British Steel Industry During The Industrial Revolution

Improved Essays
EXPANSION AND IMPORTANCE OF THE BRITISH STEEL INDUSTRY AND TRADE DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Introduction
In the paper it will be explained the importance of the steel as a commodity throughout the latter part of the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution in Britain, as well as the impact of the production and its trade, exposing political, economic and social aspects that were directly affected by the technological development of Britain in matter of steel. The steel, according to the Oxford Dictionaries is a hard “alloy of iron with carbon and usually other elements, used as a structural and fabricating material” (2015), and it was usually used for industrial purposes, as well for constructing and railroads. (Gordon, 1910)
It
…show more content…
Of the latter it could be say that many systems were already functioning by this time, such as the telegraphs, railroads networks, between others. The railroads, for example, were usually constructed with wrought iron and, apart from making rails, it was also used for constructing (buildings) and machinery parts. Nonetheless, wrought iron was not as desired as the steel, as the latter was stronger. In this matter, before the Bessemer process was invented in the late 1850´s by an Englishmen, there was not a way to produce it efficiently nor massively. With the creation of the Bessemer process the latter changed making a lot of firms that were once producers of iron, to be determined to go for the production of steel, such as Bolckow Vaughan’s (which was one of many firm located in Cleveland, Britain). Nonetheless, the steel quality would be improved by other processes such as the Siemens-Martin process between others that are not going to be mention for the purposes of this paper (Burn, 1961; Mokyr, 1998). In short, the steel then replaced wrought iron in many of their applications, soon being used in weapons, machinery, ships, buildings and railroad tracks. (Mokyr, 1998) During the 1850’s, Britain had a geographical abundance of coal and iron ore, which allowed the country to distinguished in the iron-steel industry due to the technological development that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, enhancing the mass production of them with the new processes invented for this commodity. (Hoskins & Burnham,

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    The Bessemer process, was the process to make steel in 15 minutes instead of 24 hours. That is 96 times faster. Andrew Carnegie, the maker of the Bessemer process, had instant fame for his miraculous invention. The impact this machine had in the Gilded Age was enormous. It was the foundation of the Gilded Age.…

    • 209 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Manchester Dbq Analysis

    • 1163 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The city of Manchester grew to become a city of industry over the course of the 19th century. Several aspects of the Industrial Revolution affected the growth of Manchester, such as machines that streamlined the textile manufacturing process, and steam-powered engines and locomotives. At the dawn of the 19th century, Manchester’s growth served the rich at the cost of the poor, but by the third quarter of the century, reforms benefitted the proletariat as well. Manchester’s growth created a variety of investment opportunities, and many landowners and factory proprietors prospered from industry. However, in order for the rich to prosper, the working class had to work long shifts in hazardous conditions, only to be paid meagre wages.…

    • 1163 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Evolution is a natural process that occurs throughout the history of time; this process allows the Earth and it’s inhabitants to adapt to current environments to survive. Humans are physically and mentally subjected to evolution, although humans have ceased from major physical evolutionary changes since the dawn of Homo Sapiens, their minds are ever-changing to further progress the human race. Throughout the course of human history, every generation had a different sense of purpose, beliefs, and ideologies. Every era is unique to it’s own, people from each era learned from the previous generations’ successes and failures to build the most ideal society for themselves.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Development of the steel industry was boosted by discovery of the Bessemer process. ("Second Industrial Revolution") Henry Bessemer and William Kelly drastically reduced the cost and time needed in producing steel from pig-iron. They found out that that blasting air through molten iron produced high quality steel. Steel was widely used in construction of buildings, because it provided good support for skyscrapers and tall towers.…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 8 Works Cited
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to the Oxford Dictionary, “energy” is defined as the “power derived from the utilization of physical or chemical resources, especially to provide light and heat or to work machines.” By the Oxford’s definition we can see that there is a correlation between energy and industry. It can be confirmed by the role of coal in the Industrial Revolution, in Great Britain, late 1700s. Coal was the main energy resource utilized by industries during that time. Thus the development of the emerging industry was extremely dependent of the supply of coal.…

