Stone to Silicon

Materials · 1865

Open-hearth steel

A regenerative furnace makes large, controllable steel batches.

Pierre-Emile Martin used the Siemens regenerative furnace to make steel in 1865. Open hearth became the dominant steel process for most of the 20th century.

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Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

US railway network length Latest: 231k km (1993) Source: Our World in Data