His inventions won him a knighthood:
Sir Henry Bessemer.
Our next pioneer is an Englishman who lived over a century ago. The revolutionary invention to which he gave his name is still one of the foundation stones of modern civilisation.
In 1855, Sir Henry Bessemer invented the process which first enabled industrial mass-production of steel. Bessemer was a self-made man who had made his first fortune by inventing a special “gold” powder from brass for use in paints.
Later he turned to metallurgy and invented a process for manufacturing steel vastly more efficiently and in huge quantities, that is still the basis of most of the processes used today. Bessemer’s autobiography portrays him as just a serious, hardworking man driven by tremendous curiosity coupled with a strong propensity to perfectionism.