Here's the latest in our series of our Hitchin Nub News REWIND nostalgia and heritage features:

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REWIND: On this day in 1813, a Hitchin icon and great Victorian engineer was born.

Henry Bessemer was born in the village of Charlton near to Hitchin 208 years ago this very day [Wednesday, January 2022].

Industry would be unthinkable without affordable steel - with the engineer inventing the Bessemer process for the manufacture of steel inexpensively.

The Bessemer process that made steel available in industrial quantities at an affordable price.

The Victorians were famous for building - meaning that the Bessemer process boosted steel girders for bridges, buildings and railroads – all completely unimaginable before Bessemer.

The same could also be applied for modern steel ships, steel wire, high-pressure boilers (and with them, the steam engine), not to mention turbines for power generation. Without the Bessemer process none of the above would happened.

However, while there are at least seven towns and cities named after him around the world including the US, there is only a Bessemer Close in Hitchin named after him.

Perhaps there should be a statue of him in his home town?

Perhaps Hitchin Nub News should start a campaign?

History in the making

Bessemer wrote after his first, groundbreaking experiment ended in a ball of fire.

"All went on quietly for about ten minutes," he explained, adding: "But soon after, a rapid change took place - in fact, the silicon had been quietly consumed, and the oxygen, next uniting with the carbon, sent up an ever-increasing stream of sparks and a voluminous white flame.

"Then followed a succession of mild explosions, throwing molten slags and splashes of metal high up into the air, the apparatus becoming a veritable volcano in a state of active eruption.

"No one could approach the converter to turn off the blast. All this was a revelation to me, as I had in no way anticipated such violent results.

"However, in ten minutes more the eruption had ceased, the flame died down, and the process was complete."

Bessemer patented the process in 1855. And the world was changed forever.

Bessemer lived to enjoy the fruits of his labour, with his fortune said to be estimated at around £84m when he died in 1898 - a mind-boggling sum today, which would see him worth many billions.

Happy Birthday to a Hitchin legend.

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HITCHIN NUB NEWS REWIND SERIES

REWIND The Hitchin Riots: A very Middle Class affair

REWIND Frank Young VC: 'We will remember them' - the story of Hitchin's Victoria Cross

REWIND The Hitchin - Stevenage experiment that led to a Nobel Prize

[L]https://hitchin.nub.news/n/rewind-the-day-the-graf-zeppelin-flew-over-hitchin-town39s-top-field-on-route-to-watch-arsenal-vs-huddersfield-in-1930-fa-cup-final-at-wembley[L+]REWIND: The day the Graf Zeppelin flew over Hitchin Town's Top Field

REWIND Saved from a skip - an evocative black and white photograph on Nightingale Road from early 1900s