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Steel is an alloy composed of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent carbon, with the balance being iron. From prehistory through the creation of the blast furnace, iron was produced from iron ore as wrought iron, 99.82–100 percent Fe, and the process of making steel involved adding carbon to iron, usually in a serendipitous manner, in the forge, or via the cementation process.
In these processes, pig iron made from raw iron ore was refined (fined) in a finery forge to produce bar iron, which was then used in steel-making. [ 52 ] The production of steel by the cementation process was described in a treatise published in Prague in 1574 and was in use in Nuremberg from 1601.
In 1945, the US produced 67% of the world's pig iron, and 72% of the steel. By comparison, 2014 percentages were 2.4% of the pig iron, and 5.3% of the steel production. Although US iron and steel output continued to grow overall through the 1950s and 1960s, the world steel industry grew much faster, and the US share of world production shrank.
The Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread replacement of bronze weapons and tools with those of iron and steel. [14] That transition happened at different times in different places, as the technology spread. Mesopotamia was fully into the Iron Age by 900 BC.
U.S. Steel bought the assets of the former National Steel Corp. in 2003, which added iron ore reserves and boosted its steel making capacity. The deal moved U. S. Steel from the 11th largest steel ...
One of the investors they attracted was Andrew Carnegie, who saw great promise in the new steel technology after a visit to Bessemer in 1872, and saw it as a useful adjunct to his existing businesses, the Keystone Bridge Company and the Union Iron Works. Holley built the new steel mill for Carnegie, and continued to improve and refine the process.
A major change in the iron industries during the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal; for a given amount of heat, mining coal required much less labour than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal, [57] and coal was much more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before the ...
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