John Cockerill

Two Englishmen, William and John Cockerill, brought the Industrial Revolution to Belgium by developing machine shops at Liège (c. 1807), and Belgium became the first country in continental Europe to be transformed economically. Like its British progenitor, the Belgian Industrial Revolution centred in iron, coal, and textiles.

In 1817 the English industrialist John Cockerill founded in Seraing what was to become one of the largest ironmaking and machinery complexes in Europe. The Cockerill works built the first steam locomotives on the European continent (1835) and was the first to use the Bessemer process in steel production (1863).…