page_title: Bessemer process
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Bessemer process / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Portarit of w:de:Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo, w:en:Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo, copper engraving, picture: 148x101 mm; plate: 149x102 mm; published in Adam Olearius: Neue Orientalische Reisebeschreibung. 1646. - after title page
context_page_description: The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten.
  Related decarburizing with air processes had been used outside Europe for hundreds of years, but not on an industrial scale. One such process was known in the 11th century in East Asia, where the scholar Shen Kuo of that era described its use in the Chinese iron and steel industry. In the 17th century, accounts by European travelers detailed its possible use by the Japanese.
  The modern process is named after its inventor, the Englishman Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1856. The process was said to be independently discovered in 1851 by the American inventor William Kelly though the claim is controversial.
  The process using a basic refractory lining is known as the "basic Bessemer process" or Gilchrist–Thomas process after the English discoverers Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas.
context_section_description: A system akin to the Bessemer process has existed since the 11th century in East Asia. Economic historian Robert Hartwell writes that the Chinese of the Song Dynasty innovated a "partial decarbonization" method of repeated forging of cast iron under a cold blast. Sinologist Joseph Needham and historian of metallurgy Theodore A. Wertime have described the method as a predecessor to the Bessemer process of making steel. This process was first described by the prolific scholar and polymath government official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) in 1075, when he visited Cizhou. Hartwell states that perhaps the earliest center where this was practiced was the great iron-production district along the Henan–Hebei border during the 11th century.
  In the 15th century the finery process, another process which shares the air-blowing principle with the Bessemer process, was developed in Europe. In 1740 Benjamin Huntsman developed the crucible technique for steel manufacture, at his workshop in the district of Handsworth in Sheffield. This process had an enormous impact on the quantity and quality of steel production, but it was unrelated to the Bessemer-type process employing decarburization.
  The Japanese may have made use of a Bessemer-type process, which was observed by European travellers in the 17th century. The adventurer Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo describes the process in a book published in English in 1669. He writes, "They have, among others, particular invention for the melting of iron, without the using of fire, casting it into a tun done about on the inside without about half a foot of earth, where they keep it with continual blowing, take it out by ladles full, to give it what form they please." According to historian Donald Wagner, Mandelslo did not personally visit Japan, so his description of the process is likely derived from accounts of other Europeans who had traveled to Japan. Wagner believes that the Japanese process may have been similar to the Bessemer process, but cautions that alternative explanations are also plausible.
caption: Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo described the Japanese use of the Bessemer process.[4]
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