![Area View around Catasauqua Creek and the Crane Iron Works in 2017-USGS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Area_View_around_Catasauqua_Creek_and_the_Crane_Iron_Works_in_2017-USGS.png)
Anthracite iron or anthracite pig iron is the substance created by the smelting together of
anthracite coal
Anthracite, also known as hard coal, and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic luster. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the high ...
and
iron ore
Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the fo ...
, that is using anthracite coal instead of charcoal to smelt iron ores—and was an important historic advance in the late-1830s, enabling a great acceleration of the industrial revolution in Europe and North America.
[Thomas, Samuel,
]
History
Unlike many seminal advances, the contributors, place and date of this epoch are well recorded within specific moments in the late 1830s. The first repeatable and reliably successful furnaces and smelts were managed by the same person in both the United Kingdom and the United States, in the principal control and supervision of Ironmaster David Thomas who had begun experimenting with attempts to use locally available Welsh anthracite deposits as early as 1820 soon after he became in charge at Yniscedewin Iron Works in Wales. About this 1837-38 timeframe experiments were also being made in Pennsylvania near Port Carbon,
[
] and in Mauch Chunk, but with overall better success than in Wales. White, Hazard and the LC&N Co. had begun systematic experiments to smelt using anthracite in two furnaces in Mauch Chunk in 1832–1837 with intermittent but sporadically improved successes using cold blast processes with two differently designed furnaces.
The first American smelt of Anthracite Pig Iron was performed July 4, 1840 by principal-partners
David Thomas,
Josiah White
Josiah White (1781–1850) was a Pennsylvania industrialist and key figure in the American Industrial Revolution.
Career
White began early factory-centered mill production in 1808 in water powered ironworks near Philadelphia, along with his part ...
and
Erskine Hazard
Erskine Hazard (1790-1865), a younger son of the first U.S. Postmaster Ebenezer Hazard, became the partner of Josiah White about 1810 when around 19 years old. White and Hazard together established spearheaded efforts that enabled the Industrial R ...
at their
Lehigh Crane Iron Works in their first
hot
Hot or the acronym HOT may refer to:
Food and drink
*Pungency, in food, a spicy or hot quality
*Hot, a wine tasting descriptor
Places
* Hot district, a district of Chiang Mai province, Thailand
**Hot subdistrict, a sub-district of Hot Distric ...
blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric ...
along
Catasauqua Creek
Catasauqua Creek is an ENE–SSW oriented creek draining (straight line distance) from springs of the Blue Mountain barrier ridge several miles below the Lehigh Gap in the ridge-and-valley Appalachians located upriver and opposite from Allen ...
aided by Samuel Thomas and the employees of the LCIW, in what became
Catasauqua in
Northampton County,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
. The technology enabled industries the chance to produce
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...
sufficient to demand and eventually adapt production to also feed the demand to generate
wrought iron
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag Inclusion (mineral), inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a ...
and
steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
. These useful materials are achieved by adding additional processing—by taking
pig iron
Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate product of the iron industry in the production of steel which is obtained by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silic ...
as an ingredient into a
reverberatory furnace
A reverberatory furnace is a metallurgical or process furnace that isolates the material being processed from contact with the fuel, but not from contact with combustion gases. The term ''reverberation'' is used here in a generic sense of ''rebo ...
(and in later years, a
Bessemer converter
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with ...
).
Anthracite, also known as stone coal or rock coal, is very difficult to ignite,
[
] mine, clean, and break into smaller chunks and requires correct conditions to build heat or hold temperature and sustain burning—which oft depend upon the size and uniformity of the coal particles. Yet American cities were cramped for fuels, woodlands were exhausted near bigger towns and Philadelphia, largest city in America needed fuels for mills and foundries as well to sustain manufacturing. Inventor and industrialist
Josiah White
Josiah White (1781–1850) was a Pennsylvania industrialist and key figure in the American Industrial Revolution.
Career
White began early factory-centered mill production in 1808 in water powered ironworks near Philadelphia, along with his part ...
(owner of a wire mill,
foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...
and nail factory), had determined how to burn anthracite in iron working processing furnaces during the
War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...
