On November 12, 1856, Henry Bessemer received U.S. Patent No 16,082 on the Manufacture of Iron and Steel:

After the issuance of the patent was announced in the September 1856 Scientific American, William Kelly wrote a letter to the magazine in October 1856 describing his earlier experiments and suggesting that Bessemer’s process may have been derived from Kelly’s work. Keely applied for an obtained U.S. Patent No. 17,628 on June 23, 1857.

The financial panic of 1857 resulted in Kelly’s bankruptcy, and he was forced to sell his patent. Kelly’s patent and Bessemer’s patent were licensed for steelmaking in Pennsylvania, at the Cambria Iron Works. Kelly received only about 5% of the patent royalties paid to Bessemer, and Bessemer’s name was used for the process, as Bessemer already had a well-known steel making operation in England, and Kelly, although a trained metallurgist, was little known.

The Bessemer Process was an important method of making steel for nearly a century, until it was replaced by the open-hearth process.