ere keen to improve the potter’s craft. They produced a wide variety of different types of pottery including a ware developed by Wedgwood to resemble tortoise-shell and a green glaze ware used for making pottery “Leaves.”
After five happy and profitable years with Whieldon, Wedgwood decided to set up in a “pot bank” (pottery) of his own. He first leased modest premises at Burslem known as Ivy House but soon his business had grown to such an extent that he had to move to the Bell Works where he had more space.
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Posted in Famous Inventors, Historical articles, History, Industry, Inventions, Weapons on Thursday, 6 February 2014
This edited article about Henry Bessemer first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 546 published on 1 July 1972.
Henry Bessemer, inventor of the Bessemer process
Henry Bessemer’s fertile mind was always busy with inventions. Born in Hertfordshire in 1813 he was the son of a successful inventor and it was in a type-foundry on the family estate that young Henry gained his first experience in engineering.
The family settled in London, when he was 17, and Bessemer began to produce many new ideas. Among these were a speedier method of type-setting; a cheaper way of making lead pencils; a forerunner of the modern franking machine; and a perforating machine to put the date on stamps so that they could not be re-used. However, he had not a very good head for business and he made little or no money from these ideas, although he received a knighthood for the inventions of the perforating machine 46 years after the Stamp Office had begun using it.
Not until he devised a process for making the “gold powder”, used for lettering book covers, to retail at a lower price than that imported from Germany did he achieve commercial success. Bessemer’s powder was made from brass as was that from Germany. Brass cost sixpence a pound and the German product made from it sold at £5.12s. while Bessemer sold his at £4 a pound.
The money he made from this enterprise enabled him to develop his other ideas. He was awarded a gold medal by Prince Albert for the highly-efficient sugar cane press he invented and he began making optical sheet glass and patented an improved method of silvering mirrors.
With the coming of the Crimean War the need was for armaments. His involvement with gun design led to the work for which Bessemer is most famous – the “Bessemer Process” of steel manufacture. Previously Swedish bar-iron, costing up to £20 a ton, was used for making steel. The expensive conversion process took ten days and a mere 50 pounds of steel could be made at a time. Also the type of metal obtained, while being excellent for making knives and other cutting implements, was unsuitable and too costly for other uses.
Bessemer’s process used the much cheaper crude pig iron and 5 tons of steel could be produced in just half an hour. Instead of days in a furnace, using large quantities of coke, by the “Bessemer Process” the iron once melted was kept in a molten state in the converter by the burning of its own impurities while a stream of air was continuously blown through it. The steel obtained was of a higher quality than that made in the old way.
Bessemer set up his own factory and other manufacturers in England and abroad used his process under licence, from which he gained a royalty of £2 a ton.
Henry Bessemer made over a million pounds from this process before he died in 1898. His knowledge of business methods had obviously improved over the years!
Posted in Historical articles, History, Industry, London, Politics, Railways, Royalty on Wednesday, 5 February 2014
This edited article about Queen Victoria first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 543 published on 10 June 1972.
Victoria and Albert arrive by train on a Royal Visit, by Ron Embleton
In his arms above the font, the Archbishop of Canterbury held the beautiful, chubby Royal baby. He was about to christen her when a heated argument arose between the Duke of Kent, who was the father, and the Prince Regent. Others joined in, while the Archbish