Metallurgy and Technological Change

In England the name Sheffield has long been synonymous with specialty steel,' no more so than in the early 19th century, when the town, though seeming to possess few advantages for the manufacture of steel, virtually monopolized the industry in Europe. In contrast, the U.S. steel industry before 1850 was relatively small-scale and backward, and the country relied almost entirely on England for supplies of crucible steel. Yet, this fact has received little mention in the standard texts on the steel industry, which make few references to any steel made before Sir Henry Bessemer's great invention. Ashton, Carr and Taplin, and Birch devote relatively few pages to any such activity before 1856, and it has been left to a metallurgist rather than to a historian to provide the first full-length treatment of the subject.' Similarly, in America, Hogan's five-volume economic history of the U.S. iron and steel industry pays scant attention to America's pioneering attempts at steel manufacture, while Temin, viewing events at a slightly later date, argues that crucible steelmaking had only a limited economic

Family medicine · Metallurgy · Political science · Specialty · Engineering · Materials Science · Medicine · Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts

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