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Speaker 1: Get technology with tech Stuff from stolom. Hey there, and

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Speaker 1: welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. Now,

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Speaker 1: in our last episode, we started to look at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which started in England in

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Speaker 1: the mid eighteenth century. Though, as I mentioned in that

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Speaker 1: previous episode, it's actually really hard to point at any

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Speaker 1: historical event, not just the Industrial Revolution, but really any

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Speaker 1: big event and definitively carve out exactly when it began,

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Speaker 1: because history just doesn't work like that. Things develop and

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Speaker 1: bleed into one another. But at any rate, generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: we tend to look at seventeen seventeen fifties somewhere around

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Speaker 1: there as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Now, in

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Speaker 1: that last episode, I focused mainly on the textile industry

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Speaker 1: because it's a great illustration of how quickly things changed

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Speaker 1: just within a few decades and went from something that

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Speaker 1: used to be a specialized skill among weavers that would

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Speaker 1: do you know, maybe a couple would work together, uh,

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Speaker 1: but that would be it, and it would be something

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Speaker 1: that would be produced on a very small scale, to

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Speaker 1: a full blown industry which would end up employing thousands

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Speaker 1: of people. Now, in this week's episode, we're gonna look

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Speaker 1: more closely at how iron shaped the Industrial Revolution and

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Speaker 1: how innovations and inventions in the iron industry really changed things.

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Speaker 1: And it's it's fascinating and also kind of complicated. Now,

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Speaker 1: first of all, iron is the second most common metal

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Speaker 1: in the Earth's crust. The most common would be aluminum.

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Speaker 1: But we would never really use chemically pure iron, you know,

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Speaker 1: the fe stuff to build anything of any significance. And

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Speaker 1: that's because of a couple of things. Pure iron is

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Speaker 1: really malleable, so that it means it's really easy to shape,

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Speaker 1: so that's good. And you can even cut pure iron

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Speaker 1: using something like a knife. If you've got a hunk

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Speaker 1: of chemically pure iron, you can cut through it. It

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Speaker 1: does take some effort, it's not like it's gonna slice

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Speaker 1: through like butta, but you can do it. You can

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Speaker 1: use a hammer to beat pure iron into sheets, or

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Speaker 1: you can even draw it into wires. And it's great stuff.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it conducts heat, it conducts electricity. It's also

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Speaker 1: really easy to magnetize, so it's got a lot of uses.

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Speaker 1: But it isn't strong or hard enough in order to

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Speaker 1: use for building structures like bridges or buildings or canals

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Speaker 1: or or even common tools. It's not strong enough to

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Speaker 1: to do that. It will end up bending too too much.

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Speaker 1: So all of that is kind of a moot point

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Speaker 1: because there's something else about iron that gives it a

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Speaker 1: huge drawback. We don't see much pure iron because it's

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Speaker 1: got a habit of getting really familiar with oxygen. Oxygen

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Speaker 1: corrodes iron, particularly in moist conditions, so that causes a

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Speaker 1: chemical reaction in which pure iron forms an iron oxide

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Speaker 1: that we call rust. So that's essentially what's happening, is

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Speaker 1: this chemical reaction with iron and oxygen creates this iron

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Speaker 1: oxide of rust that we don't really want. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's always about you know, you have to scrub down

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Speaker 1: the rust and get rid of it, or else it

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Speaker 1: just continues to corrode. Well, because iron reacts so readily

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Speaker 1: to oxygen, we don't mind iron in its pure form.

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Speaker 1: In fact, we just we don't find it because it

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Speaker 1: oxydizes so quickly. Instead, we mind iron oxides that are

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Speaker 1: locked inside various types of ore, including hematite, which is

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Speaker 1: the most plentiful ore that contains iron, limonite or limonite,

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Speaker 1: depending on how you want to pronounce it, sometimes called

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Speaker 1: bog iron and magnetite, which is also known as load stone,

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Speaker 1: among others. There are a few other versions of iron

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Speaker 1: ore as well. Not all ores contain the same percentage

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Speaker 1: of iron by volume, and we mine iron both in

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Speaker 1: underground mines and in surface mining. It all depends upon

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Speaker 1: where you are and where the iron deposits. Happened to

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Speaker 1: be now, the iron ore in Britain, because that again

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Speaker 1: is where the Industrial Revolution began, had really high concentrations

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Speaker 1: of sulfur and phosphorus, and both of those things will

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Speaker 1: make iron brittle if you don't get rid of them.

