-
Chapter 2. Iron and Steelmaking Science and Manufacturing
- The University of Tennessee Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Chapter 2 Iron and Steelmaking Science and Manufacturing Jordan Nelson probably would have preferred his privacy and quiet life to what lay ahead. But because of where he happened to be, Nelson was destined to be both participant and observer of an industrial revolution that had been transforming much of western Europe and the northeastern United States but that only lately had arrived in southwestern Virginia. Historians have divided the industrial revolution into two parts, the first lasting from roughly the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and the second lasting from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century.1 Industry was changing the economy, the workplace, and the lifestyle of Europeans and Americans. And the driving forces of the new industrialism were coal and iron.2 The origins of ironmaking as predecessor to steelmaking is unknown, but the industry’s development centered among wealthy landowners in Great Britain. Thomas Southcliffe Ashton noted why that was so: The “apparatus of an ironworks represented a volume of capital that few save landowners could command. Moreover the industry was intimately dependent on the land for its raw material in the form of [iron] ore, limestone, and charcoal; and it was the demand of the landed classes for the implements of agriculture and war that constituted the main reason for its existence.”3 Casting guns, canon, and shot seemed to be the major products of these early ironworks or foundries.4 Iron makers, wealthy or not, were at the mercy of mother nature to supply the ingredients of smelting—iron ore, limestone, and wood. Most critical of the three, regarding availability, was wood, which was partially burned to produce charcoal of nearly pure carbon.5 “Since ancient times, iron had been smelted with charcoal, which would be mixed in direct contact with the iron ore and then fired. Charcoal provided not only the necessary heat but also the carbon needed to promote the chemical reduction of the iron (the oxides in the ore would combine with the carbon and be released as carbon dioxide).”6 Problem was, the trees from which charcoal eventually derived grew in forests that were quickly being depleted and not very quickly renewed. In addition, iron makers 8 Science and Manufacturing vied with shipbuilders for the same wood. And given Great Britain’s status as a naval power, a reduction in wood necessary for shipbuilding was regarded as a threat to national security. As a result, the British Parliament began enacting laws in the mid-sixteenth century placing restrictions on iron makers’ use of trees as “fuel timber.”7 Restrictions and potential scarcity of such an important ingredient forced iron makers to consider replacing charcoal with a more abundant raw material: coal.8 The idea of using coal to replace charcoal was not new. Coal had been used sparingly for such purpose early on, but it was discovered that coal contained impurities—sulfur chief among them—that would “contaminate the iron when the coal and iron ore were mixed together.” Iron makers discovered, however, that the “key to making usable iron with coal was to first bake the coal to drive off the volatiles and turn it into ‘coke,’ much the way wood is turned into charcoal.”9 The coke-making, or coking , process was not a simple one to master, although a patent for manufacturing coke was awarded as early as 1589. Not until 1709, though, was Abraham Darby credited with actually “distilling” coke from coal and making it a “commercially viable product” for smelting iron at his ironworks in Coalbrookdale.10 Darby’s contribution came at a propitious moment in British history. Coal, plentiful and relatively inexpensive, already had supplanted wood (due to its growing scarcity) as the major heating fuel for both home and workplace. Even more important, it was easily transported from mine to town or city via Britain’s numerous waterways , particularly its canals. In fact, the British parliament passed several navigation acts between 1758 and 1802 to create canal or riverimprovement companies “whose primary aim was to carry coal.”11 Much of that coal—about a fifth of it by the early nineteenth century—was destined for ironworks. And, of course, the same vessels that delivered coal and other raw material to the foundry also carried what was produced at the foundry to the marketplace.12 Ironworks were also located near waterways to properly smelt the iron in blast furnaces, which were heated with blasts of air provided by “bellows worked...