Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 25): Throughout the early part of this dynasty, 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.
By the 4th century BC, southern India begin exporting Wootz steel, also known as Seric steel. Wootz steel is a crucible steel characterized by a pattern of bands and high carbon content. It was a pioneering steel alloy developed in India in the mid-1st millennium BC and exported globally.
476-1400 AD: At the start of the Middle Ages, notably in Western Europe, iron was still being made by a process of extracting a soft, spongy ball of iron—called a bloom—from the bottom of the furnace and then hammering the balls into bars of wrought iron. By the 1100s, water-powered hammers replaced hand hammers for forging out iron bars.
Tang Dynasty: The world’s first explosive, gunpowder, is inadvertently invented by several Chinese alchemists. Made of a mixture of sulphur, saltpeter and charcoal, the invention leads to the evolution of guns, cannons, artillery, and spurs ironmaking throughout Asia and Europe.
Although the Iron Age had ended around 550 BC, abundant supplies of iron ore were still available, and iron tools were still being made. The leading practitioners were the ancient Egyptians who may have used metal from meteorites to make iron objects.
Austria. Evidence that Central Europe made the transition from bronze to iron around this time is found in the historic cemetery of Hallstatt, now in Northern Austria. The kinds of implements and weapons used in the Bronze Age were now being made of iron.
Jordan. Earliest bloomery for smelting iron is established at Tell Hammeh, an archaeological Tell, or mound.
Song Dynasty: Earliest depiction of an iron cannon was created.
1000 – 900 BC: With the collapse of the Bronze Age and the end of the Mycenaean civilization in Greece as well as the Hittite Empire in Turkey, the Iron Age shifts in importance to Xinjiang region of China, where the “Silk Road,” an important trade route, became the crossroads of Central and East Asia.
The beginning of the Iron Age, an important era in human history lasting until at least 600 B.C., depending on the region. The Age is defined by people throughout much of Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, who began making tools and weapons from iron and steel. It marked the end of the Bronze Age.
Medieval Europe (46 AD – 1453 AD): The medieval period in Europe brought two developments: the use of waterpower in the bloomery process, used for iron smelting, and the first European production of cast iron. The latter process may have been used as early as 1135 at the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux in France and by the 13th century, the process was in use in France and Sweden. The first documentary evidence that cast iron was being made was found in the 1408 account books of a forge owned by the Bishop of Durham, near Bedburn, England
1150 -1350 AD: Evidence that the bloomery process was being replaced by a casting method was found in two ancient furnace sites, Lapphyttan, and Vinarhyttan, both discovered in a historic mining district of central Sweden. These sites were the first in Europe to produce cast iron using Medieval blast furnaces, which turned out bun-like blooms that were cut into lumps to use as a trading currency. It was not until the late 14th century that a market for cast iron goods began to form, as a demand developed for cast iron cannonballs in Europe.
The Balkans and other territories separate from the Roman Empire (1-400 AD) and begin a slow transition to the Iron Age, marking the collapse of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean region and Near East. Iron items are no longer cast but hammered into shape and decoration or ornamentation on weapons begin to appear.
Hints of the beginning of the Iron Age are marked by the earliest evidence of smelted iron in India.
Germany: The Krupp dynasty began in 1587 when trader Arndt Krupp moved to Essen and joined the merchants’ guild. His descendants produced small guns during The Thirty Years War and eventually acquired fulling mills, coal mines, and an iron forge.
China: Bronze Age civilizations (most centered around the Yellow River) grow during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 B.C) and Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 B.C.) During this historic period, the lost-wax method used by other Bronze Age cultures is slowly replaced with clay-piece or mold casting to create chariots, weapons, and vessels from bronze.
European bloomeries perfect the use of low-shaft furnaces with waterpower to drive the bellows, and the bloom – a semiliquid slag which might weigh over 200 lbs. – that is extracted through the top of the shaft. Repeated reheating and hot hammering eliminate much of slag, producing a much stronger wrought iron.
Iron ore is first mined in the American Colonies by the colonists in Jamestown, Virginia. Now known as the “Lost Colony” because the settlement did not last, but neither did they use the iron ore – it was shipped to England.
Colonial Virginia: A group of English investors – the so-called Southampton “Adventurers”– raise capital to build the first ironworks in the colonies. It is located upriver from the former iron ore mines at Jamestown and produces bloomery iron in a blast furnace, making cast iron pigs that were refined into wrought iron and shipped back to England. Two years later, an uprising of Native Americans resulted in the deaths of the entire community, ending the colonists’ nascent iron industry for over a half a century.
Massachusetts: The first successful iron plantation in the colonies is established in Saugus, Massachusetts. This early ironworks, known as Hammersmith bog ironworks (now a historic site known as Saugus Iron Works) was the first successful integrated ironworks in America. The bloomery used skilled workers for each stage in the process such as founders who poured molten iron into sand troughs to make pig iron, and bog diggers who harvested iron-bearing geodes from the ground without the need for mining.
