Although humans have been making steel since antiquity, its primacy as a design material was only established after the Industrial Revolution. Previously used almost exclusively for smaller objects, it was Henry Bessemer’s discovery of a process for removing impurities from pig iron in 1857 that resulted in steel’s proliferation as a building construction material. The invention sparked a crucial …
Although humans have been making steel since antiquity, its primacy as a design material was only established after the Industrial Revolution. Previously used almost exclusively for smaller objects, it was Henry Bessemer’s discovery of a process for removing impurities from pig iron in 1857 that resulted in steel’s proliferation as a building construction material. The invention sparked a crucial shift in the steel industry and it was only a matter of time before heads of industry began to scale production and evolve the process to develop even more efficient ways of producing the material.
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