Bessemer, Sir Henry, English engineer and inventor, b. Charleton, Hertfordshire. He made experiments to obtain stronger material for gun manufacture and discovered the basic principle of the B...

Basic oxygen process, method of producing steel from a charge consisting mostly of pig iron. The charge is placed in a furnace similar to the one used in the Bessemer process of steelmaking ex...

Wyandotte, industrial city (1990 pop. 30,938), Wayne co., SE Mich., a suburb of Detroit on the Detroit River; inc. as a city 1867. Salt deposits there supply the city's extensive chemical indu...

Hitchin, city (1991 pop. 33,480), Hertfordshire, SE England. Hitchin was the site of a monastery in Offa's time and appears in the Domesday Book as a royal manor named Hiz. Corn and cattle are...

Nickel, metallic chemical element; symbol Ni; at. no. 28; at. wt. 58.69; m.p. about 1,453°C; b.p. about 2,732°C; sp. gr. 8.902 at 25°C; valence 0, +1, +2, +3, or +4.Nickel is a hard, malleable...

Steel, alloy of iron, carbon, and small proportions of other elements. Iron contains impurities in the form of silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and manganese; steelmaking involves the removal of t...

Steel industry, the business of processing iron ore into steel, which in its simplest form is an iron-carbon alloy, and in some cases, turning that metal into partially finished products or re...

Cooper, Peter, 1791–1883, American inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist, b. New York City. After achieving success in the glue business, Cooper, with two partners, erected (1829) the Ca...

Blast furnace, structure used chiefly in smelting. The principle involved in this means of extracting metals is that of the reduction of the ores by the action of carbon monoxide, i.e., the re...