ANNUAL PRODUCTION OF PIG-!RON AND STEEL (In thousands of metric tons)
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Pig-iron
Steel Ingots
1910
1913
Best year in 1911-20
1920
1910
1913
Best year in 1911-20
1920
Austria-Hungary
2,010
2,370
2,418
2,188
2,682
3,337
Belgium
1,852
2,485
2,485
1,132
1,450
2,467
2,515
1,237
Canada
726
1,024
1,085
991
746
i, 060
1,700
l!l28
France
4,038
4,207
5,939
3,317
3,506
4,687
4,687
2,961
Germany
14,793
19,292
19,292
7,000*
13,699
'8,959
18,959
9,000*
Italy
215
427
472
635
846
1,332
Japan
57
77
384*
14
2 4
1,050*
Russia
3,042
4,548
4,548
3,479
4,827
4,900
Spain
367
425
498
365
470
Sweden
604
735
821
469
583
United Kingdom United States All other countries
10,381 27,637 525
10,482 31,482 495
10,482 40,092 550
8,139 37,530
6,477 26,512
315
7,787 31-823 325
10,434 45,786 350
9,205 42,821
66,190
78,029
59,792
76,425
- Estimated.
cations. Mechanical stokers were evolved in numerous designs to dispense with hand labour and to control by mechanical contrivances the combustion of coal in an efficient way.
Mill Equipment. Roller tables, skids, transfers, cooling-beds and titters were perfected and installed in increasing numbers owing mainly to the efficiency and handiness of electric motors. Variable- speed drives gained in favour. Straighteners, saws, punches and shears were made in conformity with the availability of electric power. Hydraulic devices were pushed in the background and elec- tric drives supplanted engines in the field of these mill accessories.
Melallographic Progress. Metallographic knowledge spread in the decade 1910-20 from the university laboratory to the steel-mill, outgrowing the narrow circle of students to become the helpmate of the operator. Pyrometers or temperature re- corders and the scientific control of temperature came as a matter of course in numbers of steel-mills. The variety of alloy steels offered for practical uses was due to the theoretical investigations of the metallograph. Chromium and vanadium, nickel and cobalt, tungsten and molybdenum added their special properties to steel, and improved heat-treating methods enhanced these qualities with a skill and positiveness hitherto unknown.
Beyond the realm of iron and steel making, properly regarded, but coming within the purview of the industry, the remarkable development of the second decade of the aoth century was the heat treatment of metals. It went hand-in-hand with the study (by means of the microscope, and thus of the photomicrograph) of grain structure and the transformations which take place in the so-called solid solutions, according to the degree of heating and cooling given to the metal. Practical applications of the investigations of the scientist were numerous, and the history of the temperature experience of a given metal product going into an article of commerce was accepted as every bit as important as the chemical constituents, for two pieces of steel, identical chemically, may be made to behave physically very differently according to their crystalline state.
Other developments which must be briefly enumerated were: Efforts to test a material's fitness or agreement to specifications with- out destroying it, as by X-ray photographs (sheets), or by magnetic analysis (by noting changes in permeability of an article of constant cross-section, as a rifle-barrel, wire or steel rail, by moving it through a magnetic field) ; these, however, were not definitely of commercial dependence, pending further investigation ; success in making large chains of cast-steel links followed by heat treatment, such as anneal- ing; efforts to cast in centrifugal moulds, such as cast-iron pipe by introducing molten iron into the rotating mould; commercial re- covery of potash from blast-furnace flue-dust deposits at the base of hot stoves finding a market ; making iron pipe by an electrolytic process of depositing iron on a rotating cathode in a ferrous-chloride electrolyte; commercial manufacture of a stainless steel having IO% to 15% of chromium, which, Harry Brearley in England dis- covered, gave amazing resistance to corrosion, so that it became the base of an important cutlery industry and offered a satisfactory material for rifle-barrels, turbine blades and steel articles subject to both erosion and corrosion ; additions to the numberless varieties of alloy steels, largely to secure some desired physical characteristic for specific needs, such as increased tensile strength in terms of lighter members of a fabricated steel product; elements like cerium and zirconium entered the ferro-alloy circle, but a delineation of the vari- ous alloys and of their definite fields of usefulness was not completed.
Production. The appended table was compiled to give some measure of the relative producing capacity of the leading in- dustrial nations of the world. The figures are of actual produc- tion before the World War for such countries as France, Bel- gium and Russia, but during the war for the United States, the United Kingdom (in steel) and Canada. Authoritative informa- tion was not obtainable as to the realignment of Europe's capabilities after the war, but the effect of the Versailles Treaty was to bring Germany down close to the level of England in this respect, and to raise France, on the completion of rebuilding plans, to 80% of Great Britain's capacity.
The world's steel-making capacity was put in 1920 at ico,- 000,000 tons in round numbers. Nearly one-half was credited to the United States, which could make four times as much as Great Britain. The United States' percentage of the world's pig-iron-making facilities was somewhat over 45 %. More than one-third of the total annual output of iron ore in the world came from the United States, and of the American produc- tion 85% came from the Lake Superior district. The Lorraine ore fields supplied about 25% of the world needs and 80% of it went to France and Germany.
World statistics of the production of ore, pig-iron and crude and finished forms of steel are obtainable from the National Federation of Iron and Steel Manufacturers, London. (W. W. M.)
IRVING, HENRY BRODRIBB (1870-1919), English actor, elder son of Sir Henry Irving (see 14.855), was born in London Aug. 5 1870. He was educated at Marlborough and New College, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1894; but he quickly abandoned this profession for that of the stage, for which his inherited aptitude had always been very marked. At Oxford he had belonged to the O.U.D.S. and had played the leading parts in Browning's Stra/ord and Shakespeare's King John. His first professional appearance in London was made Sept. 1891 with John Hare at the Garrick theatre in Robertson's School. Three years later he joined Mr. Ben Greet's company, where he met Miss Dorothea Baird, whom he married in 1896 at the time of her great popular success in Du Maurier's play of Trilby. His earliest notable success was in Barrie's The Admirable Crichton in 1903, and he followed it by an interesting impersonation of Hamlet in 1905. His picturesque appearance and strong likeness to his father induced him to repeat many of his father's famous parts; but he did original work of a high order in Stevenson's Dr. Jekytt and Mr. Hyde, in Stephen Phillips's The Sin of David, in Walter Hackett's The Barton Mystery, and in other romantic and melodramatic productions, many of them produced at the Savoy theatre, London, of which he was lessee and manager from 1913 until his death. Throughout his life he was a keen student of criminology, and he published a Life of Judge Jeffreys (1898); French Criminals of the igth Century (1901); A Book of Remarkable Criminals (1918) and other papers on the subject. He died in London Oct. 17 1919.
His younger brother, LAURENCE SYDNEY BRODRIBB IRVING (1871-1914), English actor, was born in London Dec. 21 1871.
