The Bessemer Process Sparked A Turning Point In The 1850's

The uncommonly known Bessemer process sparked a turning point in the 1850’s. A process designed to yield steel at a much faster rate allowed for a development in traditional structures‒bridges, buildings, and skyscrapers‒as well as advanced economic theory and practices and their relation to a successful business model. Revolutionaries such as Andrew Carnegie (a successful entrepreneur) and James Buchanan Eads (an engineer specializing in bridges) paved the way for practices and techniques still used today, over 160 years later. The Bessemer process, designed by William Kelly and Henry Bessemer, expedited the production of steel very rapidly. Prior to the Bessemer process, steel was produced at an extremely lethargic pace. It required “15 days” of labor in order to “produce 50 pounds of steel” (Bruce 1). Henry Bessemer saw the a major flaw in the production and created a way to produce “five tons of steel in 30 minutes” (Bruce 1). Despite the revelatiotions made by Kelly and Bessemer, “little of the new metal was being made” as tycoons were tepid of this nascent process, unwilling to invest on the off chance that it would not succeed (Johnson and Leon 1). A young businessman by the name of Andrew Carnegie noticed the potential of the Bessemer process and took a leap of faith. Within a few short years, Carnegie owned “six of the 11
Had the Bessemer process been invented just 50 years after it was, we, as a society could still be living in a world without cell phones, advanced cars, and major cities like New York City due to the lack of expansion that steel provided. Mass production would not be a common practice and immigrants would not be flooding into the country as there would not be a need for grueling jobs such as mining, laying railroad tracks, and building technological marvels such as skyscrapers and the Golden Gate