Right. And one point that cannot be stressed enough.
Good steel, in quantity, only goes back to 1880.
Lots of things that "could have been built in antiquity" foundered on that basic fact. Before Bessemer, steel was as exotic as titanium is now.
The alternatives are not good. Cast iron? Too heavy and too brittle. Wrought iron? Maybe, but not that great. Lead? Too soft. Brass? Could work, but expensive. A king's kid might have had a brass bicycle.
If the iron workers of Cizhou, China, who had an air-blown steel making process by about 1100 AD, had made the next step to a Bessemer converter, history would have been completely different. They were close. Right idea, limited steelmaking capability, existing iron industry. Coal was available, but apparently not too easily.
The few places in the world with easy access to both coal and iron ore started the Industrial Revolution. Then came railroads, and the resources didn't have to be so close.
Good steel, in quantity, only goes back to 1880.
Lots of things that "could have been built in antiquity" foundered on that basic fact. Before Bessemer, steel was as exotic as titanium is now.
The alternatives are not good. Cast iron? Too heavy and too brittle. Wrought iron? Maybe, but not that great. Lead? Too soft. Brass? Could work, but expensive. A king's kid might have had a brass bicycle.
If the iron workers of Cizhou, China, who had an air-blown steel making process by about 1100 AD, had made the next step to a Bessemer converter, history would have been completely different. They were close. Right idea, limited steelmaking capability, existing iron industry. Coal was available, but apparently not too easily.
The few places in the world with easy access to both coal and iron ore started the Industrial Revolution. Then came railroads, and the resources didn't have to be so close.