The History of Steel

In 1740, clockmaker Benjamin Huntsman developed the crucible process at his workshop in Handsworth, near Sheffield, melting blister steel in small clay crucibles to produce steel of unprecedented quality and consistency. Before this, steel had been made for millennia in bloomeries in small quantities, chiefly for tools and cutlery. Sheffield grew into the world's steel-making center, though output remained limited by the laborious process.

Location: Sheffield, England

Henry Bessemer patented the Bessemer process in 1856 — blowing air through molten pig iron to burn off impurities, cutting the time to make steel from days to about half an hour. The invention reportedly grew from a conversation with Napoleon III about stronger artillery steel, during the Crimean War era. Early licensees produced brittle metal until metallurgist Robert Mushet found that adding spiegeleisen restored the right carbon content; American William Kelly also claimed independent discovery, receiving a priority patent in 1857. Bessemer steel dropped the price from around £40-60 per ton toward £7, making steel affordable for the first time for rails, ships, and construction.

Location: London, England

In the late 1870s, Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas developed the basic (alkaline-lined) Bessemer process, which removed phosphorus and unlocked the vast phosphoric iron ores of Continental Europe. At the same time, the Siemens regenerative open-hearth furnace, demonstrated in the 1860s, allowed larger, more controlled heats; by the early 20th century open hearth had become the dominant process. Together these advances fed the railway boom, naval arms races, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers.

Location: England and Germany

Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel, built on Bessemer converters and vertical integration, made Pittsburgh the center of a booming American industry — a growth marked by the violent 1892 Homestead strike, in which company guards and striking workers fought over wages and union recognition. In 1901, J.P. Morgan financed the merger that created United States Steel, the first corporation with a capitalization of over one billion dollars. The episode became a defining chapter in American debates over labor, monopoly, and industrial capitalism.

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

In 1912, engineers at Krupp's Essen works patented martensitic and austenitic chromium-nickel corrosion-resistant steels, and in 1913 Harry Brearley in Sheffield independently developed a rustless steel while researching gun-barrel erosion — initially commercialized as cutlery steel. Stainless steel would become indispensable to medicine, food processing, architecture, and chemical industry.

Location: Essen, Germany

In 1949-1952, engineers at the VOEST works in Linz and Donawitz, Austria, developed the basic oxygen process (LD or Linz-Donawitz), blowing pure oxygen — rather than air — onto molten iron to refine steel far faster and more cheaply than the open-hearth furnace. First commercial heats began in November 1952. Alongside the growing electric arc furnace, which melts scrap steel using grid power, oxygen steelmaking replaced open hearth worldwide by the late 20th century and remains the dominant route.

Location: Linz, Austria

From the late 1970s, the American and Western European steel industries contracted sharply in the face of aging plants, low-cost Japanese and later Korean exports built with modern oxygen furnaces, and the decline of integrated mill regions — the economic hollowing of the American "Rust Belt," exemplified by Youngstown, Ohio's mill closures in 1977 and the wave of bankruptcies including LTV and Bethlehem Steel in the early 2000s. Communities built around mills experienced sustained job losses; debates over tariffs, industrial policy, and trade protection became permanent features of the politics of steelmaking regions.

Location: United States and Europe

In 1996, China overtook Japan and the United States to become the world's largest crude steel producer, and after its 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization its output expanded explosively, driven by the construction boom of the world's largest urbanization. China produces more than half of the world's steel, over one billion tons annually, reshaping global trade and triggering recurring disputes over capacity and dumping.

Location: China

Steelmaking is one of the most carbon-intensive industries, responsible for roughly 7-9 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, because coke is used to reduce iron ore. In 2021, the Swedish HYBRIT consortium — a partnership of steelmaker SSAB, mining company LKAB, and utility Vattenfall — delivered the first steel produced with hydrogen reduction and fossil-free electricity, and SSAB made the first commercial delivery of green steel to Volvo. Trials of hydrogen direct-reduction and electric-furnace routes are underway across Europe, North America, and the Middle East, backed by government subsidies and carbon border policies, though the transition faces large cost and scale barriers.

Location: Lulea, Sweden