Steel Industries history

From simple, small-batch production, new technologies such as the Bessemer process (developed in England in 1854) contributed to the mass production of steel.

The problem of mass-producing cheap steel was solved in 1855 by Henry Bessemer with the introduction of the Bessemer converter at his steelworks in Sheffield, England.

One was the Bessemer process for making steel, developed by British engineer Henry Bessemer in 1856.

The second was the Siemens-Martin open-hearth method, introduced in 1858.

In Britain by 1860 there were 3,400 puddling furnaces producing a total of 1.6 million tons per year—about half the world’s production of wrought iron.

In 1864, with the introduction of the Bessemer steelmaking process in the United States, the Association, then headquartered in Philadelphia, changed its name to the American Iron and Steel Association (AISA).

In 1865, Pierre-Émile Martin took out a license from Siemens and applied his regenerative furnace for making steel.

Bessemer converter, print published in 1867 in Great Britain.

By 1870, Bessemer steel was widely used for ship plate.

Sheffield became the centre of crucible steel production; in 1873, the peak year, output was 110,000 tons—about half the world’s production.

In Philadelphia in 1876, John Wanamaker opened the first department store, which was quickly imitated by Macy's in New York and Marshall Field in Chicago.

In 1878 Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and Percy Gilchrist developed a basic-lined converter in which calcined dolomite was the refractory material.

Between 1880 and the turn of the century, American steel production increased from 1.25 million tons to more than 10 million tons.

In 1882, Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Trust, which controlled upward of 95 percent of the refining capacity in the United States.

After 1890, the Bessemer process was gradually supplanted by open-hearth steel making.

The violent Homestead strike of 1892 in Pennsylvania turned into a complex battlefield with Andrew Carnegie using scab African American labor to crush the largest craft union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.

Rockefeller reorganized his business in 1899 as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

World production of steel rose to about 50 million tons by 1900.

Carnegie sold his company to a group of investors led by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1901 for just under $500 million.

By 1910, America was producing more than 24 million tons, by far the greatest of any country.”

Before the year was through, National Steel acquired the Michigan Steel Corporation, a $10 million steel concern organized in 1922 by National Steel's president, George R. Finch.

The oldest ladle addition treatment was the Perrin process developed in 1933 for removing sulfur.

After forming in 1936, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) worked to be recognized by steel companies, including United States Steel Corp.

United States Steel Corp. recognized the union in March 1937, but Little Steel persisted in refusing to talk with the SWOC.

In the 10 years starting in 1948, American steel mills averaged nearly 700,000 workers.

The Linz-Donawitz (LD) process, developed in Austria in 1949, blew oxygen through a lance into the top of a pear-shaped vessel similar to a Bessemer converter.

The basic electric-arc process was therefore ideally suited for producing low-alloy steels and by 1950 had almost completely replaced the basic open-hearth process in this capacity.

Blister steel continued to be made on a small scale into the 20th century, the last heat taking place at Newcastle, Eng., in 1951.

Although the company had spent substantial time and money to assure its facilities were the most modern and efficient, capital expenditures increased dramatically beginning in 1959 when National Steel initiated a four-year, $400 million expansion and modernization program.

Known originally by the German abbreviation OBM (for Oxygen bodenblasen Maxhuette, “oxygen bottom-blowing Maxhuette”), it became known in North America as the Q-BOP. Beginning about 1960, all oxygen steelmaking processes replaced the open-hearth and Bessemer processes on both sides of the Atlantic.

An infuriated Kennedy found such action as “wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest” (Kennedy 1962). Such price controls have been maintained worldwide through subsidies and public ownership because of the industry’s dense intersectoral linkages.

In 1965 National Steel eclipsed the $1 billion dollar sales plateau, recording $1.1 billion in sales and producing 8.5 million tons of raw steel, prodigious sums for a prodigious force in the United States steel industry.

In May 1967 National Steel acquired 20 percent of Southwire Company's common stock as part of an agreement between the two companies to jointly build an aluminum smelter.

The crucible process allowed alloy steels to be produced for the first time, since alloying elements could be added to the molten metal in the crucible, but it went into decline from the early 20th century, as electric-arc furnaces became more widely used. It is believed that the last crucible furnace in Sheffield was operated until 1968.

In 1969 United States steel production peaked at more than 141 million tons.

With the acquisition of Granite City Steel Company in August 1971, National Steel surpassed Republic Steel Corporation to become the third largest steel producer in the United States and a secure member of the industry's elite.

The most noteworthy development is the unprecedented growth of the Chinese economy since economic liberalization in 1979.

Already the most mechanized domestic steel producer, National Steel boosted its capital spending in steel-related businesses 50 percent in 1980, pumping money into steel production automation to ensure a stable foundation from which to diversify.

Eight months later, in November 1982, Weirton Steel Corporation was organized to facilitate the spin-off of the division, and in May of the following year the Weirton employees acquired the division for $194.2 million.

After the sale, in September 1983, National Steel reorganized, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of a holding company it had formed named National Intergroup, Inc.

Next came a Japanese steel manufacturer, Nippon Kokan K. K. (NKK), which announced in April 1984 that it was in the process of purchasing a 50 percent stake in National Steel for $292 million.

Excluding the Eastern-bloc countries, for which employment data are not available, some 1.7 million people were employed in 1987 in producing 430 million tons of steel.

By 1988 production was up to more than 102 million tons, with greater efficiencies resulting in a smaller but more productive workforce.

At that time, electric-arc furnaces produced about 10 percent of all the steel manufactured (about 200 million tons worldwide), but, with the subsequent use of oxygen to speed up the basic arc process, basic electric-arc furnaces accounted for almost 30 percent of steel production by 1989.

Then in 1991 it slipped to less than 90 million tons as an economic recession set in.

The top six firms accounted for $25 billion worth of steel, or 40 percent of all shipments in 1992.

After two strong years industry performance slackened slightly in 1996 as some plants suffered breakdowns after running at full capacity.

By 1997 minimills had the capacity to produce in excess of 50 million tons per year of carbon, alloy, and specialty steels—more than 40 percent of the total United States raw steelmaking capacity of 120 million annual tons.

However, the wave of imported steel, coupled with a projected slowdown in the growth rate of the United States economy and excess world steel producing capacity, signaled that 1999 would see a decline in the United States steel industry.

Iron production began in Anatolia about 2000 bc, and the Iron Age was well established by 1000 bc.

In 2005 POSCO of South Korea, with several steel ventures in Asia and Latin America, announced a $12 billion iron and steel project in India.