Posted by elizabeth on February 17, 2004 at 19:30:58:
In Reply to: The Bessemer Process and its Relevance in Our Historical Methods of Inquiry posted by PS on January 21, 2003 at 01:26:04:
: The Bessemer Process and its Relevance in Our Historical Methods of Inquiry
: Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) was a prolific English inventor and engineer, possessing 117 patents in his lifetime, the first obtained at age 25. Among the most celebrated of his inventions was the Bessemer Converter, the heart of the Bessemer Process for refining steel much less expensively, much more quickly, and in much greater quantities than the prevalent technology of his time.
: As with many of Bessemer’s inventions, the Bessemer Converter was the result of an attempt to make a previous invention workable. Bessemer’s rotating artillery shell proved to be too much for cast iron cannons of the era to handle, and so the inventor set out to build a better cannon from a higher grade of metal. The result was the Bessemer Process of refining steel.
: While many and diverse British and foreign industries embraced the use of Bessemer steel, the British military doggedly refused to have anything to do with the material in the making of its firearms, preferring the weaker and more expensive materials and construction already accepted, and even fraudulently documenting flaws found in the testing of the Bessemer steel to justify its rejection.
: A number of valuable lessons may be learned from Bessemer’s prodigious success in engineering and the glaring instances of its biased and irrational rejection by existing authorities. Bessemer himself best summarizes his advantage in chapter 6 of his autobiography: “I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem under consideration, inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the too-general belief that whatever is, is right.” The application of the principles which ensured Bessemer’s success is of crucial importance in our own historical process of discovery. We must be wary of the knowledge we already possess, most specifically of our acceptance of its authority and relevance, lest we bias the results of our inquiry. We also must be cautious regarding accepted historical models and our propensity to misapply them in new areas of discovery. Our goal is to approach the past without preconceptions, to balance our knowledge so that it is indeed a useful advantage in our interpretation of the past, rather than the lens through which our newly acquired knowledge is distorted.