For those of you who think steel is an element, it is not.  We do not mine for steel, and we never have, because you can’t find the stuff in the ground.  If it were an element, then there would not be much to write about in this history, since the chronology would run something along the lines of:

15 billion years ago- steel created in big bang

A few thousand years ago-people start making weapons and tools out of steel

Today- people still just make weapons and stuff with steel

Fortunately, as I said before, steel is not an element, and its history is rich and vibrant, filled with tales of mystery and intrigue.

 

First, a little background: steel is made from iron.  Specifically, it is the refined product of iron, sort of like how gasoline is the refined product of oil, or SPAM is the refined product of ham.  Iron is a very boring element with a history much like that stated above (if you just plug in the word “iron” for “steel”), but it is with iron that we must begin.

 

As early as 6000 years ago, early civilizations used iron ore found in meteorites to construct tools.  However, it took a few thousand years for the use of iron to catch on, since falling meteorites aren’t really a reliable market source.  Anyway, the first iron furnaces appeared in about 1400 B.C.E. and people began realizing that iron didn’t just fall from the sky, it could be mined.  The Iron Age was in full swing.

 

The first furnaces were very simple: rounded hearths in which iron ore and charcoal were heated to very high temperatures.  During the heating process, the oxygen in the ore was released (due to chemical reactions between the ore and the charcoal), and the metal became harder and shinier.  By reheating this new substance, ironworkers could hammer the metal to remove impurities, and each new reheating tempered and hardened it further.  The final product could be shaped as desired.

 

Soon people realized that by making high-quality iron really really hot and adding a few other metallic elements, they could create an even stronger material.  Small amounts of crude steel were first developed in eastern Africa and India as early as 300 B.C.E.  The Europeans and Chinese developed steel making processes a few hundred years later.  In the mid-1800’s, however, new technological innovations sparked the boom of the steel industry.

 

The industrial revolution obviously had a major impact on the uses and demands for steel: newly developed machinery, railroads, and other ambitious industrial constructions needed huge amounts of the stuff.  Fortunately, the technological boom did not demand more steel without developing the means for a vastly increased supply.  Up until then steel production had been a slow and cumbersome process, but, just as there were advancements in other areas, there were advancements in steel making.

 

The famous British steel manufacturer Henry Bessemer developed the first revolutionary new steel production method, and it was known, surprisingly enough, as the Bessemer process.  You can learn more about the Bessemer process by journeying to the technology page.  The Bessemer process accounted for 90% of United States steel production by 1880.  Other significant process of the time were the regenerative gas furnace, developed by William and Friedrich Siemens in 1856, the Siemans-Martin or open hearth process, developed Pierre and Emile Martin in 1864, and the electric arc furnace, developed by William Siemens in 1878.  All of these are discussed on the technology page.

 

Quite honestly, not much more has happened to steel itself than that.  Steel hasn’t written any Pulitzer Prize winning books, hasn’t sparked riots in the streets of Los Angeles, and it wasn’t the second gunman on the grassy knoll.  However, we must remember that without steel just about every technological innovation of the past 200 years would not have happened.  While its own history is simple, the history of its impact on the modern world is an entirely different matter.  And that history, I fear, would require much more than just these few pages of text.