USA HISTORY

WESTWARD EXPANSION INDUSTRIALIZATION URBANIZATION 1870 1900

AMERICAN INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT IN THE GILDED AGE

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
Which invention allowed factories to produce steel cheaper and faster?
A
Bessemer Process
B
Transcontinental Railroad
C
Either A or B
D
None of the above
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -Henry Bessemer, in full Sir Henry Bessemer, (born January 19, 1813, Charlton, Hertfordshire, England-died March 15, 1898, London), inventor and engineer who developed the first process for manufacturing steel inexpensively (1856), leading to the development of the Bessemer converter.

Detailed explanation-2: -Born in Hertfordshire, England, Bessemer received 110 patents throughout his life. His inventions included a solar furnace, a way to make graphite for pencils, an astronomical telescope, and a diamond-polishing machine.

Detailed explanation-3: -Carnegie may have been known as a successful man of business but he was also an innovator. In a desire to make steel more cheaply and more efficiently, he successfully adopted the Bessemer process at his Homestead Steel Works plant.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Bessemer Steel Process was a method of producing high-quality steel by shooting air into molten steel to burn off carbon and other impurities. It was named after the British inventor Sir Henry Bessemer, who worked to develop the process in the 1850s.

Detailed explanation-5: -Patented in 1855, the Bessemer process decreased the cost of steel from £50–60/t ($80–95/t) to £6–7/t ($9–11/t), hand-in-hand with vast increases in scale and speed of steel production. Steel girders for bridges, buildings, railroads, skyscrapers – all were unimaginable before Bessemer.

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