"The History of Magnesium" https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1957.tb04052.x https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1957.tb04052.x Industrial-scale produc

"The History of Magnesium" https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1957.tb04052.x https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1957.tb04052.x Industrial-scale production began in Germany in 1886. There was another significant change in 1924-1925 with the development of a truly anhydrous chloride melt, which significantly reduced anode wear and increased energy efficiency. For the production of ductile iron, one major challenge was managing the loss of magnesium by boiling since the BP of Mg is so much lower than the MP of cast iron. "Fundamentals of Magnesium Addition to Ductile Iron" https://sci-hub.tw/10.4271/640802 https://sci-hub.tw/10.4271/640802 You can see multiple gating factors for why magnesium based production of ductile iron was not discovered (or at least industrialized) earlier: - Early industrial magnesium production was expensive due to high electrolytic anode wear from impure raw materials. - Electrolytic magnesium production was also expensive due to the high cost of electric power; 1880s-era generators had low thermal efficiency and generated electricity at high costs [1]. - Early ductile iron production suffered from high losses of costly magnesium, due to boil-off. The various economizing measures described in the second paper I linked above did not yet have their own enabling technologies available in the 19th century. [1] I'm not going to try to reproduce my full work here, but I was surprised at the high cost of electricity I found referenced in an American chemical engineering textbook from 1940. On further investigation of the consumer price index and published historical electricity prices, I found that electricity was (by contemporary American standards) quite expensive before WW II, and relatively expensive through the 1950s. It wasn't until the 1960s that electricity became fairly cheap.