ABSTRACT
The Age of Steel THE first Industrial Revolution has sometimes been described as a new iron age. Watt's engines and the machinery for the new factories could never have been made had not Darby's coke burning blast furnace made it possible to produce iron on a scale never known before. (The story of iron is told in The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1860.)
To-day we live in an Age of Steel. Sometimes as girders, sometimes as rods embedded in concrete, steel provides the framework of all our large buildings and bridges. Railway lines, locomotives, ships, motor cars, lorries, tractors, bicycles, sardine tins, needles and paper clips are all made of steel; the list is endless.