,
[ but its use in smelting operations was hit or miss, dependent upon the material packing geometries of any particular charging load in a cold blast furnace.][
] The earlier development of coking
Coking is the heating of coal in the absence of oxygen to a temperature above 600 °C to drive off the volatile components of the raw coal, leaving a hard, strong, porous material of high carbon content called coke. Coke consists almost ent ...
of bituminous coal
Bituminous coal, or black coal, is a type of coal containing a tar-like substance called bitumen or asphalt. Its coloration can be black or sometimes dark brown; often there are well-defined bands of bright and dull material within the seams. It ...
, as well anthracite coke enabled the smelting of iron using local coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when dea ...
sources with cold blast
Cold blast, in ironmaking, refers to a metallurgical furnace where air is not preheated before being blown into the furnace. This represents the earliest stage in the development of ironmaking. Until the 1820s, the use of cold air was thought to b ...
air in blast furnaces after the latter 1830s allowed the production of the vast quantities of iron that built the fundamental infrastructure of the early North American Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
—which was built on iron products and only some steel. At the time, iron was used minimally with respect to wood. Even most railroad tracks were laid with wooden rails, sometimes covered by iron strapping. As more iron became available, more uses were found for iron, creating a cycle of increasing demand, experimentation and improvements—part of the revolution in industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
.
Development of the process
During the United States' first energy crisis
An energy crisis or energy shortage is any significant bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In literature, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, in particular, those that supply n ...
stands of forest near larger towns and America's Eastern Seaboard cities became farther and farther from population and factory centers, raising the price of fuel for heating and smithies, especially clean burning charcoal
Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...
—long the fuel of preference for smelting and glass making, creating a decades long search for alternative fuels. By mid-1792 prominent Philadelphians had formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company
Lehigh may refer to:
Places United States
* Lehigh, Iowa
*Lehigh, Kansas
* Lehigh, Oklahoma
* Lehigh, Barbour County, West Virginia
*Lehigh, Wisconsin
*Lehigh Acres, Florida
*Lehigh Township (disambiguation)
*Lehigh Valley, a region in eastern Pe ...
(LHCM Co.) to bring Anthracite
Anthracite, also known as hard coal, and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic luster. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the hig ...
to cities reachable via the Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...
Valley, especially Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
—the nation's largest and most industrialized city, though no one fully understood how to use anthracite as a sole fuel—just that ''it 'could' burn 'some' of the time'' with a hot enough base fire, so could augment furnace fuels.
The LHCM Co. had great difficulty getting many ark-loads of coal to the docks in Philadelphia, much less having capabilities to make reliable deliveries of the fuel to industries risking its use, for the trip from Lausanne
, neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), ...
along the Lehigh River
The Lehigh River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in eastern Pennsylvania. The river flows in a generally southward pat ...
's variable water height and many rocks and rapids then surviving the over on the equally untamed Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...
. In the midst of the War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...
iron industry magnate Josiah White
Josiah White (1781–1850) was a Pennsylvania industrialist and key figure in the American Industrial Revolution.
Career
White began early factory-centered mill production in 1808 in water powered ironworks near Philadelphia, along with his part ...
set his foremen to systematically conducting experiments as how 'stone coal' could be made to burn reliably. It was recognized as some use aiding other fuels, and pack animal loads occasionally reached the city, which had mills and foundries desperately needing to circumvent the British Naval Blockade, so Bituminous Coal coastal shipments up from Virginia might resume. These experiments established a bottom draught and closed doors (reflection or reverberatory furnace
A reverberatory furnace is a metallurgical or process furnace that isolates the material being processed from contact with the fuel, but not from contact with combustion gases. The term ''reverberation'' is used here in a generic sense of ''rebo ...
techniques) were the key. Before the war, Baltimore, New York, Newark, New Haven, Boston, and Philadelphia industrialists were importing Bituminous via shipload from Virginia and Great Britain, and these supplies became difficult to obtain or blocked politically by the war and its preceding embargoes on British goods. After the war, the sanctions continued until various boundary disputes were resolved as far away as The Oregon Country
Oregon Country was a large region of the Pacific Northwest of North America that was subject to a long dispute between the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 19th century. The area, which had been created by the Treaty of 1818, co ...
and the Columbia River basin.
