ABSTRACT
This is the story of a technological revolution that has occurred within this generation, although the seeds were sown in 1943 [1]. That was the year that the Iron and Steel Division of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) U.S. hosted a conference in Pittsburgh, in conjunction with the government, to stimulate the production of electric furnace steel for the war effort. As a result, a number of integrated mills installed such furnaces to produce carbon steels, although they still played second ddle to the open hearths (OH) and even the old Bessemer process. In retrospect, however, a more signi cant event that year was the graduation of a metallurgist named Jerry Heffernan from the
University of Toronto (Figure 1.1). He followed up wartime service in Europe with graduate work at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he worked on some business projects for Professor Frank Forward. Then he entered the steel business in Canada and spent the next 7 years acquiring industrial experience and nurturing a vision.
