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I was surprised to learn about how bad bessemer steel was, I'd heard about it in the past sort of revolutionizing the production, but I must not have kept in my
by wolfram74 4y ago
I was surprised to learn about how bad bessemer steel was, I'd heard about it in the past sort of revolutionizing the production, but I must not have kept in my head how singularly useful it was.
Also it's an interesting case of how luck plays into things, were there people before Bessemer who'd tried something similar and had high phosphorous ores? How long would things have carried on before someone intentionally tried fiddling with that knob?
- PaulHoule 4y agoIt is not really that bad, but it is worse in some ways than the other options. Before modern steelmaking people made very high quality "crucible steel" despite understanding very little about the basic science behind metallurgy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel it was crazy expensive though. (The bit cost more than the horse.) The high cost of steel caused Japan to conflate social status with military competence and led to the mystique of the Samurai sword, and contributed to Okinawa developing a system of fighting based on weapons with limited or no metal content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawan_kobud%C5%8D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawan_kobud%C5%8D
- chasil 4y agoFrom what I am read in the article, phosphorus is the problem. It said that the iron Bessemer obtained had some of the lowest phosphorus content in Great Britain. Provided some method to remove phosphorus, the quality might improve.