Bessemerkonverter

What is that, you ask? A spaceship that landed in Högbo? No, it's a Bessemer converter standing here, thanks to something Högbo Mill's owners managed to do in 1858.

It was with the help of a converter that steel could be made in large quantities and at a cheap price for the first time. Half-finished iron was melted in the converter and then tipped out by rocking the converter, a process known as Bessemer blowing. When this was done, sparks, coal and slag were thrown out of the container in a mighty shower. The purified iron that remained was ready to be forged or cast.

The Bessemer process replaced refining, a heavy manual job that took days to do what the converter did in half an hour with better results. Thanks to the Bessemer process, the world for the first time had a good supply of steel, which until then had been an expensive commodity. The industrial revolution and the construction of society took a giant leap forward.

So what did Högbo Bruk's owner Göran Fredrik Göransson achieve in 1858? Well, he was the first man in the world to succeed in implementing the Bessemer method, something that the inventor of the method, Sir Henry Bessemer, and many others had failed to do. At Högbo Mill's blast furnace in Edsken, Göransson carried out the world's first successful Bessemer blowing. The first Bessemer steel was forged here at Högbo Bruk and the world success was a fact.

Göransson later developed a new company from the iron processing in Högbo, a company that would become today's industrial group Sandvik. This particular converter has been in operation at Sandvik. It was donated to Högbo Bruk as a memorial to the success that gave the world mass-produced steel.