While thus engaged, Bessemer learned that the government was being defrauded of probably five hundred thousand dollars a year, by people taking stamps from old and useless deeds, and using them on new deeds. Bessemer thought a stamp could be made which would prevent this fraud. Everything else was set aside and neglected, for this great object was to make his fortune. After some months, the die was completed. It was made of steel, and punched four hundred little holes in the parchment, each one of them forming a part of the design of the stamp. The die was no sooner finished, than Bessemer was off to the president of the Stamp Office. In triumph he said to himself: "A few more weeks will seal the fate of my life. If I succeed in saving the government so much revenue, they must reward me liberally. I shall then establish myself in a new home, and marry the young lady to whom I have for two years been engaged.

"The design gave great satisfaction . . . , and the Stamp Office authorities decided to adopt it. I was then asked if, instead of receiving a sum of money from the Treasury, I should be satisfied with the position of Superintendent of Stamps, at three or four thousand dollars a year. This was all I could desire. . . . A few days after this . . . , I called on the young lady to whom I was engaged, and showed her . . . my new . . . stamp. I explained to her how it could never be removed and used again . . . , when she at once said, 'Yes I understand this; but surely, if all the stamps had a date upon them, they could not be used again without detection.' While I felt pleased and proud at the clever and simple suggestion of the young lady, I saw also that all my more elaborate system of piercing dies, the result of months of study, and the toil of many a weary and lonely night, was shattered to pieces by it."

Bessemer felt in honor bound to present to the authorities the new die with the movable dates. It was so simple that it was adopted and is in use even to this day. But the new die was so simple that there was no need of a superintendent of stamps at four thousand dollars a year. Bessemer thought, of course, that the government would pay him liberally for his nine months of labor. At first there were half promises of reward, but the Stamp Office finally told him that he had offered the die to the government of his own free will, and that there was no money to give him. "Sad and dispirited, and with a burning sense of injustice overpowering all other feelings," he says, "I went my way from the Stamp Office, too proud to ask as a favor that which was . . . my just right."

This was a hard blow for a young man who thought he all but had a good position for life, and could marry at once the girl he loved. He was, however, not altogether discouraged. "I have made one good invention," he said to himself, "and I can make others. I will keep my eyes open for a 'good vein,' and when I find it, I will work it for all it is worth." For the next four or five years, he was busy with a number of inventions, when by accident he discovered the first of the "good veins" he was to find.

Henry's sister asked him one day to letter the title and her name on the cover of a flower book. The book was so beautiful that Henry thought common ink would not look well enough. He decided to do the letters in a paint made of bronze powder, so that they would look as if they were made in gold. When he went to get the bronze powder, he was astonished to learn that a little ounce bottle cost a dollar and a half. Most of us would have grumbled at the price, then paid it, and gone our way. Not so with Bessemer; his eyes were wide open for a "good vein."

"On my way home," he tells us, "I could not help asking myself over and over again, 'How can this simple . . . powder cost so much money?' for there cannot be gold enough in it, even at that price, to give it this beautiful rich color. It is probably only a better sort of brass; and for brass . . . a dollar and a half an ounce is a marvelous price."

Bessemer hurried home and with a little acid convinced himself that there was no gold in the powder. Here was powdered brass, selling at twenty-two dollars a pound, and the brass itself only cost twenty-two cents a pound.

"This powder must surely be made," he said to himself, "by some old-fashioned hand process, and offers a splendid opportunity for gain, if I can construct a machine to make it."

Bessemer set about making a machine that would change, at small cost, a solid block of brass into powder as soft and fine as flour. The first machine he built reduced the solid brass to powder, but when the powder was worked up into paint, it was dull, and lacked the beautiful color which gave value to the powder. "This," he tells us, "was not the first castle I had built, only to see it topple over."

For about a year after this, Bessemer was occupied with other things. But the idea of making a machine which in an hour would give to a pound of brass the value of an ounce of gold haunted him. With the aid of a microscope he studied the bronze powder he had bought, and that which he had made, and saw why his powder was worthless. He then designed and made with his own hands a number of working models, one to cut the brass, another to roll the tiny particles, another to polish them, and finally one to sift the powder. "At last after months of labor, the great day of trial once more arrived. . . . I felt that on the result of this . . . trial hung the whole of my future life's history, and so it did . . . I watched . . . with a beating heart, and saw the iron monsters do their appointed work."

Bessemer was now sure that he could make bronze powder. He interested in the new enterprise a friend who advanced fifty thousand dollars to build a factory. A patent would give no protection to such an invention. If they were to profit by it, everything must be kept a secret. So Bessemer worked for almost a year in designing all by himself the different machines.

To keep even those who had made the machines from having an idea of what they were for, the different parts of each machine were give out to be made at different places. The old "Baxter House," to become famous because of the many inventions made there in after years, was bought and fitted up for a factory. Here, at length, all the machines were assembled and put in place. To carry on the work,—and there was not very much to do, for the machines were all self-acting,—the three brothers of Bessemer's wife were employed, at extra good wages. They kept faithfully a secret for which at any time they might have received thousands of dollars. The secret did not become known for many years.

