The Use Of Iron During The Industrial Revolution

Manufacturing and production during the Industrial Revolution substantially contributed to the creation of the modern society. It marked the beginning of the use of machinery to manufacture products. From machinery to new forms of power, the achievements made during the Industrial Revolution shaped much of the modern world that humans live in today. During the Industrial Revolution, improvements in machines produced larger quantities of manufactured goods, which led to a mass-production. Machines such as the power loom, the Newcomen atmospheric engine and James Watt’s steam engine were invented. New techniques such as the ‘puddling’ procedure were applied to the production of iron to improve the way iron was manufactured. On a large scale,
Instead of using wood or charcoal as fuel, coal was a much more efficient fuel to use in the manufacturing of iron. Before the Industrial Revolution, iron was produced by extracting iron ore from the ground. Metallic impurities were then removed by going through the 'smelting' process, where iron ore was heated to a very high temperature in a blast furnace. Iron-makers found it difficult when going through this procedure because it was challenging for them to produce pure iron without any impurities. In 1709, Abraham Darby developed a blast furnace that used coke as a type of fuel to smelt iron. Darby's invention removed more metallic impurities from the iron ore, which produced a more pure iron. "The use of coke also allowed the construction of larger blast furnaces capable of producing greater quantities of pig iron." [Darlington, R., Smithies, G. and Wood, A. (2013) p. 46] This was a creative leap that helped the production of iron make a breakthrough on the dependence on wood and charcoal as the major fuel source, which made it possible to produce pig iron in larger quantities and of
It was a method that reduced the carbon content in pig iron so that it would not brittle. Other impurities in the iron ore were also removed, resulting in "a product that was stronger and could be bent, rolled or cast into many different shapes." [Darlington, R., Smithies, G. and Wood, A. (2013) p. 47] The high-quality iron was used to manufacture machines, infrastructures and other implements. Compared with the production of iron in 1760, Britain produced more than seventy times the amount of iron by 1850. The advances in iron-making techniques manufactured metals that were stronger and cheaper, and could be applied to a variety of uses. Iron production became an industry that impacted the modern society by changing the way people manufactured iron. Without the innovations in the manufacturing and production industry during the Industrial Revolution, it would not have been possible for the contemporary world to produce pig iron without ANY impurities in