    • 238 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The formation of Carnegie Steel in the late 1880’s symbolized the rise of big businesses. Thanks in large part to Andrew Carnegie, by 1889, output of steel from the United States exceeded that of the United Kingdom. By that time, Carnegie Steel Company was the biggest of its kind in the world. Carnegie may have been known only as a successful man of business but he was also an avid innovator. In a desire to make steel more cheaply and more efficiently, he adopted the Bessemer Process, which was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of…

    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Morgan’s Federal Steel gaining traction in steel market share (Skrabec 167). In 1870, firms out of Pittsburg wanted to built a jointly owned blast furnace to manufacture their own pig iron. Carnegie decided that it would be in his and his company’s best interest to build their own furnace because they would then have 100% control of the use and production from it (Krass).…

    • 2022 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This essay will try to find the reasons which predisposed Britain towards early industrialisation through the examination of geographical, economic, political and cultural factors. By the early 1800s Britain was a country of cheap energy - coal. The great inventions of that century - the steam engine, mechanical spinning, smelting iron with coke - all served to economise on the expensive factor of production and use more of the cheaper one. Other countries were slow to follow suit not because they were sluggish or repressed, but because they did not have that particular combination of several factors which helped Britain.…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th centuries, in which agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America witnessed modern economic changes in mass production, oppression of inadequate resources, and the rise of industrial workers as well as, advances in machinery and technology as a whole. (Modern World History, ch. 8) Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution occurred and in that revolution new farm techniques with the addition of modern machines and scientific methods greatly helped the quality of food; Cities began to rapidly rise in population and because of that reason the Industrial Revolution was sparked. (Modern World History, ch.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Iron and coal was one of the important resources in the Industrial Revolution. In England, there was a lot of coal hiding in the mining. When several innovation such as steam engine came out, Britain used coal rather than wood, a scarce and inefficient resource, for making iron. The iron was one of the high quality mineral in European countries in order to make product such as “machines, engines, railway tracks, agricultural implements, and hardware” (Cole and Symes 622). These resources were important since it made European countries to have good quality products in Industrial Revolution.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crafts and Harley who challenge this broad view see the the Industrial Revolution as the result of practical change in only a few industries. This article provides a test of these views using the Ricardian model of international trade with many goods. This source has a lot of value because it explains many different opinions as well as the other source. There is a lot of information from this source that is very valuable. Although it has a lot of value, there are also limitations such as bias.…

    • 621 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Industrialization in Britain from the eighteenth century onwards was the revolutionary growth, which brought significant changes in Britain; it was as W.W. Rostow deems a “decisive transition” . The impact on economics, to some extent, was an essential experience of the revolution due to economic expansion in industrial and agricultural growth brought by technological innovations. However, as Mokyr argues: “by focusing on economics we isolate only a part, though a central part, of the modernization of Britain.” Consequently, the change of social institutions, the rise of urbanisation and the role of female and child labour were also an essential phenomenon of the industrial revolution.…

    • 1261 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Why was Great Britain the first Industrial nation? Great Britain had an abundance of factors that gave it a significant advantage over other countries and Empires when it came to Industrialisation. Britain had all it needed to begin this revolution as they had large amounts of natural resources such as coal, an increasing population due to agricultural improvements, the development of new inventions and most importantly, an ever expanding Empire. All these factors contribute and provide the foundations for how Britain became the first Industrial nation, best described through “a wave of gadgets swept over England”1 showing how quickly the face of Britain changed once its potential was fully realised.…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said, “The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.” Those insightful words could not ring more true when spoken at the time. The world was changing and science and technology was at the forefront of this movement. New manufacturing processes were developed and instead of everything being hand-made, goods were produced in factories. As more new machines were invented, production became increasingly faster.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Before the Industrial Revolution many people used to produce a bulk of their own food, clothes, furniture, and tools from their homes. There was no way to mass produce these items, so people just made them themselves.…

    • 1570 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays