SIR HENRY BESSEMER.—Among his early contrivances may be noted a method by which basso-relievos were copied on cardboard, and also a machine for producing bronze-dust at a low price. Knowing well the inefficiency of the Patent Laws, Bessemer was careful to conduct his operations as secretly as possible, and the manufacture of gold bronze powder is still invested with much of the mystery of mediæval alchemy. After inventing a system for improving the Government stamps on deeds and other documents, so as to render forgery impossible, saving the country several millions (for which he received no reward or acknowledgment whatever from the Government), he submitted to the authorities at Woolwich a novel form of projectile. On its rejection in England he exhibited it to the emperors of France and Austria, who acknowledged its value, and gave the inventor every assistance for its improvement. It was incidentally remarked, however, that some stronger metal than any then in use would be necessary for the construction of the guns, to enable them to resist so heavy a charge. It is said that this remark first led Bessemer to turn his attention to the improvement of the method of smelting iron. He established and maintained at his own expense a foundry in the north of London, where he continued for several years to expend nearly the whole of his private fortune. At length, in 1856, at the Cheltenham meeting of the British Association, the scientific world was startled, and almost a panic created at Birmingham, by the announcement of the discovery of the process, since known as the Bessemer process, which was to effect a revolution in the metal industry. The invention, however, remained incomplete till the year 1859, when it first began to be adopted by the Sheffield and Birmingham manufacturers. Recent improvements—more particularly the Gilchrist-Thomas process—have since greatly increased its value and removed, or at least diminished, its earlier defects. Bessemer steel is now used for every purpose in “hardware,” and has almost entirely supplanted wrought iron. For rails it has proved invaluable. Then its extreme tenacity and toughness render it most suitable for the purposes of ship-building and boiler construction. It has been adopted by Krupp in Prussia, and Elpstrand in Sweden, for the manufacture of their celebrated ordnance; and even Sir William Armstrong, in designing his coiled steel guns, resorted to the Bessemer metal. Mr. W. D. Allen, of Sheffield, who was the first to adopt the process practically and commercially, declared recently that he had made every conceivable article with the metal, from an intermediate crank shaft to a corkscrew or table-knife. In 1878 a Commission of the Admiralty adopted Bessemer steel as the most serviceable material for anchors. The inventions of Sir Henry Bessemer are embodied in no less than 114 patents, and the drawings of these alone, all from his own pencil, fill seven volumes.