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Speaker 1: So until the Industrial Revolution, iron masters hadn't really quite

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Speaker 1: worked out how to do that on an efficient basis.

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Speaker 1: For that reason, British iron was often used in very

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Speaker 1: cheap items like nails. Now, this was also a little

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Speaker 1: tricky because iron making iron required a lot of labor,

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Speaker 1: a lot of backbreaking hard work, and that drove up

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Speaker 1: the price of the final product. So Britain was starting

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Speaker 1: to supplement its own iron supplies by importing about half

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Speaker 1: of all the iron that was using from Sweden. The

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Speaker 1: iron from Sweden did not have the high concentrations of

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Speaker 1: sulfur or phosphorus, so it wasn't as problematic, and Britain

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Speaker 1: just couldn't produce enough of its own despite ample supplies

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Speaker 1: of iron ore. Now, once we get hold of iron ore,

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Speaker 1: we have to smelt it. That's in order for us

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Speaker 1: to get to the iron that's inside of it. Now,

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Speaker 1: this involves heating the ore up to the melting point

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Speaker 1: of iron. We also use fuels that will produce chemicals

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Speaker 1: that can bond with the iron during this process, which

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Speaker 1: changes iron's physical characteristics. We're talking chemical reactions here, and

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Speaker 1: what we're really doing is creating iron alloys. And an

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Speaker 1: alloy is a mixture that has a metal with something else.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's another metal, sometimes it's a different substance. But

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Speaker 1: these are chemical mixtures that have their own features that

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Speaker 1: are a front from the features of the individual elements

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Speaker 1: or or ingredients in that mixture, so you're getting something new.

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Speaker 1: The main ingredient we mix with iron to produce useful

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Speaker 1: material is carbon, and if you get the mix of

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Speaker 1: carbon to iron just right, you produce steel. Steel is

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Speaker 1: an iron alloy that has around two or less carbon

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Speaker 1: in it. Other types of iron hab between two to

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Speaker 1: four percent of carbon in the alloy, and mixing other

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Speaker 1: metals or substances will create different types of steel or iron.

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Speaker 1: So how do you mix carbon into the iron? What

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Speaker 1: exactly are you doing here is there's some sort of

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Speaker 1: powder that you're pouring in. Well, one way is by

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Speaker 1: using a carbon rich fuel as the means of heating

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Speaker 1: up your iron to melt it in the first place.

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Speaker 1: So if you're using something a fuel that has a

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Speaker 1: lot of carbon in it, then some of that carbon

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Speaker 1: gets transferred into the iron as it melts. Charcoal is

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Speaker 1: a great example, and iron masters in Britain and really

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Speaker 1: all over Europe relied very heavily on charcoal for centuries

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Speaker 1: when smelting iron ore. But if you remember from our

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Speaker 1: last episode, I talked about a man named Abraham Darby

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Speaker 1: who came up with an alternative to charcoal, and it

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Speaker 1: was coke. Now, coke is a fuel product you make

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Speaker 1: by baking coal in an airless oven or furnace at

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Speaker 1: a really high temperature, and at that high temperature, some

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Speaker 1: of the coal begins to ash. That ash will end

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Speaker 1: up melding with the the coal itself and it converts

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Speaker 1: into this other fuel called coke, which is once it

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Speaker 1: cools down, grayish in color and has a very porous structure.

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Speaker 1: When you burn coke, it creates carbon monoxide, among other things,

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Speaker 1: which is important in this process of creating iron useful iron.

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Speaker 1: But why would anyone worry about switching from charcoal to

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Speaker 1: coke in the first place. I mean, charcoal is pretty simple.

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Speaker 1: You just have to burn wood to make charcoal. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, this is where the problem would come in.

