Bessemer converter invention (1856)

Henry Bessemer in 1856 develops air-blown cast-iron conversion to steel, enabling the Carnegie steel era.

You had this guy who was one of the greatest British scientists of all time. In 1856 he developed — this is his original Bessemer converter. He would take the cast iron and blow oxygen in here, and he essentially came up with a way to make puddled iron without puddling it — you blow air into cast iron and turn it into steel. That's the beginning of the Bessemer Age, of Andrew Carnegie becoming the richest man in the world. It's an interesting story that could be a good paper — how Andrew Carnegie did some sort of shady things in Pennsylvania and ended up with part of a steel company. He became the richest man in the world, so far as anyone we know, in modern times, in constant dollars. He actually was a very kind Scotsman in many ways.