Lot Essay
After the Crimean War (1854-56), there was a large demand for iron and steel for making armaments and also for constructing railways. Henry Bessemer created a process by which molten iron could be converted into steel by blowing air through it in a convertor. The Bessemer Process dramatically reduced the price of steel and the invention spread throughout England and the United States, where Andrew Carnegie made an enormous fortune using it to produce steel.