Second (later) reply to the same parent comment. The initial disconnect here seems to be that I'm deliberately eliding a lot of details in order to see all iro

Second (later) reply to the same parent comment. The initial disconnect here seems to be that I'm deliberately eliding a lot of details in order to see all iron products as part of a unified whole, with improvements on a continuum over time. Whereas you seem to see this as an egregious violation of terminology and facts. It's really just a question of which level of detail you want to work at. That kind of objection wouldn't be a problem, except... The problem I have with it, and the reason I will now most likely never be won over to anything you have to say, is because while missing my point (which mind you is small and not that interesting), you jumped right into not only correcting details I left out intentionally, but also asserting that that must mean I'm ignorant of them. Do we need to always say everything we know about metallurgy? I guess it's a dick-waving contest... shoot, I would've brought my whole dick if I'd known. Saying I studied it in college - that wasn't an appeal to authority, it was a hint to you that your lecturing about basics is unneeded, in the hope of changing the context back away from the minutiae. All iron products are made of iron and are cast at some point. Cast iron is the only one we call "cast iron," and that is an arbitrary, happenstance artifact of history. Terminology is arbitrary symbology, always, and deserves the appropriate skepticism or at least the ability to imagine a world with different symbols. Not even a world... go to a country where they speak another language. They might not even have separate words for "sky" and "heaven." If that feels like a "word game" you need to realize all words are games and are non-deterministic. I don't need to dance around to evade your amazing laserlike prowess at calling out my errors because again, you're arguing minutiae while missing my pretty modest point. RE Bessemer I left you a giant implicit 'else' clause by saying IF you want to take his patent as a milestone, then it's 9 years. Obviously there are reasons not to particularly take it as a relevant milestone. You know what, I'll go all the way and actually say the thing you accused me of saying: steel is cast iron. With a bunch of ingredients and processing steps added. I know, I know, it's ridiculous, and bordering on meaningless, because look, a microprocessor is just a rock with a bunch of ingredients and steps added. The point is not to take it to extremes of ridiculousness, the point is to see the similarities and see how processes were added and changed to improve and transform the final product.