Product Catalog » Iron
The first wrought iron used by mankind during prehistory came from meteors. The smelting of iron in bloomeries began in the second millennium BC. Artifacts from smelted iron occur in India from 1800–1200 BC.[10] in the Levant from about 1500 BC (suggesting smelting in Anatolia or the Caucasus).[11][12]
Cast iron was first produced in China about 550 BC,[13] but not in Europe until the medieval period[citation needed]. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron (in this context known as pig iron) using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.
Steel (with smaller carbon content than pig iron but more than wrought iron) was first produced in antiquity. New methods of producing it by carburizing bars of iron in the cementation process were devised in the 17th century AD. In the Industrial Revolution, new methods of producing bar iron without charcoal were devised and these were later applied to produce steel. In the late 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented a new steelmaking process, involving blowing air through molten pig iron, to produce mild steel. This and other 19th century and later processes have led to wrought iron no longer being produced.
