Bessemer Converter

In the mid-nineteenth century very little steel was being produced In britain. In 1855 only about 50,000 tonnes were bieng produced and that at the ex-orbitant average cost of 75 Euro a tonne. Wrought iron was at that time still the main product of the British iron Industry.
  During the Crimean War an English Inventor called Henry Bessemer (1813-98) designed a new rotating artillery shell. Bessemer foung his invention unsatisfactory becouse the tarditional cast-iron cannon wastoo weak As a result he developed his famous steel making process

  To produce steel,impurities such as silicon, manganese and phosphorous have to be removed from the pig iron. Bessemer's Idea was to blow a blast of air through the converter containing the iron, So oxidishing the sillicon and manganese. This revolutionary process meant that steel could now be produced cheaply and swiftly.