Historical backdrop
Meanwhile, between 1814 and 1818 industries along the Eastern Seaboard were still thirsting for energy relief when inquiries to the LHCM Co. by Hazard & White indicated the operation & rights of the company were available. Frustrated by the snail-like progress of improvements that would become the Schuylkill Canal, White & Hazard applied to the Pennsylvania legislature for the rights to improve and operate navigations
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...
upon the rapids-strewn Lehigh River
The Lehigh River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in eastern Pennsylvania. The river flows in a generally southward pat ...
initiating the process that lead to the Lehigh Canal
The Lehigh Canal, or the Lehigh Navigation Canal, is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of twenty years, beginning in 1818. The low ...
—beginning regular high volume & reliable coal deliveries in late 1820—and the great changes a flood of anthracite would create in the next century.
Iron from Anthracite smelting
Research into the smelting of iron using anthracite coal (without coking it first) began in the 1820s in Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
by Thomas,[ experiments in France, most notably by Gueymard and Robin at ]Vizille
Vizille (; frp, Veselye) is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France.
Population
Sights
Vizille is the home of the Musée de la Révolution française, a rich depository of archival and rare materials devoted to the French ...
in 1827,[ and in the 1830s in Pottsville][ & ]Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania
Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe is loc ...
.[Bartholomew, Metz, & Kneis, pp.4-6] Early attempts tried to gradually substitute anthracite for other fuels, such as coke or charcoal
Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...
, but all failed due to the use of cold blast
Cold blast, in ironmaking, refers to a metallurgical furnace where air is not preheated before being blown into the furnace. This represents the earliest stage in the development of ironmaking. Until the 1820s, the use of cold air was thought to b ...
techniques, which generated insufficient heat to keep the anthracite in regenerative combustion.[Bartholomew & Metz, pp. 14–15] In the same time-frame, Thomas had also continued experimenting with mixes of Anthracite and other fuels, before he combined those experiments and the new hot blast
Hot blast refers to the preheating of air blown into a blast furnace or other metallurgical process. As this considerably reduced the fuel consumed, hot blast was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. ...
processing.
In the United States, where the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company
The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company headquartered in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, now known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The company operated from 1818 until its dissolution in 1964 and played an early and i ...
(LC&N) had begun shipping anthracite to Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
in 1820 because the principles could not obtain sufficient fuels for their iron works at ''the 'Falls of the Schuylkill' ''—so had built the Lehigh Canal
The Lehigh Canal, or the Lehigh Navigation Canal, is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of twenty years, beginning in 1818. The low ...
and taken over the works of the haphazard Lehigh Coal Mine Company
Lehigh may refer to:
Places United States
* Lehigh, Iowa
*Lehigh, Kansas
* Lehigh, Oklahoma
* Lehigh, Barbour County, West Virginia
*Lehigh, Wisconsin
*Lehigh Acres, Florida
*Lehigh Township (disambiguation)
*Lehigh Valley, a region in eastern Pe ...
—by the late 1820s having established works that were running smoothly, after building America's second operating railroad in 1827, they'd great interest in exploiting the great anthracite deposits of Schuylkill County for ironmaking, which mills foundries were their principle businesses.
The Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...
, in 1830, offered a gold medal to the manufacturer of the greatest quantity of anthracite iron, and Nicholas Biddle
Nicholas Biddle (January 8, 1786February 27, 1844) was an American financier who served as the third and last president of the Second Bank of the United States (chartered 1816–1836). Throughout his life Biddle worked as an editor, diplomat, au ...
and his associates offered a prize of $5,000 to the first individual to smelt a certain quantity of iron ore within a given time, using anthracite. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation, by then an industrial giant of the times, also offered free water power and discount rates on coal and shipping to encourage the development of the process.
The first key breakthrough occurred in 1828–29,[ when Scotsman ]James Beaumont Neilson
James Beaumont Neilson (22 June 1792 – 18 January 1865) was a Scotland, Scottish inventor whose hot blast, hot-blast process greatly increased the efficiency of smelting iron.
