Antiquity–1800
Bloom and crucible
Wrought iron and small crucible heats; charcoal, skill and pattern welding defined quality.
강철 did not arrive as a finished commodity. bloomery c. 1800 BCE / Bessemer 1856 around Anatolia → Sheffield still explains who makes it and which tests it sits in.
Ten dated points, five eras and three milestones below are the spine — not a complete industrial history.
시작
bloomery c. 1800 BCE / Bessemer 1856Anatolia → Sheffield
연표
c. 1800 BCEBloomery iron
Solid-state reduction of ore in charcoal furnaces produced wrought iron blooms in Anatolia and the Levant.
c. 500 BCEWootz crucible steel
South Indian crucible steels, later traded as Damascus blades, showed high-carbon patterned microstructures.
c. 200 BCEHan China steel
Chinese bloomery and fining routes scaled agricultural tools and weapons in the Han period.
1740Huntsman crucible
Benjamin Huntsman in Sheffield remelted blister steel in clay crucibles for clock springs and cutlery.
1856Bessemer converter
Henry Bessemer’s air-blown converter dropped the cost of bulk steel and opened rails and ship plate.
1868Open-hearth
Siemens–Martin hearths allowed scrap + pig iron charges and tighter chemistry control.
1952LD / BOF
The Linz–Donawitz oxygen converter cut cycle time versus open hearth and became the global default.
1970sContinuous casting
Slabs and billets froze in motion, cutting energy and yield loss versus ingot teeming.
1990sAHSS for autos
Dual-phase and TRIP steels let car bodies thin while crash energy absorption rose.
2020sHydrogen DRI pilots
Direct-reduced iron with hydrogen aims to cut blast-furnace CO₂; first commercial lines are still regional.
시대
1856–1914
Converter age
Bessemer and open-hearth steel made rails, bridges and hulls a bulk commodity.
1918–1970
Alloy and war steel
Nickel, chromium and molybdenum grades served armour, aircraft and machine tools.
1970–2000
BOF and mini-mills
Oxygen steelmaking plus electric-arc scrap mills split primary and recycling routes.
2000–now
AHSS and green trials
Advanced high-strength auto steels and hydrogen-DRI pilots rewrite both cars and climate math.
이정표
Bessemer 1856
1740Air blow through molten pig iron made cheap bulk steel possible.
BOF 1952
1952Oxygen converters became the dominant primary route worldwide.
AHSS 1990s
2020sMulti-phase microstructures let crash structures lose mass without losing energy absorption.
Knowing this timeline is how to read a mill certificate without treating 강철 as timeless.