts. The United States would not have grown to become a global powerhouse in

the 20th century without the Bessemer Process and the steel industry. In 1880 the output of

Bessemer treated steel in the United States surpassed that of Great Britain for the first time, and

it remained higher for every year after that (Boeckel). By 1890, the America was churning out

more than 30% of global steel production of all types, and the percentage was even higher for

high quality Bessemer Steel. And by 1925, the United States produced more than half the

world’s supply of steel (Boeckel). All this is to say that steel was a central part of the American
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economy from the late 19th century into the middle of the 20th century and remains important to

this day. It was considered a business barometer by many people, a kind of microcosm of the

entire US economy (Boeckel).

As such an important part of the economy, steel was greatly influenced by the most

important economic event of the early 20th century, the Great Depression. During the depression,

many smaller mercantile steel mills were forced to shut down because they could no longer

support themselves. This helped further increase the already massive influence of industrial mills

operated by companies like US Steel, Bethlehem Steel, and others (Warren). World War II

helped snap the steel industry back into action by augmenting demand for guns, cars, tanks, and

other military equipment (Warren). Because of its importance to the US economy as a whole,

this also helped revive the rest of the economy.

Social. As explained, the steel industry created by the Bessemer Process was a dominant force in

the United States. This was prevalent in more than just the economy, as it was a primary force in

social development as well. Specifically, the rise of labor unions and the workers’ rights

movement was dependent on the steel industry as well.

Originally, there was not much laborers could do to protest working conditions in steel

factories. The companies were so large and had so much legal weight to throw around that any

protests could easily be squashed. However, World War I helped to change this. With a large

portion of able-bodied men off serving in the War, the steel factories had a decreased labor force

to draw upon. Accordingly, they needed to be slightly more accommodating to their workers,

because replacement workers were more difficult to find (Brown). The Steel-workers Union was

the first prominent organized labor group to demand a guaranteed annual wage, and although

they did not initially achieve this, they were given something (Harris). A Supplementary
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Unemployment Benefit was agreed for the union workers, and this was a compromise to ensure

that the workers had enough financial security to know that if they lost their job, they would still

have some money coming in. An interesting extended effect of the rise of labor unions is that

cities with well-developed union groups saw an increase in racial solidarity (Brown). The rise of

labor unions plays its own critical role in American history, and that role would be far different

without the influence of steel workers.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

The Bessemer Process was a critically important invention. Its impacts ranged far beyond

the obvious tangible improvements to the properties of steel. From being a critical component of

the things that make up our lives, to causing the socioeconomic changes that defined the last

hundred and fifty years of American culture and helping desegregate the United States, steel has

been instrumental in our history.

Prior to 1856, steel was a relatively niche material used in applications where the high

cost could be justified and the brittleness was tolerable. The Bessemer Process helped to change

that. By stripping out excess carbon from steel instead of adding it in, steel became less brittle

and more malleable, allowing it to be more suitable for many cases. Additionally, by making

steel less expensive, companies could afford to build using this new miracle material, thus

igniting an upward craze in architecture as building height grew exponentially.

Having this material with properties that had previously been mutually exclusive

encouraged people in other industries to rethink their decisions and adapt to the new market.

Steam powered turbines for electricity generation are subjected to high heat and forces on a

regular basis, so steel’s high melting point and ductility made it a desirable material for use there

(McNeil). In the railroad industry, steel rails made using the Bessemer Process could last up to
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nine times longer than the iron rails they replaced, thus helping grow the rail network in the

United States (Ramirez). As this helped to decrease the average travel time between locations, it

brought people closer together and allowed them to perceive their world as smaller. There are

many stories that run similar to those, and all revolve around steel.

CONCLUSION

There are certain events in history that forever change the world and the people who

inhabit it. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech is one example, the election of

Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa is another, and the terror attack on September 11,

2001 is a third example of this. The invention of the Bessemer Process in 1856 is another event

with equally powerful ramifications. This entire essay has been focused on the effects the

Bessemer Process had on the people who were directly impacted by it: the engineers, scientists,

architects, and laborers who all worked with steel. That leaves out the vast majority of the global

population. It would be completely impossible for modern ways of life to exist without steel.

Cities would be a mere shadow of their current glory, transportation as it is now known would

not exist, and workers across all industries could still be stuck under the tyranny of monopolistic

employers without concern for their safety. But who thinks about this on a daily basis? No one.

The general public goes on with their happy lives and does not stop to think about what their life

would be like without the invention of affordable, tough steel. A paradigm shift that redefines the

way people live and think about the world without them even realizing it is the most powerful

type of shift.
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Works Cited

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content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1950812,00.html.

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9780198821472-e-263>.

Boeckel, Richard. "The Iron and Steel Industry." Editorial Research Reports 1930, vol. II, CQ

Press, 1930, pp. 303-24. CQ Researcher, 19 Oct. 2019,

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Sociology, vol. 100, no. 6, May 1995, pp. 1479–1519., doi:10.1086/230669.

Harris, Seymour Edwin. American Economic History. Beard Books, 2002.

“History & Culture.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 26 Aug. 2019,

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“Materials and construction.” Understanding Architecture: an Introduction to Architecture and

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McNeil, Ian. An Encyclopaedia of the History of Technology. Routledge, 2003

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Ramirez, Ainissa. "Bessemer's Volcano and the Birth of Steel." American Scientist, vol. 104, no.

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"The Iron Manufacture and Mr. Bessemer's Invention." American Railway Times (1849-1859),

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