
The Entire History of Steel - Reedx
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20722505/history-of-steel/
======
aequitas
For anyone in Europe I can recommend a visit to Völklingen Hütte
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lklingen_Ironworks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lklingen_Ironworks)).
I went there last year on holiday in Germany.

It's an old iron factory built into a museum. Most parts are open to public
and are left in a 'frozen' state since it was closed in '86 (although
maintained and sometimes still fully functional). It's a really nice travel in
time and insight into an industry of this scale. I remember how parts of the
complex seen organised and architected and other parts are just a big mess of
pipes and parts that have been added and shoved in over the decades that this
factory ran (24/7, all season, without a roof, I might add).

~~~
trhway
I raise you a Russian city of Cherepovets, the photos don't do it justice,
where you see green, yellow, violet snow wherever it isn't just black and the
pipes, columns and other stuff of the steel and associated chemical plants go
for kilometers along the road and you feel like you're descending to hell.
Those moving trains of railroad cars filled with tens of tons of actively
burning coals which awash everything around with that red glow...

[https://gizmodo.com/5680577/the-chimneys-of-hell-are-in-
russ...](https://gizmodo.com/5680577/the-chimneys-of-hell-are-in-russia)

~~~
hinkley
Mommy why are the clouds orange?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I think those particular clouds are orange because the sun is setting behind
them. It seems unlikely that grey smoke rises up from the chimneys and then
suddenly turns orange a bit below the cloud layer.

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danieltillett
For those interested in entrepreneurship I highly recommend the autobiography
of Henry Bessemer [0], the inventor of the bessemer steel process. He is one
of the few inventors who actually got rich from his inventions.

0\.
[https://archive.org/details/sirhenrybessemer00bessuoft](https://archive.org/details/sirhenrybessemer00bessuoft)

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toomanybeersies
It's interesting how difficult it is to actually make large quantities of
quality steel.

On the surface it seems like an easy process to make steel, but it required
hundreds of years of gradual technological progress to get to the point where
large quantities of consistently decent steel could be manufactured. So many
independent inventions and scientific discoveries where required before we
could make steel. It's really a material that's taken for granted.

It would be interesting to make a sort of real life tech tree of the
inventions required to get to modern steel.

~~~
throwawayjava
This is true for even very, very simple technology. My favorite example is
gunpowder (the smokey kind we don't even use anymore), which requires
potassium nitrate, which without modern (c. 19th century) processes you have
to a) get lucky and find a cave you can mine/scrape from; or 2) collect
manure, pour urine on it for a year, and then scrape off the top and process.
It's actually freaking amazing anyone figured out how to do this, even though
with hindsight we understand each reaction.

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AceyMan
Anyone who liked this submission will enjoy a new engineering blog called
Knife Steel Nerds (should be the top result in a search).

It's run by a professional metallurgist and the quality of the articles is
outta sight.

They take Patreon funding to get cool samples and stuff to do testing and
analysis. It's the real deal. Recommended.

~~~
swimfar
[https://knifesteelnerds.com/](https://knifesteelnerds.com/)

Sounds cool, I'll check it out. Thanks.

------
sitkack
I watched an amazing documentary, Bethlehem Steel, The People Who Built
America [1], that went over the history and the processes involved in making
steel as well as the sad decline (and preventable) of the American steel
industry. And "The History of the American Steel Industry documentary" [2]

If you have a chance, tour a steel plant, they are amazing places. Nearly all
of these location should offer tours

[http://www.nucoraccount.com/locations.aspx](http://www.nucoraccount.com/locations.aspx)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QTGiHOZZFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QTGiHOZZFU)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOzvl6KMRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOzvl6KMRM)

~~~
philipkglass
Take a look at the steel statistics on pages 5-7 of this report:
[https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/historical-
statistic...](https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/historical-
statistics/ds140-feste.pdf)

US apparent steel consumption was 97.8 million tons in 2012, the latest date
available. That's a bit lower than the 106 million tons in 1968. American
steel consumption has declined about 40% per capita. The US steel industry
would have had to ramp up exports very aggressively to remain as large a
portion of the US economy as it was in the 1960s.

~~~
sitkack
> American steel consumption has declined about 40% per capita.

I wonder how much of that is from import auto sales? Or an overall drop in
civic projects?

~~~
philipkglass
It's measuring consumption, so I think that imported goods are included.

My top guesses as to causes would be a reduced pace of building/infrastructure
construction, reduced steel content in cars, and cars lasting longer.

------
camtarn
For those interested in historical steel production, I'd recommend watching
this beautiful documentary from 1945, made by the British Council in postwar
Britain.

It shows massive industrial steel plants operated entirely by hand - highly
trained teams of men spending their days doing what we'd do with computers,
pulling levers and operating wheels to control individual parameters of steel-
making machines, and turning out steel made with incredible precision.

The narrator, John Laurie, later became famous for playing Private James
Frazer in the UK sitcom Dad's Army.

[http://film.britishcouncil.org/steel](http://film.britishcouncil.org/steel)

------
Bucephalus355
I would really like to learn more about manufacturing. Does anyone know how to
do this?

There are books out there on hardware startups, but that’s the only thing I’ve
seen. Are there any museums, courses, and or paid experiences people recommend
in the US?

~~~
bigger_cheese
I work as an engineer in manufacturing, coincidentally to this article I work
at an integrated Steelworks. I know our plant has a visitor's center and there
is a company that takes tour groups through the site on certain days (mostly
school children). I have heard some other sites such as mines and power
stations also do tours. Depending on where you live there may be a site nearby
that you could visit, nothing like experiencing it first hand.

For books I'd recommend the "Chemical Engineers' Handbook"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry's_Chemical_Engineers'_Ha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry's_Chemical_Engineers'_Handbook)

That's a pretty good general textbook that should give you a lot of
fundamentals. We keep a copy in our office and it's well thumbed through.

Anything else I could recommend would be much less general more specialized
topic (i.e thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, solid mechanics etc).

Sorry I can't really offer more than that Manufacturing is a hugely broad
discipline. To start with maybe consider if you are more interested in primary
processing (mining, refining, smelting etc) or secondary processing (turning
raw materials into products).

------
ak217
Relevant: [https://www.wired.com/2008/01/nanotech-
used-2/](https://www.wired.com/2008/01/nanotech-used-2/)

~~~
sverige
I rarely watch videos all the way through, but this documentary on the making
of the premier Viking sword was fascinating. The speculation on how the
technology got to Europe and the actual building of an ancient smelter etc.
really interested me.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lspB3QhrW_Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lspB3QhrW_Q)

------
djmips
I enjoyed this long presentation of people who smelt iron in a primitive
traditional fashion.
[https://youtu.be/RuCnZClWwpQ](https://youtu.be/RuCnZClWwpQ)

------
nojvek
I have to say this is a superbly well written article. My dad owns a steel
mill but I was never quite interested in it. This article has definitely
sparked up a curiousity.

------
ordinaryperson
This is totally off. Everyone knows steel comes from giants who stole it from
stole it from Crom: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMG-
FdCGtM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMG-FdCGtM)

[downvoters: relax, it's a joke. Get out and watch a movie once in a while]

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Sometimes being told which god you belong to makes life easier...

Thanks for posting the clip. It was interesting to see how bad SFX were in a
big budget movie from 1982.

I'm a big fan of mythology and how we use it to explain things about our
world.

~~~
goldenkey
You would probably really enjoy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth)

It is on Netflix. Absolutely wonderfully insightful journey through the
different myths of our ancestors.

