Real iron making in America began six years later with John Winthrop, Jr., and his “Company of Undertakers for the Iron Works” which for many years operated in several localities in the New England States. Heaps of cinders left from their furnaces may still be seen and testify to their very extensive operation. One of Winthrop’s men was Joseph Jenks, who became known as the “Tubal-Cain” of New England. What is claimed to have been the first casting made on the Western Continent was made by him. It is a small pot, which was acquired and is said to be still owned by the family of Thomas Hudson, a descendant of Hendryk Hudson.
Sand molding as used at present was introduced by an ingenious Englishman, Jeremy Floris, and is vastly superior to the previously used system of molding in clay. Hollowware began to be extensively produced about this time.
As the country developed, iron works sprung up here and there and various kinds of articles came to be regularly manufactured. Of the early plants we can only mention the Stirling Iron Works, at Warwick, New York, which made the great 186–ton chain with links weighing 140 pounds each, which spanned the Hudson River near West Point, and where in 1816 was cast the first cannon made in America; the foundry of Sharp & Curtenius, in New York, where was cast the first steam cylinder; and the Trenton Rolling Mills, which first rolled iron as fireproof structural material.
Before the Revolutionary War the colonies exported considerable bar and pig iron to Europe, and as early as 1791 England began to foresee that this country would eventually be a serious rival.
Pittsburg’s great advantage as an iron and steel center has been due to its proximity to an extensive seam of bituminous coal and ore in adjacent counties, and to its location so near the Great Lakes, which provided cheap water transportation for the Lake Superior ores. The first iron works there was that of Turnbull & Company, which was established in 1790.
Though Reameur, a Frenchman, is the accredited discoverer of the process of malleableizing cast iron, Seth Boyden, in a little shop in Newark, New Jersey, made malleable iron castings a commercial success.
Two Modern Blast Furnaces, Showing Skip-Hoists, Cast Houses, Stoves, and Ore Pile
The utilization of the great beds of high grade coking coal of eastern Pennsylvania, well known as the Connellsville district, and the discovery and development of the Lake Superior ore deposits have made the United States the leading producer of iron and steel of the world. The development of the Birmingham, Alabama, district, also has been a chapter of great importance but lack of space forbids description at this time.
We can have only a very slight appreciation of the debt which civilization owes to iron, for practically everything we see or with which we daily come in contact contains or has resulted from application of iron in some way or other. Our cooking utensils and implements (even the enameled and tinned ones), the kitchen range, the water and drain pipes, and the furnace and heating plants of our houses, are they not largely of iron? Our main building materials—the steel frames of skyscrapers and bridges, and are not even wood, brick, stone, and cement either shaped, molded, or of necessity made by aid of iron machinery? The conveyances by which we travel—wagons, automobiles, street cars, steam railways and steamships—how would they be possible without iron or steel? Consider the power plants of our factories, of gas and electric lighting plants, the pumping machinery and distribution systems of water works, mines, etc. Would the electric current which supplies so much of our power and light be known to-day or even be possible but for the magnetic properties of iron? And how many of the materials and articles which we wear, use, and have about us constantly would be in any way possible without the wealth of steel machinery and tools which are available and absolutely necessary for their production?