DEVELOPMENT OF IRON AND STEEL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 65, 17 March 1936, Page 10

DEVELOPMENT OF IRON AND STEEL

Influence On Civilisation

SINGLE ELEA! ENT lias exercised such a profound influence on the social organisation of mankind as iron. To-day, directly or indirectly, it enters into every moment of our lives, ■leeping, or waking; the production of our food, our clothing, our homes, our furniture; and without it modern transport by sea, land and air, the distribution of gas, water, and electricity, in fact, all the amenities of modern civilisation, would be impossible. hi an address before the Royal Institution, ‘which is reported in •‘Nature’’ ‘ (London), Sir William J. I.arke, K.8.E., director of the British Iron •nd Steel Federation, quoted many in- I foresting facts about the use ot iron , by the early Egyptians and traced the , development of the industry. Nearly 5 per cent, ot the earth’s , crust consists ot iron in various forms, i Though widely scattered, it is found in j varying degrees of richness in iron con- • font from a trace up to 68-7 O per cent. Iron beads and other articles have been 1 discovered under conditions indicating I that iron was known as a previous Bietal in Egypt at least 1 <M» B.C. A sickle blade found under a sphinx at i Karnac, and a portion of a cross-cut | ■aw found in one of the pyramids, estivated at 3000 8.C., are the earliest | evidence of its use for purposes other than ornamental. Such early iron has been proved t*» be of meteoric origin, and indeed the , ! word iron in most cultural languages i is derived from a root meaning “some- I thing hard from the sky.*’ This ac- • ceptance of its origin was very wide- • spread. According to Zimmer ami ! others, de Cortez, whilst in Mexico in t 1519-21, found that the Aztecs pos- ■ •essed knives ami daggers of iron. ! which were prized higher than gold, being of great rarity; but they had no knowledge of how to smelt it, and i when asked, stated that the material came from the sky There is litth* i doubt that all the early iron in North America up to the fifteenth centurx was meteoric in origin. Man doubt- • less discovered the existence ot terrestrial iron through the accidental [ fusing of orc in a camp hie, but there ‘ is no evidence to show at what date. Early remains indicate that the first j iron furnace consisted of a hole in the ground lined with < lay in which were j set alternate layers of charcoal and iron ore. The product was a mass or spongy iron mixed with slag ami char- 1 coal, which had to be reheated,and 1 hammered to eliminate the impurities ’ and render the metal fit for forging | into weapons ami tools. The resulting j metal was no doubt soft, ami it is recorded of some of the ancient tribe.* ■ who were iron workers, that when ■ fighting the Romans, who were then armed with bronze, their weapons frequently bent ami required to be straightened. The production of steel . of a high quality under controlled conditions seems to have l>een established j in India several centuries 'before the ' Christian era. Between the soft weapons of the : early Iron Age in Europe ami the more 1 highly finished steel of the early productions of India, there is the complete range of qualities in iron and I steel which ultimately led to the transi- i tion from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The hard bronze weapons of th-’ Romans were at least a match for •’ those of soft iron produced direct!;- | from the ore ; but as the production of |

steel became mure general, the steel weapons were able to pierce bronze armour. The importance of non for weapons was recognised by the Etruscan King I’orsena, 507 8.C., who in the conditions or peace prohibited 'the Romans ironi using iron, except tor agricultural purposes. It seems evident that iron and steel weapons displaced bionze after Marathon, approximately 490 B.C. About the same period the Phoenicians established colonics in Spain and introduced iron making as followed by ' the Greeks, and during the second cen- ■ tury B.C. Spain became the greatest i iron centre, ami remained so for cenI turics. The Romans during the second 1 century B.C. adopted Spanish swords, i and Toledo blades were famous long before the Christian era. j Although examples of the Hallstatt I iron weapons have been found in Great | Britain, and according to Ault were | the cause of the people turning their attention to iron, the Iron Age seems to have commenced in England about I 100 B.C. 'I he iron mines of Sussex i were famous until the eighteenth cenI tury. The advent of iron tool’s for | wood working and for agriculture coni verted man from a hunter to a farmer ami thence to a capitalist as he accumulated at first stores ot grain, and then more and more stores of grain, and then more and more tools. The furnaces in which the ore was smelted with charcoal, consisting of holes in the ground with goat skin bellows, gave way to structures reared above the ground, in which were inserted tubes or tuyeres for the blast. , These structures were called, bloomeries, from the Anglo-Saxon bloma, a lump. They were adopted by the Romans, and ultimately used with water-driven bellows, and hammers for forging or refining the iron. During the period of the modern history of England, that is, from the time of the Norman Conquest, there may be said to have been three main phases of industrial development. The first and longest phase lasted until the early part of the eighteenth century, being the era in which physical force was only obtainable from the strength of horse and man. It was the era in which the influence of iron became important as an adjunct of wood, in forming the manual tools for agricultural and structural purposes. The second industrial phase lasted nearly a century and a half, and may be described as the age of iron and coal; while the third phase, that of the development of metallurgy ami alloy steels, has only lasted a quarter of a century, and we may be said to bp at the beginning of a new era. Blast furnace practice has been enormously improved, but the fundamental principles remain identical with those which have characterised the production of cast iron since the fourteenth century, the earliest period in which it vva s known. But whereas a single furnace could only produce, even as late as the end of the seventeenth century, less than 200 tons a year, and the average output of the charcoal furnace in 18G6 was of the order of 700 tons a year, the coke furnaces were by that time producing approximately LOO t* ns a tear. The average production of the blast furnace to-day in Great Britain is 60,000 tons a furnace a year, ami there are single furnaces in • peration producing 4000-5000 tons a week.