>Steel is interesting, because it's thousands of years old, yet wasn't mass produced until the 1890s. Thank you for your succinct summation of this complex poi

>Steel is interesting, because it's thousands of years old, yet wasn't mass produced until the 1890s. Thank you for your succinct summation of this complex point. I've been fascinated by the history of technology for as long as I can remember, but as a kid, even a teenager, steel drove me nuts. On the one hand, there were lots of sources talking about the late 19th Century as the time when steel emerged, but there were equally as many references mentioning Chinese steel, Indian steel or Damascus steel thousands or hundreds of years ago. It took me a long time (until, in the pre-internet era, I had access to a college library) to get a good picture of steel's place over time.