Iron and Steel Production in the Industrial Revolution

The production of iron was one of the foundations of the Industrial Revolution. The new machines, the new factories, the new railways, and the new ships all required iron in vast quantities, and the development of cheaper, more efficient methods of iron production was a precondition for much of the rest of the industrial transformation. The story of iron and steel production in the Industrial Revolution is, in many ways, the story of how the material basis of the new industrial economy was built.

The replacement of charcoal by coke in the early eighteenth century, the puddling process of the 1780s, and Henry Bessemer’s converter of the 1850s are the three main hinge points in the history of iron and steel. The pages below cover each in turn, with links to detailed articles on the people and the regions involved.

The Importance of Iron

Iron was one of the most important materials of the Industrial Revolution. It was used to build the machines that drove the new factories, the bridges and buildings of the new industrial cities, the rails of the new railways, and the hulls of the new steamships. The growth of the iron industry was therefore closely tied to the growth of the rest of the economy, and the demand for iron was one of the driving forces behind the expansion of the coal industry that supplied the fuel for iron production.

In the early eighteenth century, however, the production of iron was limited and expensive. The traditional method of smelting iron required large quantities of charcoal, and the supply of wood in Britain was running out. The result was that iron was expensive, and many applications that would have been possible with cheaper iron were not feasible. The need for a cheaper method of iron production was clear, and it was the problem that the new techniques of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries would solve.

The Switch to Coke

The first major change in the British iron industry was the substitution of coke for charcoal in the smelting process. Coke, a fuel made by heating coal in the absence of air, had several advantages over charcoal: it was cheaper, more readily available, and produced a more concentrated heat. The problem was that the sulphur and other impurities in coke tended to contaminate the iron, producing a brittle, low-quality product.

The breakthrough came in 1709, when Abraham Darby, a Quaker ironmaster at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, succeeded in smelting iron using coke. Darby’s discovery gradually spread through the British iron industry, and by the late eighteenth century, coke-smelted iron was the norm.

The switch to coke made possible a rapid expansion of the British iron industry. Output rose from approximately 28,000 tons in 1750 to approximately 180,000 tons in 1800, and the industry grew rapidly throughout the nineteenth century. By 1850, Britain was producing more iron than the rest of the world combined, and the new material was being used in a wide range of applications, from the rails of the new railways to the frames of the new cotton mills.

The Puddling Process

The second major change in the British iron industry was the development of the puddling process by Henry Cort in 1784. The puddling process was a method of converting pig iron, the brittle, high-carbon iron produced in the blast furnace, into wrought iron, a tougher, more malleable material suitable for a wider range of uses.

The puddling process involved melting pig iron in a furnace and then stirring it with a long iron rod, which exposed the metal to the air and burned off the excess carbon. The result was a more or less pure iron that could be worked into a wide range of shapes, including bars, plates, and rods. The puddling process was not very efficient, since it required a great deal of heat and skilled labor, but it was a major improvement over the older methods of producing wrought iron, and it remained the standard method until the late nineteenth century.

The Geography of the Iron Industry

The development of the new iron-making techniques was closely tied to the geography of coal. The blast furnace and the puddling furnace both required large quantities of coal, and the iron industry therefore moved to the coalfields. The most important iron-producing regions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were:

South Wales, where the coalfields of the valleys around Merthyr Tydfil, Aberdare, and Swansea supported a large iron industry. By 1840, South Wales was producing about a third of British iron.
The West Midlands, especially Birmingham and the Black Country, which had a long tradition of metalworking and a dense network of small ironworks.
The Scottish Lowlands, especially the area around Carron and Coatbridge, where local coal and imported iron ore supported a large iron industry.
The Northeast, especially the Tees Valley, where coal and iron ore were found together and where the new iron industry helped to support the early railway industry.

The Coming of Steel

The First Industrial Revolution was the age of iron, but the Second Industrial Revolution would be the age of steel. Steel, an alloy of iron and carbon that is stronger, harder, and more versatile than either iron or wrought iron, had been known for centuries, but it was expensive and difficult to produce in large quantities. The development of new techniques for producing cheap steel in the mid-nineteenth century transformed the iron and steel industry, and it laid the foundation for the great steel industries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The most important of the new techniques was the Bessemer process, developed by the British inventor Henry Bessemer in 1856. The Bessemer process involved blowing air through molten pig iron to burn off the excess carbon, producing steel in large quantities and at relatively low cost.

The Bessemer process was soon supplemented by the Siemens-Martin open hearth process, developed in the 1860s, and by the electric arc furnace, developed in the late nineteenth century. The result was a rapid fall in the price of steel and a massive expansion of the steel industry. By 1900, the world’s steel production was about 28 million tons a year, and steel had become the most important metal in industry.

The Effects of Cheap Iron and Steel

The availability of cheap iron, and later cheap steel, transformed many other industries. The railway boom of the 1830s and 1840s would not have been possible without cheap iron for rails, bridges, and locomotives. The growth of the steamship industry depended on iron for hulls and engines. The construction of the new industrial cities required iron for bridges, buildings, and machinery. And the development of new industries, including shipbuilding, engineering, and construction, was made possible by the availability of cheap and reliable metal.

The growth of the iron and steel industry also had important social and environmental consequences. The new ironworks were large, dirty, and dangerous, and they employed large numbers of workers in often brutal conditions. The coal mines that supplied the ironworks were also dangerous and unhealthy, and the use of child labor in the mines and ironworks was widespread. The article on working conditions in British factories describes the conditions in these industries.

Selected Sources

Hyde, C. K. British Iron Production, 1600–1900: A Study in Technological Change. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1971; published in Economic History Review articles, 1960s–70s.
Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Riden, Philip, and John C. Lowe, eds. William Henric Journal: A British Ironmaster in the Industrial Revolution. Cardiff: Merton Priory Press, 2000.

In this section

Abraham Darby and the Birth of the Coke-Smelted Iron Industry The life and work of Abraham Darby, the Quaker ironmaster who first successfully smelted iron using coke at Coalbrookdale in 1709. Henry Bessemer and the Bessemer Process for Cheap Steel How Henry Bessemer's invention of the Bessemer process in 1856 transformed the steel industry and laid the foundation for the Second Industrial Revolution. The Puddling Process How Henry Cort's puddling process transformed the British iron industry in the 1780s by making it possible to produce large quantities of wrought iron.