Steel is one of the most common metals from which EVS fabricates parts and products. Archeologists and historians believe that steel has been being produced for almost years; this makes sense, as that puts the timeline at the beginning of the Iron Age &#; iron being the primary element used to manufacture steel.
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The history of steel is long and fascinating. While we have no idea exactly who it was that actually &#;invented&#; steel, examining its origin and viewing its production and implementation from its earliest days can help give some context around why exactly it is that steel has been incredibly important to multiple civilizations through the centuries, and remains so to this day.
Starting in the 13th century BC, archeologists have found evidence that blacksmiths were the first to begin to synthesize steel. Like many inventions, it was likely a happy accident, the result of iron being left too long in coal furnaces that contain high levels of carbon, which is a component of steel. The carbon made the iron stronger, harder and more durable.
About 700 years later, in the 6th century BC, &#;wootz&#; steel was born in India, which is a beautifully textured metal that is still sought after to this day. &#;Wootz&#; steel is the result of combining wrought iron and charcoal during the smelting process. 600 years later (around 300 AD), India&#;s neighbor China began to produce steel in true mass quantities &#; the first country to do so. Damascus steel &#; a very hard type of steel primarily used for sword or knife blades due to its ability to be honed to a razor-like edge &#; made its debut in the Middle East in the 11th century.
The 18th century brought a number of inventions and disruptions that would greatly impact the evolution of steel. These include the invention of the first successful steam engine, the development of the crucible steel technique, the introduction of steam power into steel mills, and the invention of the steel roller.
The s, however, were even more vital to steel&#;s eventual rise to the place it holds today around the world. This century ushered in the American agricultural boom of the s; the introduction of the Bessemer process in &#; the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten iron; and the invention of the open-hearth furnace in . Just a few years later, the end of the American Civil War led to enormous growth in the U.S.&#; production of steel. This same period saw the invention of tungsten steel &#; a type of air-hardening steel &#; by Robert Mushet. This meant that for the first time, steel wouldn&#;t need to be &#;quenched&#; before it hardened, a huge advance for the industry.
The open-hearth process of steel production that was invented in the mid-s eventually made steel both less expensive to make and of higher quality. This directly contributed to the Industrial Revolution, much of which can be credited to capitalists and industrialists like Charles Schwab and Andrew Carnegie. In fact, when Andrew Carnegie founded US Steel Corporation in , it was the first company ever launched with an initial valuation of over $1 billion.
The 20th century also ushered in the age of the automobile, and was greatly fueled by two World Wars that made steel an absolute necessity to many governments well into the s. This boom was aided by the invention of electric arc furnace steelmaking, a process that by the early s was being used for the vast majority of steel manufacturing. Finally, in the s, Oxygen steelmaking made its debut as an even more efficient process, leading to the closure of the last remaining open-hearth facilities by the very beginning of the 21st century, in .
Want to know more about how EVS Metal&#;s steel fabrication capabilities can help with your next project? Get a quote online, or call us at 1-888-9EVSMET.
Iron production began in Anatolia about bc, and the Iron Age was well established by bc. The technology of iron making then spread widely; by 500 bc it had reached the western limits of Europe, and by 400 bc it had reached China. Iron ores are widely distributed, and the other raw material, charcoal, was readily available. The iron was produced in small shaft furnaces as solid lumps, called blooms, and these were then hot forged into bars of wrought iron, a malleable material containing bits of slag and charcoal.
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The carbon contents of the early irons ranged from very low (0.07 percent) to high (0.8 percent), the latter constituting a genuine steel. When the carbon content of steel is above 0.3 percent, the material will become very hard and brittle if it is quenched in water from a temperature of about 850° to 900° C (1,550° to 1,650° F). The brittleness can be decreased by reheating the steel within the range of 350° to 500° C (660° to 930° F), in a process known as tempering. This type of heat treatment was known to the Egyptians by 900 bc, as can be judged by the microstructure of remaining artifacts, and formed the basis of a steel industry for producing a material that was ideally suited to the fabrication of swords and knives.
The Chinese made a rapid transition from the production of low-carbon iron to high-carbon cast iron, and there is evidence that they could produce heat-treated steel during the early Han dynasty (206 bc&#;ad 25). The Japanese acquired the art of metalworking from the Chinese, but there is little evidence of a specifically Japanese steel industry until a much later date.
The Romans, who have never been looked upon as innovators but more as organizers, helped to spread the knowledge of iron making, so that the output of wrought iron in the Roman world greatly increased. With the decline of Roman influence, iron making continued much as before in Europe, and there is little evidence of any change for many centuries in the rest of the world. However, by the beginning of the 15th century, waterpower was used to blow air into bloomery furnaces; as a consequence, the temperature in the furnace increased to above 1,200° C (2,200° F), so that, instead of forming a solid bloom of iron, a liquid was produced rich in carbon&#;i.e., cast iron. In order to make this into wrought iron by reducing the carbon content, solidified cast iron was passed through a finery, where it was melted in an oxidizing atmosphere with charcoal as the fuel. This removed the carbon to give a semisolid bloom, which, after cooling, was hammered into shape.
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