When was steel invented/discovered?

epepke

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epepke
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The International Iron and Steel institute claims that Henry Bessemer invented steel in 1856. However, Samuel Fox is claimed to have invented the steel-ribbed umbrella and have founded the English Steels Company in 1852. And John Deere came up with a design for a steel plough blade in 1837. The prototype was made from an existing steel saw blade. He was buying rolled steel from England in 1843 and having it made in America by 1848. Other sources claim that by the 14th century, techniques for making wrought iron occasionally produced a true steel. A source for school science in the UK claims that steel was known in India by the first century AD but could only be made in small quantities. The Damascene and the Japanese processes may also occasionally have produced true steel, but most of the time, it was technically not true steel.

Of course, Bessemer invented the Bessemer Converter, which made steel cheap. However, some time during the previous 500 years, it must have become possible to make steel in high enough quantities that it was suitiable for such relatively mundane consumer items as umbrellas by the mid-1800s and might have been a guild secret before then. Does anybody know what that was or when it was done?
 
Well, I found this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3705205.stm

4th century, and is called ultra-high carbon steel. Seems to put paid to the 1856 claim.

It may be the first steel produced using modern processes, or something similar. From their site, although they aren't very clear, it seems he was the first to patent a process for reliable production.

On Fox, some info here: http://www.espinet.freeserve.co.uk/stocks/fox.htm

Seems he bought steel elsewhere, and from Bessemer in 1962. Lends support to the idea of Bessemer being first to perfect the process and/or industrialize it.

It may simply be that the definition of modern steel is used by the IIS in a stricter sense than others would use it. Many may refer to any smelted iron as steel, or the term may have been used differently in the past.

I'd imagine the first steps towards steel are lost in time. The question of who invented steel is a hard one, sort of like who invented bread. Do you mean any baked good, or whole grain breads, or modern bleached white bread? Rolls? Unleavened breads? Likewise, steel I think is too broad a term, there have been improvements and discoveries all along the way, I don't really think it could be narrowed down to one person or one discovery.
 
Huntsman said:
Well, I found this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3705205.stm

4th century, and is called ultra-high carbon steel. Seems to put paid to the 1856 claim.
Click to expand...

Very cool, thanks! At 2% carbon it's marginal, though. It wasn't clear to me from the article whether they had done a microscopic analysis. Steel isn't just low-carbon iron; you can actually make wrought iron that has lower carbon than most steels. Steel is also a matter of the lattice. Early Japanese swords, for example, used a core of low-carbon tiny-crystal iron sheathed in one or two layers of high-carbon huge-crystal iron.

I'd imagine the first steps towards steel are lost in time. The question of who invented steel is a hard one, sort of like who invented bread. Do you mean any baked good, or whole grain breads, or modern bleached white bread? Rolls? Unleavened breads? Likewise, steel I think is too broad a term, there have been improvements and discoveries all along the way, I don't really think it could be narrowed down to one person or one discovery.
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You're probably right. However, I'm trying to understand the process, not really look for one date. The Bessemer converter makes getting rid of the carbon cheap. (It's a simple idea: blow oxygen or air through molten iron, and the carbon burns off.) The rolling process, which does nice things to the lattice, seems to have been invented earlier. It's much harder to get the same results with a hammer.

I'm wondering if there were small groups of people that managed to produce good steel in reasonable quantities but kept it a secret for a long time. I'm wondering this because there are legends of magic swords, and a true steel sword would probably have seemed magical more than a few hundred years ago.
 
According to the Book of Mormon, steel existed as early as 600 BCE.

This is a somewhat questionable scientific authoritah, however. Joseph Smith (dum dum dum dum dum) "translated" the Book of Mormon in the 1830s, I believe.
 
Brown said:
According to the Book of Mormon, steel existed as early as 600 BCE.

This is a somewhat questionable scientific authoritah, however. Joseph Smith (dum dum dum dum dum) "translated" the Book of Mormon in the 1830s, I believe.
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I read that once. Wasn't it about Uma Thurmin thrumming a Theremin, um? Or something like that?
 
I am no expert on the history of steel. However, I do work in a steel mill. I also spent several years working on heat treat furnaces.

There is always carbon in iron after you remove it from whatever sort of furnace you have used. I would regard steel as something that was discovered more than invented.

Those who first made steel did not know what they had. They could not distinguish it from iron. They only knew if they did “x” they got metal that had different properties than if they did not do “x”.

Today the metallurgists spend a great deal of effort making sure they have the right trace elements to produce different grades of steel. Carbon is still the second largest component of steel. “Mild” classes of steel typically have about 0.40% carbon. Nitrogen, which is hard to remove from steel, is a big concern. It can make the steel harder but can also make it brittle.

Metallurgy still tends to be a bit of a black art. That is to say that they can not always get equipment like heat-treat furnaces to produce the same results under identical conditions. Most of the equipment that I worked on were carburizing furnaces. Engine and transmission parts are placed into 1500+ degree F. furnaces for a few hours in a protective atmosphere. The atmosphere contains extra carbon that is used to increase the carbon content from 0.40% or so up to about 0.85% in the outer casing of the part. In addition, the structure of the iron crystals are altered by the heating process. The catch here is that the amount of time and atmosphere content needed to produce the desired results varied from one furnace to another even when they were of the same design.

