October 1856: Beating Bessemer - Forgotten engineer J. G. Martien

2023 marks the 125^th anniversary of the death of great English inventor Sir Henry Bessemer, remembered today for inventing the Bessemer Process: the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron.

Delving into The Engineer’s archive, though, begs the question: was Bessemer the true inventor of his process, or just the first to commercialise it? Confined to just a quarter of a page in the October 17, 1856 edition of The Engineer, is the claim that an American working at a Welsh ironworks, J. G. Martien, is the actual discoverer, with a patent for the process filed three months prior to that of Bessemer’s.

The discovery involved using oxygen in a blast of air, blown through molten pig iron to burn off the impurities and thus manufacture steel both cheaply and efficiently. This process revolutionised the steel and iron industry, and the Bessemer Process became the most important technique for steelmaking from 1856 – 1950, lasting the test of time until the introduction of the open hearth method and more technical oxygen steelmaking processes. Bessemer himself was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1879 for his invention and overall contribution to science, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year.