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Message: <blockquote data-quote="buzzard" data-source="post: 255930" data-attributes="member: 3003">Being that metallurgist type critter that I am I have to say decent steel. For quite a long time people were limited in the tools they had available to work with on the quality anf quantity of metals available. Good steel production would have a drastic effect on many areas, and be an enabling technology for many of those mentioned above.No good steel- no railroad. No good steel- forget a steam boiler. No good steel, your bridge will be quite limited in span. Without steel, buildings are limited to a height at which rock gets crushed by its own weight (maybe 10 floors). Also cheap good steel will enable a superior military. The advent of iron supplanting bronze had this effect. Bronze was expensive due to scarcity of tin. Iron is quite common, and thus with iron weapons a larger army could be fielded for a given cost. Good steel would give an edge to ones weapons and armor. Better metallurgy could well justify a product being classed as masterwork simply due to composition. However, this is not to state that good steel, by itself, will change the world. It will merely enable the world to be changed. Your main step towards good steel would have to be development of the blast furnace and open hearth (or Bessemer converter). Blast furnace by itself will not cut the mustard. A blast furnace will only produce liquid carbon saturated iron of decent quality. To make decent steel you have to lower the carbon content to get better properties. Open hearths and Bessemer converters burn off the excess carbon to enable useful steels to be made. If you have any further steelmaking questions I can elaborate, I did piss away plenty of years on that Metallurgy doctorate. Buzzard</blockquote>

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