The Tinton Falls Ironworks is established near Shrewsbury, Monmouth County. In 1715, another ironworks opens in Burlington County, New Jersey, and by 1730, ironmaster Isaac Pearson (c.1685-1749) and his partners had fired up the Mount Holly Ironworks. Before it was destroyed by British raiders at the start of the American Revolution in 1776, the ironworks was a major supplier of cannon shot for the Continental Army.
Colonial Pennsylvania: While still in England, William Penn specifically encourages ironworkers to emigrate to his colony. He later pens an important pamphlet to the Free Society of Traders, promoting the abundance of iron ore deposits found close to the ground surface as well as the extensive woodlands, natural springs and rivers, and large limestone deposits. Southeastern Pennsylvania soon becomes the epicenter of colonial iron production.
Colonial Pennsylvania: A popular poet named Richard Frame publishes one of the earliest descriptions of ironmaking experiments in the New World. It is believed he described the activity at Iron Hill – named for a now largely vanished mountain in Newark, Delaware (then part of Pennsylvania).
United Kingdom: Abraham Darby “The Elder,” (1677-1717) rebuilds Coalbrookdale Furnace on the banks of the Severn River in Shropshire, England. Using a blast furnace, Darby experiments with the use of coke (aka “coking coal”) rather than forest-consuming charcoal, which results in the smelting of iron ore on a mass scale. The use of coke was a major catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, with generations of Darbys producing coke-smelted cast iron for steam engines, bridges, and many of the inventions of the 19th century.
United Kingdom: The English inventor Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) builds the first commercially successful steam engine. As an ironmonger in Devon, Newcomen saw the need for a mechanical means of pumping water from the Cornish tin mines. His first working engine was installed in 1712 at a coal mine at Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.
Colonial Pennsylvania: Thomas Rutter (1660-1730), an English blacksmith, travels up the Schuylkill River to Manatawny Creek and builds Pennsylvania's first ironwork, a bloomery forge. After Rutter’s death, the site is renamed Pine Forge and is run by a prominent ironmaster family, the Potts.
Colonial Pennsylvania: Thomas Rutter converts his forge on the Manatawny Creek into a refinery forge and builds Colebrookdale Furnace, Pennsylvania's first cold blast furnace. Named for the celebrated English iron furnace, the site is later leased to Thomas Potts and it becomes the model for subsequent charcoal blast furnaces in the state, proving that British blast furnace technology could be used successfully in the colonies.
England: Ironmasters and ironmongers in the iron-making town of Bristol petition the House of Commons, alleging that the colonists in the New World are producing large quantities of bar iron, and refusing to export large quantities of nails and other ironware – all to the detriment and impending ruin of the English iron trade.
United Kingdom: The Iron Act is passed by Parliament to impede the colonial iron industry that was turning out mass quantities of cheap iron goods. In effect, no new furnaces, plating forges, rolling, or slitting mills were allowed in the colonies. Nor could hardware or iron tools be sold independently – it was all for export within the British empire. To prevent colonial iron works from breaking the law, local sheriffs were tasked with the job of monitoring each ironworks site but enforcement was difficult.
Sheffield, England: A former clock, lock, and tool maker, Benjamin Huntsman (1704-1776) paves the way for a new cast or crucible steel industry when he develops techniques for producing high quality steel and builds a steelworks in a small village east of Manchester. For the first time, steel is made by melting blister steel in clay crucibles at a temperature of 2,700° to 2,900° F, using coke as a fuel.
Colonial Pennsylvania: Hopewell Furnace, now an 848-acre state park, near Elverson, PA., is established by Mark Bird (1738-1812), son of a prominent ironmaster family. Its production of stove plate reaches a high point from 1825 until 1844. Although it was not an official military site, Hopewell supplied iron cannon, shot and shell for the Continental Army, from 1775 to early 1778, and later for the Union Army. Hopewell was rendered obsolete, however, when charcoal-fueled furnaces were replaced by anthracite-fueled steel mills, and the furnace closed in 1883.
American Colonies: Despite the 1750 Iron Act designed to keep the colonial iron industry in check, there are now 82 charcoal furnaces and more than 175 iron forges turning out bar iron for use in the new nation. There were also slitting mills and other iron works run by waterpower that made smaller goods like nails and barrel hoops for colonial households.
Shropshire, England: The world's first iron bridge is erected over the River Severn in a region now known as the birthplace of industry. This pioneering structure, which still stands today, marks a turning point in English design and engineering. Abraham Darby III of Coalbrookdale Furnace supplied the cast iron, which soon came to be widely used in the construction of bridges, aqueducts, and buildings.
England: Working at his forge and slitting mill in the southeast hamlet of Funtley, Henry Cort (1740-1800) develops and patents the steel roller. The following year, Cort discovered the puddling process, named for the act of stirring molten pig iron in a reverberatory furnace. Puddled iron proved to be a stronger and more malleable type of wrought iron, which could be rolled (instead of hammered) and produced on a large scale, without charcoal.
