The steel industry provides much of the material basis for modern civilisation. Although its end products are numerous, the largest sector of the industry is involved in the production of wide strip. This is used by countless other industries to make a range of products from automobile bodies, and the cases of domestic appliances, to metal furniture and cans for the preservation of foodstuffs and drinks. A hundred years ago sheet steel was made in labor-intensive operations by a large number of small rolling mills. This is an account of how this relatively backward part of the industry was transformed by the invention and industrial application of a revolutionary new technology. In the hot strip mill a slab of steel was passed through a series of rolls to be reduced into a continuous band of wide strip, which was then shipped either as coils or cut into sheets.
The introduction of the wide continuous hot strip mill began to concentrate the sheet and tin plate industry into much bigger operations complete with iron making, steel works, rolling mills and finishing plant. New companies rose to prominence; some old industry leaders fell behind. Many former locations for sheet manufacture were abandoned, but other old plants and companies re-equipped and survived. Major producers of other products entered the new trade. Less than thirty years ago another major change began when electric arc steel furnace operators began to install strip mills and the trade of the now rather inappropriately named `mini-mill` grew rapidly at the expense of the longer established iron—open hearth steel—primary rolling mill—strip mill industry. Now, as its centenary approaches, the strip mill sector is still undergoing major changes. This book surveys the growth, structure and changes in this dominant part of the steel industry. The strip mill has transformed steel world-wide, but in its origins and development it has above all been a distinctively American achievement.
By:
Kenneth Warren
Imprint: Lexington Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 159mm,
Spine: 19mm
Weight: 472g
ISBN: 9781498576994
ISBN 10: 1498576990
Pages: 214
Publication Date: 22 November 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: Innovation and Continuous Rolling Mills Abbreviations Chapter 1: Foundations: The Sheet and Tin Plate Industries to the Late Nineteenth Century Chapter 2: Growth, Combination and Rationalization, 1898–1901 Chapter 3: Vandergrift Works Chapter 4: Expansion and Company Promotion, 1900–1920 Chapter 5: A Great Divide: The Sheet Trade in the 1920s Chapter 6: The Search for a Practicable Continuous Sheet Mill Chapter 7: The Wide Continuous Hot Strip Mill Chapter 8: Investment in Adverse Times: The Thirties Chapter 9: Contrasts in Development Planning: Policies in the Pittsburgh District and Opportunities and Initiatives in Michigan Chapter 10: Hand Mills, Continuous Mills, and Social Problems Chapter 11: World War Ii and the Postwar Boom Chapter 12: Corporate Policy after 1945 Chapter 13: The “Second Generation” Mills Chapter 14: Years of Difficulty: The 1970s and 1980s Chapter 15: EAF Steel and Compact Strip Mills Chapter 16: Into a New Millennium Appendix: The Old Sheet Steel Industry and Contrasting Perspectives on the Impact of the Strip Mill on Employment
Kenneth Warren (1931–2018) received his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Reviews for A Century of American Steel: The Strip Mill and the Transformation of an Industry
Kenneth Warren, the ‘dean’ of historians of the American steel industry, is at the top of his form in this work. In it, he deftly and cogently analyzes the complex vicissitudes of technology and market during the long twentieth century. It should stand as the seminal work in the field for years to come. -- John N. Ingham, University of Toronto
