second reference, all you need to base your purchase decision of your railroad or billiards table as suits your idiosyncratic anachronistic needs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vFY8ufrslw&list=PLfUV806q_R...
The Triumvirate: Coal, Iron, and Steam
11–14 of 14 posts
Re: The Triumvirate: Coal, Iron, and Steam
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't need to melt it to work with it. From https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-... : "The second problem is chemical, because we are never going to melt this iron. Our furnaces can’t get that hot (and even if they could, melting this iron would cause it to absorb a lot of carbon from our fuel, which we do not want). So we’re going to be reducing our iron – that is, getting it to change…
"It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores from at least Greece to India" ... "The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron.[2] The archaeological evidence seems to…
Smelting does not imply that the iron or iron ore is ever in a molten state.
Re: The Triumvirate: Coal, Iron, and Steam
#13Q: Why is Ohio full of steelworks? A: Because it’s halfway between the iron of Lake Michigan and the coal of the Appalachians.
Intuitively it seems to me the better place would be either where the coal is or where the ore is. Either that or it doesn't matter, as long as it's between them and not somewhere else altogether.
Re: The Triumvirate: Coal, Iron, and Steam
#14Q: Why is Ohio full of steelworks? A: Because it’s halfway between the iron of Lake Michigan and the coal of the Appalachians.