Brown, Ellis, and Bragge
c.1854 John Brown took John Devonshire Ellis into partnership to purchase a small steelworks in Sheffield. Mr. Brown was already a manufacturer of railway springs and buffers.
1858 they admitted a third partner, William Bragge.
The enterprise began in a small works covering less than three acres, with a joint capital of about £15,000, 250 employees, and an annual output of about 5000 tons, value £30,000.
The railway developments of the fifties gave the new firm its first great lift, Mr Ellis having realised the importance of the invention of the firm's neighbour, Mr. Henry Bessemer, and persuaded his associates to start to manufacture steel rails by the Bessemer process. The firm did well out of steel rails for many years.
Within a few years the firm became John Brown and Co