William Kelly (inventor)

William Kelly (August 21, 1811 – February 11, 1888), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was an American inventor. He is credited with being one of the inventors of modern steel production, through the process of injecting air into molten iron, which he experimented with in the early 1850s. A similar process was discovered independently by Henry Bessemer and patented in 1855. Due to a financial panic in 1857, a company that had already licensed the Bessemer process was able to purchase Kelly's patents, and licensed both under a single scheme using the Bessemer name. Kelly's role in the invention of the process is much less known.