Pennsylvania: The Phoenix Iron Works is established in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. The iron works made only nails until 1812 when an early industrialist and politician from colonial New Jersey named Robert Waln (1765-1836) turns it into a larger complex that produced pig iron, wrought iron, and other iron-related materials. By 1825, the complex includes a blast furnace and puddling furnace, and an adjacent iron foundry.
United Kingdom: Welsh inventor and ironmaster Phillip Vaughan patents the design for ball bearing to support the axle of a carriage. His patent was considered a great innovation since it allowed carriage wheels to rotate freely by reducing friction. Today, similar bearings are used in most rotating machines in the modern world, such as rotating parts in cars, bikes, trains, and planes.
Germany: In the midst of the Napoleonic wars, Friedrich Krupp (1787-1826) builds Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works) in the village of Essen and begins smelted steel production in 1816. The new enterprise soon develops a global market for steel used to build railroads, including those in the United States, and lays the foundation for the steel empire that would come to dominate the world under his son Alfred.
Pennsylvania: Charles Lukens (1786-1825), a former physician who took over the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory, his father-in-law’s slitting mill and nail factory, on the West Branch of the Brandywine River in Coatesville, becomes the first ironmaster in America to successfully roll boilerplate. The iron plate was initially used in the first iron-hulled ship in the nation, but the company thrived as the steam engine gained in popularity and demand grew for boilerplate that could withstand the extreme heat of engine boilers.
Pennsylvania. Phoenix Iron Works in Phoenixville, is among the nation’s first ironworks to generate steam by burning anthracite coal, as well as being among the first to develop a power-driven rolling method to weld and forge wrought iron – a process used during the Civil War to produce cannons for the Union Army. Its best-known product, patented in 1862, is the “Phoenix Column,” comprised of four wrought iron segments riveted together. The invention was hailed as much lighter and stronger than the solid cast iron columns of the day.
United States. Tannehill Ironworks is established, in McCalla, Alabama. Significant for its contribution to the confederate military during the Civil War, the historic ironworks is now part of a 1,500-acre state park.
Germany: The 400-year-old Krupp family dynasty continues to expand when Alfred Krupp (1812–87) becomes the sole owner of the family-run steel works and soon becomes the major arms manufacturer for the German Empire as well as for Russian, Turkish, and the Prussian armies. Nicknamed the “the Cannon King,” Krupp is the first of many generations that branch into a diverse number of products such as steel rollers. The company is later renamed Krupp AG Co. and is the world’s largest steelmaker and manufacturer through the end of World War II.
United Kingdom. During the Crimean War, the British inventor Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) sees the need for large scale steel manufacturing and ordnance production. (Until then steel was made in very small quantities, such as for tools and cutlery.) In 1856, he patents the Bessemer process; it converts iron into steel by blowing air through molten pig iron. The interaction of oxygen and carbon leads to a new term in steel-making – the so-called “heat” – and the Bessemer process is soon used world-wide, giving birth to the modern steel industry.
England: The German born mechanical engineer Carl Wilhelm Siemens (1823-1883) begins to experiment with the regenerative furnace, originally used in glassmaking, that could be used to melt steel. Later known as the Siemens-Martin furnace, it was first used successfully to make steel in 1863 by French engineer, Pierre-Emile Martin (1824-1915).
Pennsylvania. The Saucona Iron Company – predecessor of Bethlehem Steel – is established by a Bethlehem merchant named Augustus Wolle. The infamous “Panic Of 1857” halts further growth until Wolle forms an alliance with two investors and continues the company as the Bethlehem Rolling Mill and Iron Company. At the start of the Civil War, the renamed Bethlehem Iron Company, constructs its first blast furnace and the business thrives by supplying iron rails to the burgeoning railroad industry.
United States. The large-scale production of crucible or cast steel, begins at various sites in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This innovative process of making steel involves the melting of pig iron or cast iron, regular iron, and sometimes steel, and often mixing it with sand, glass, wood ash, and other flux agents.
United Kingdom. There are 3,400 puddling furnaces in Britain producing a total of 1.6 million tons of wrought iron per year, about half the world’s production. Puddling is a process of converting pig iron into wrought iron by subjecting it to heat and stirring it in a furnace, without using charcoal. It was the first method that allowed quality wrought iron to be produced on a large scale.
United States. Following the American Civil War, the United States' steel production grows with astonishing speed, led by Scottish American industrialist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919).
United States. An iron works known as Stockham Valves and Fittings in Birmingham, Alabama is established, eventually becoming one of the world’s largest producers of valves and fittings.
England: Carl Wilhelm Siemens earns a patent on the open hearth furnace, successor to the Siemens regenerative furnace. It is considered a more efficient way of producing steel from pig iron, using large shallow furnaces. Until the 1950s, when it was replaced by the Basic Oxygen Process (BOP) 90% of the steel in Britain and the United States was produced by the open-hearth process.
United States. A vast deposit of iron ore is discovered in the first four major iron ranges in a region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota. The Mesabi Iron Range in northeast Minnesota is considered the nation’s largest deposit and soon becomes the chief iron ore-mining district of the United States.
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