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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.
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, [1] was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardisation, mass production and industrialisation from the late 19th century into the early 20th century.
Steel is often cited as the first of several new areas for industrial mass-production, which are said to characterise a "Second Industrial Revolution", beginning around 1850, although a method for mass manufacture of steel was not invented until the 1860s, when Sir Henry Bessemer invented a new furnace which could convert molten pig iron into ...
This made steel easier, quicker and cheaper to manufacture, and revolutionised structural engineering. One of the most significant inventors of the Second Industrial Revolution, Bessemer also made at least 128 other inventions in the fields of iron, steel and glass. Unlike many inventors, he managed to bring his own projects to fruition and ...
Until these 19th-century developments, steel was an expensive commodity and only used for a limited number of purposes where a particularly hard or flexible metal was needed, as in the cutting edges of tools and springs. The widespread availability of inexpensive steel powered the Second Industrial Revolution and modern society as we know it ...
Before it was introduced, steel was far too expensive to make bridges or the framework for buildings and thus wrought iron had been used throughout the Industrial Revolution. After the introduction of the Bessemer process, steel and wrought iron became similarly priced, and some users, primarily railroads, turned to steel.
U.S. Steel bought Big River Steel the following year. Prices have settled back to around $800 per metric ton, but that remains at the top end of the spectrum for steel prices over the past six years.
Hogan, William T. Economic History of the Iron and Steel Industry in the United States (5 vol 1971) monumental detail; Ingham, John N. The Iron Barons: A Social Analysis of an American Urban Elite, 1874-1965 (1978) Krass, Peter. Carnegie (2002). ISBN 0-471-38630-8. Livesay, Harold C. Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business, 2nd Edition (1999).