The profits from making bronze powder by this new process were enormous. Powder which cost a dollar and thirty cents a pound to make was sold at a dollar and thirty cents an ounce. From these profits, Bessemer had ample means to support himself and his family. What was quite as important, he had ample means to carry out and bring to completion the many other inventions born of his active mind. Thus this invention had a profound effect on Bessemer's life. It freed him, at the early age of thirty, from anxiety about the comfort of his family, gave him the use of all of his time, and supplied him with the money necessary to carry on his experiments.

During the next dozen years, Bessemer was busy with many different projects, and he took out no less than thirty patents. This brings us to 1854, when he was at work on a new kind of ball or projectile for cannon.

"If you cannot get stronger metal for your guns," said an army officer one day, "such heavy projectiles will be of little use." This remark set Bessemer at work to find a way to produce a metal from which big guns could be cast, and this led to the discovery of his now famous process of making steel.

To refine, or to change pig iron into steel, at that time, the common way was to break up about seventy pounds of pig iron into small pieces, and place them in a tub-like arrangement, over which poured a very hot flame. As the pig iron melted, a man called a puddler stood by and stirred the molten mass so that the flame and air reached all parts of it. After two or three hours of stirring, the liquid iron formed into grains. The heat was then increased until these grains melted and ran together. When this had occurred, the flame was shut off, and the puddler collected, on the end of an iron bar, the cooling metal in a ball-like mass called a bloom. The bloom was then put between great rollers, and rolled, reheated, and rolled again and again. Or it was hammered, reheated, and hammered over and over. It was this long process, expensive both in fuel and labor, that made steel cost so much.

At the old "Baxter House," Bessemer built a puddling furnace very much like those in common use at that time. One day, when working with his furnace, he noticed two pieces of pig iron on the inside which did not melt, although the heat in the furnace was great. About a half hour later, he observed that the pieces were still unmelted. It occurred to him to take one of them out and examine it. To his surprise, what he thought was a piece of unmelted pig iron turned out to be a piece of steel. He saw from this that if air was forced into the molten pig iron when under great heat, the iron would be changed into steel. A small furnace was built, and Bessemer proved to his own satisfaction that good steel could be produced in this way.

Most people would doubtless have been satisfied with so great a discovery and stopped. But to Bessemer's mind, this question came: "Yes, pig iron can be changed into steel by forcing air into the molten metal when fuel is used; but can steel be made in this way, without the use of fuel?" The answer to this question changed the history of the world.

Bessemer next built what he called a converter. It was about four feet high, and around the bottom were six pipes extending inside. The pipes were connected on the outside with a chamber into which air was driven by a forced draft.

When all was ready, the draft was turned on, and about seven hundred pounds of molten pig iron were poured into the converter. Except for a few sparks that came from the top, everything went on quietly enough for about ten minutes. Then things began to happen. Clouds of sparks and a roaring flame burst from the top. This was followed by a few mild explosions, and then the converter became a young volcano in active eruption. Slag and white-hot metal were thrown high into the air, and the converter rocked, as explosion followed explosion. All this was a surprise to Bessemer, and for a time he was fearful of his life. In another ten minutes the eruptions had ceased, the flame had died down, and all became quiet again.

The molten metal, hotter than ever metal had been heated before, was drawn off and molded into an ingot. Best of all, it was steel of good quality. Thus was born the most ferocious of all the machines used by men, and one of the greatest of all inventions. "What all this meant," says Bessemer, "what a perfect revolution it threatened in every iron-making district in the world, was fully grasped by my mind as I gazed on that glowing ingot, the mere thought of which almost overwhelmed me for the time."

Bessemer now worked to adapt the new process to commercial use. A number of different converters were made, and finally he hit upon the form which has since been in general use. By early August, 1856, he was ready to take out a patent on his invention, which came to be known the world over as the "Bessemer Process." Thus, in seven months, this great inventor brought forth an invention which changed iron into steel in twenty to thirty minutes, and which reduced the cost of making good steel from two hundred dollars to three or four dollars a ton.

The new invention was scarcely finished before Bessemer read a paper before a meeting of iron makers. The title of his paper, "The Manufacture of Iron (Steel) without Fuel," was the object of many a joke. "We will be burning ice next," remarked one iron maker. "Clay," said another to his friend, "I want you to come with me . . . this morning. Do you know that there is actually a fellow come down from London to read a paper on the manufacture of malleable iron without fuel?" Nevertheless, Bessemer's paper was the sensation of the meeting. Iron makers flocked to "Baxter House" to see the new process. In less than a month, Bessemer sold to the iron makers of England licenses to use the new process, to the amount of one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. Greater honor and greater wealth than he had ever dreamed of seemed easily within his reach.