ABSTRACT
In the 1860s the iron and steel industry experienced revolutionary technological innovations—the Bessemer and open-hearth processes which created the heavy steel industry. From being an expensive and indispensable raw material of the cutler and to be used in small quantities, steel, or rather the new product ‘mild steel’, was transformed into the subject of mass-production techniques and was used as the ubiquitous source of strength for the architect, the engineer, the shipbuilder and armaments manufacturer. Even today, its indispensability and universality are only slightly challenged by aluminium, necessary for man’s technological exploits in the air.
