This illustration dates to the 1870s and shows the apparatur for making Bessemer steel. The Bessemer process was the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. It was named for Sir Henry Bessemer of England. The vessel, converter, in which it took place, is an egg-shaped vessel, about feet in diameter, made of wrought iron in two parts and lined in the inside with a thick infusible coating made from ground fire-bricks and a certain kind of sandstone. The two parts are united by flanges strongly bolted together, and the converter swings on trunnions, one of which is hollow and admit
This illustration dates to the 1870s and shows the apparatur for making Bessemer steel. The Bessemer process was the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. It was named for Sir Henry Bessemer of England. The vessel, converter, in which it took place, is an egg-shaped vessel, about feet in diameter, made of wrought iron in two parts and lined in the inside with a thick infusible coating made from ground fire-bricks and a certain kind of sandstone. The two parts are united by flanges strongly bolted together, and the converter swings on trunnions, one of which is hollow and admits the airblast by the pipe (b) to the base of the vessel. The pipe, which turns on the trunnion with the converter, conducts the air to a kind of chamber (d) from which it passes into the vessel through about fifty holes of .5 inches diameter. To the other trunnion a toothed wheel is attached, which engages the teeth of the rack receiving motion from hydraulic pressure in a cylinder. The iron for the operartion is melted in a furnace having its hearth above the level of the converter, which is turned so that its axis is horizontal and its mouth upward. In this position, it is ready to receive the molten iron, which is conveyed to it by a trough, lined with sand, when the furnace is tapped. C here is the trough; A, the converters; B is the axis of the converter; the crane or revolving table is D; the handles are H. The vessel into which the molten steel is poured from the converter is E.
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Photo credit: © Ivy Close Images / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: 1800s, 1870s, 19th, bessemer, blast, britain, cast, century, converter, diagram, english, furnace, henry, industrial, interior, iron, mass, pipes, producing, production, revolution, sir, smelting, steel, trunnion, tuyeres