The thing that always came across as being a bit goofy was the need to get as much carbon out of the iron as you could to initially produce steel. They we turned around at the end of the manufacturing process and started putting more carbon back in again.
 
I thought Samurai swords were meant to be steel? though 'hand-forged' as it were. They go back to the 13th Century, but I can't find a decent source defining scientifically the blade material.
 
Uhh, define steel. The Iron Age started in the last centures BC in some areas. Tempered iron could well be termed steel.

Hans
 
Yes ... we are sort of settling on defining it in terms of what comes out of a process that can be reliably reproduced, I think.

The Bessemer will consistently create 'steel', where people in the iron age might have produced it by chance a few times.

The japanese claim the consistency of the samurai blades was good, and materially I think it is close to what we call steel today.

Maybe one of us should ask the International Iron and Steel what their definition is in terms of the original question. I go along with Doubt's point that it was discovered rather than invented.
 
Hmmm…….

Practical definition? I can cook one up here and now.

Iron is what you get after you try to burn out most of the impurities from the molten product that comes out of the blast furnace. (The stuff that came out of the blast furnace is called pig iron.) The end results of the Bessemer process and old open-hearth furnaces are less than perfect, but they do make a huge difference in purity.

Steel is the alloy you make from the iron by adding things to it.

Tempering is just another metallurgical process. It does not change the composition of the alloy. Well, if you raise the temperature up to much in a temper furnace, you will produce scale, (iron oxide), but then you are not really tempering any more.

If we want to define when steel was first produced, then we need to figure out when people started adding things to iron to achieve different results. I would limit it to things that worked, rather than things that did not work.
 
Just to briefly echo some of the fine comments already made, ...

The Bessmer Process allowed steel to be mass produced, however steel was around for at least a thousand years before then.

However, in those preceeding centuries, it took much, much more work to get the carbon content in the iron just right so steel was almost a semi-precious metal.
 
Benguin said:
I thought Samurai swords were meant to be steel? though 'hand-forged' as it were. They go back to the 13th Century, but I can't find a decent source defining scientifically the blade material.
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They're steel now. I base the other assertion on an article I read about 15 years ago that went into excruciating detail about Japanese sword production, but I no longer have a copy.
 
Benguin said:
Maybe one of us should ask the International Iron and Steel what their definition is in terms of the original question. I go along with Doubt's point that it was discovered rather than invented.
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That's why I put invented/discovered with a slash. To me, it isn't really an important distinction.
 
epepke said:
I read that once. Wasn't it about Uma Thurmin thrumming a Theremin, um? Or something like that?
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freaking. brilliant. you are going in my sig. even though it's "Thurman". :)
 
back on topic, it is my understanding that steel was first discovered a couple thousand years ago by people that were just a little over zealous about pounding their iron around charcoal. if Conan is right, they also used advanced casting techniques.

[edited to add link]
 
EdipisReks said:
freaking. brilliant. you are going in my sig. even though it's "Thurman". :)
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You can fix it if you want. I always get it wrong on a Google search. Here's a revised version so that it can be legit:

I read the Book Of Mormon once. Wasn't it about Uma Thurman, um, thrumming a Theremin? Or something like that?
 
epepke said:
You can fix it if you want. I always get it wrong on a Google search. Here's a revised version so that it can be legit:

I read the Book Of Mormon once. Wasn't it about Uma Thurman, um, thrumming a Theremin? Or something like that?
Click to expand...

thanks! :D
 
Very generally/roughly speaking, steel is the result of removing impurities from and carbonizing, iron. That can be done with heat, or pressure, or a combination.

There are multiple ways of performing that task.

One is to find a chunk of metal where most of the work has already been done...and there are steel artifacts going back centuries that are likely the result of finding meteor fragments where the iron had already been subjected to incredibly high temperatures and pressures.

Another is to manually remove the impurities and add carbon molecules...as in the case of Chinese swords. which are made by folding the metal in a forge and repeatedly hammering.

(For those who want to be thoroughly disabused of their romantic notions concerning Japanese swords, how many times you can fold a piece of metal, the 'secret' Damascus treatment, and so forth, I recommend Sword Forum International...they will tear you to shreds, but you will learn something).

Then we have the method of forcing air through flames to increase temperature, which allows for molten metal to give the same carbonizing and impurity melting results, in a very inconsistent manner.

And finally, we have Mr. Bessemer, who invented the mass produced, and very consistent steel manufacturing process which bears his name.

I'm told that the latest advances in metallurgy have refined the steel process to a point where it is in the same league with the metal found in meteor fragements...so we are at least full circle.
:D
 
crimresearch said:
...And finally, we have Mr. Bessemer, who invented the mass produced, and very consistent steel manufacturing process which bears his name.
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That's quite interesting, but there's still a gap, which I was hoping that someone knew about. Perhaps I will be dissapointed.

Before Bessemer, specifically in the early part of the 19th century, there's evidence that steel was produced in reasonable commercial quantities.

What processes were used to do this, and when did they come about?
 
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