Sir Henry Bessemer, F.r.s.: An Autobiography Hardcover – 27 Aug. 2015

If you want this book for research/reference purposes, this kindle version is sufficient. If you want to read it for pleasure, it may not be. In the first 10% of the book there is a lot of "line noise": random characters sewn in amongst the actual text. This may be a case of the scanning software slowly learning the font and/or whitespace conventions. I don't know, since I haven't seen the original.Furthermore, the image "plates" are discolored, poorly scaled, and badly distributed within the related text. The book's index is not linked, and the page numbers are not (well)displayed, so you will have to manually page-down through the entire text to get to the part you want to read.This scan it is completely adequate for research and citation, but remarkably poor quality (and irritating) as reading material.

This is a very interesting book. At first I had wondered how and why it has no review. Since I'm a huge fan of the accomplishments of one Sir Henry Bessemer I had sought out and was determined to find any literature that would paint some light into what made him the man he was. This book came as a boon. It reads like Henry Ford's "My Life And Work".Written in the first person, it offers a rare glimpse into the working mind of Sir Bessemer. He talks about the travails of his life and his endeavors. One can not help but marvel at his genius for solving problems which have long plagued those who thought of no other solution prior to the one he rendered which was heretofore not known. He was an original thinker. A master at finding solutions to even the most intricate of problems. A mind that's ever tinkering with solutions,ingenious ones, to any problem that might prove insuperable to his peers.He evinced a dogged tenacity when it came to pursuing the solution to a problem. Never stopping for anything, never having any doubt as to his ability to outdo others in a field considered their purview. This coupled with the fact that he was self taught and was unencumbered by the normal hindrances that characterized the thinking of normal folk, was thought by him to be his sole advantage when it came to problem solving. And this he exploited it to the fullest. I should however issue a disclaimer and say the book is notorious for taking on a technical turn owing to Bessemer's fervor in describing his experiments and their contraptions thereof. So one must be possessed by a keen of mind to at times follow explanations and descriptions that might prove arduous to do so, but nonetheless still possible to understand.Equally infuriating is the lack of continuous flow from one page to the next, or one chapter to the next. With the resultant effect that the reader might have to assume a lot and simply glide over to the next chapter. His prose is characterized by long, serpentine sentences which demand utmost focus from the reader lest he be lost in their meaning. As I said, I had really admired and revered this illustrious personage and was in awe of his accomplishments so much so that no encumbrance in the writing manner of this book would hinder my reading it. Like Ford's book,it's almost free and the content inside is very informative. Technical terms and explanations aside, this is a pretty awesome book about a redoubtable individual. Enjoy.