Life
He was the son of the engineer Walter Neilson, a millwri ...
patented the hot blast
Hot blast refers to the preheating of air blown into a blast furnace or other metallurgical process. As this considerably reduced the fuel consumed, hot blast was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. ...
technique & process, which he had conceived in an attempt to improve the efficiency of conventionally fueled furnaces. The first person to employ the hot blast technique to anthracite smelting was Dr. Frederick W. Gesenhainer, who filed for a patent on the process in 1831 and received it in 1833. In 1836, he tried smelting anthracite iron on a practical scale at his property, Valley Furnace, near Pottsville, Pennsylvania
Pottsville is the county seat of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 13,346 at the 2020 census, and is the principal city of the Pottsville, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies along the west bank of th ...
, while in the same year White & Hazard's LC&N Co. built two experimental blast furnaces in Mauch Chunk
Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe is ...
. He produced a small quantity of iron, but due to mechanical breakdowns, could not keep the furnace in operation for more than two months. While distinguished visitors, including Governor Joseph Ritner
Joseph Ritner (March 25, 1780 – October 16, 1869) was the eighth Governor of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and was a member of the Anti-Masonic Party. Elected Governor of Pennsylvania during the 1835 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, h ...
, acknowledged his success, he sold out his share in Valley Furnace and went to New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
The research was proceeding along parallel lines across the Atlantic. George Crane, owner, and David Thomas, superintendent of the Yniscedwyn Iron Works, had themselves conceived of the idea of using hot blast to smelt anthracite. Thomas was sent to Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
to examine Neilson's installation and reproduced it at Yniscedwyn. Crane filed for a British patent on smelting iron with anthracite and hot blast in 1836 and received it in 1837. By the time the patent was sealed, Yniscedwyn was producing about 35 tons of iron using anthracite only as a fuel.
Inspired both by Geisenhainer and Crane (whose success was closely followed by the LC&N), experiments in the US continued. Baughman, Guiteau and Company used an old furnace near Mauch Chunk
Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe is ...
to produce some anthracite iron during late 1837. They built another experimental furnace nearby, which was worked for about two months during fall and winter 1838 and for some time in 1839, but mechanical deficiencies led them to abandon the furnace at the end of 1839. In the meantime, Pioneer Furnace, in Pottsville, was blown in using anthracite fuel in 1839. It was built by William Lyman obtained the aid of a Welsh emigrant, Benjamin Perry, who was familiar with Neilson's process and the Yniscedwyn works, for the blowing-in. The furnace ran for three months on anthracite alone and fulfilled the conditions to win the $5,000 prize. In the design of Pioneer Furnace, Lyman had also been assisted by David Thomas, who had arrived in the United States in May 1839. Thomas was engaged by the LC&N to set up the Lehigh Crane Iron Company
The Lehigh Crane Iron Company (later simply the Crane Iron Company) was a major ironmaking firm in the Lehigh Valley from its founding in 1839 until its sale in 1899. It was founded under the patronage of Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, and fin ...
and its first furnace at Catasauqua, which went into blast in 1840, along with five other anthracite furnaces. This marked the commercial establishment of anthracite iron production in the United States.
Decline
The opening of bituminous coal
Bituminous coal, or black coal, is a type of coal containing a tar-like substance called bitumen or asphalt. Its coloration can be black or sometimes dark brown; often there are well-defined bands of bright and dull material within the seams. It ...
deposits suitable for coking in the western part of the Allegheny Plateau
The Allegheny Plateau , in the United States, is a large dissected plateau area of the Appalachian Mountains in western and central New York, northern and western Pennsylvania, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. It is divide ...
resulted in the gradual displacement of anthracite as a fuel. The production of coke-fired furnaces overtook that of anthracite-fired furnaces in 1875, and the last anthracite furnaces in the US, the former Lock Ridge Iron Company, converted to coke in 1914.[Bartholomew & Metz, p. 79]
Explanatory notes
Citations
Sources
*
General references
*
*
*
*
*
{{Authority control
Ferrous alloys
Iron
Metalworking
Smelting
Steelmaking