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Speaker 1: In order to fuel a single iron works for one year,

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Speaker 1: it would take two acres of forest to supply enough

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Speaker 1: charcoal for operations. So for one iron works, you would

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Speaker 1: need two hundred acres of woods. And keep in mind

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Speaker 1: that once you've gone through that that two acres of

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Speaker 1: forests in a year, you're not gonna be able to

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Speaker 1: use those same two hundred acres the next year because

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Speaker 1: it's going to take time for that forest to grow back.

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Speaker 1: So we saw a steady decrease in the forests of

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Speaker 1: Britain during this time period. At this time, iron works

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Speaker 1: were mostly located in forests because it was cheaper to

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Speaker 1: ship the iron ore and iron from the iron work

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Speaker 1: or to the iron works, and from the iron works

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Speaker 1: then it was to ship charcoal around, so they located

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Speaker 1: the iron works near the fuel, not the iron ore,

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Speaker 1: which seems counterintuitive at first, but eventually the growth of

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Speaker 1: the iron industry and the fact that more and more

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Speaker 1: people were building ships during this time period for England

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Speaker 1: meant that England was using up more wood than it

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Speaker 1: could replenish. So charcoal became more expensive because forests were

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Speaker 1: being chopped down. Wood was becoming a scarce commodity comparatively

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Speaker 1: speaking compared to how it had been in previous centuries,

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Speaker 1: so it became really expensive to use forests just to

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Speaker 1: generate charcoal. So an alternative fuel was definitely needed to

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Speaker 1: make British iron and actual commodity. Now. Some iron masters

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Speaker 1: tried using coal as fuel, but burning coal produces sulfur,

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Speaker 1: and that sulfur would react to the melted iron ore

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Speaker 1: and produce an iron that was too brittle to be

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Speaker 1: of much use. Coke, however, didn't produce nearly as much

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Speaker 1: sulfur when burned, and the carbon monoxide coke produces when

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Speaker 1: burned would mix with a melted iron ore to create

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Speaker 1: useful iron. And if you listen to that last episode,

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Speaker 1: you heard that Abraham Darby had developed a process for

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Speaker 1: making pig iron by using coke as the fuel. While

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Speaker 1: smelting iron ore, but his approach wasn't adopted by the

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Speaker 1: iron industry during his lifetime. There are a couple of

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Speaker 1: reasons for that that, you know, the iron industry didn't

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Speaker 1: immediately swap to using coke instead of charcoal. One of

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Speaker 1: those reasons is that Darby pretty much kept his process

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Speaker 1: a secret and only told his son, Abraham Darby the second,

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Speaker 1: how to do it. At the time, anyone wanted to,

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Speaker 1: you know, get an advantage over their competitors. What they

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Speaker 1: did was they kept their methods secret. Some people would

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Speaker 1: choose to patent ideas to protect them. Others decided that

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Speaker 1: patents were bad because if you if you file a patent,

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Speaker 1: the information on how you do something becomes public knowledge

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Speaker 1: and eventually passes into the public domain. So rather than

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Speaker 1: patent of process, some people would try and keep it

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Speaker 1: a secret. That's what Derby did. But the other reason

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Speaker 1: is that Darby didn't live to a very ripe old age.

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Speaker 1: He actually had a really long illness and died at

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Speaker 1: age thirty eight in seventeen seventeen. Now, his grandson, Abraham

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Speaker 1: Derby the third would build the first iron bridge in

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Speaker 1: the late seventeen seventies, but the Derby's method was really

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Speaker 1: only good for creating a particular type of iron called

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Speaker 1: cast iron. And I'll talk more about what cast iron

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Speaker 1: is in just a minute, but first, let's talk about

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Speaker 1: the smelting process, all right. So let's say you've got

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Speaker 1: yourself an iron furnace. Typically we would talk about a

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Speaker 1: blast furnace. Blast furnaces are really giant cylinders. We're talking

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Speaker 1: some of them being around thirty to forty ft tall

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Speaker 1: and to thirty ft square at the base. Often built

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Speaker 1: into the side of a hill. So that way, in

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Speaker 1: order to bring materials to the blast furnace, which you

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Speaker 1: would deposit in the top of the furnace, you would

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Speaker 1: climb the hill, as opposed to putting scaffolding up or

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Speaker 1: a long ramp or however you would you know, be

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Speaker 1: able to have an access point to get to the

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Speaker 1: top of the furnace. Now, if you want to imagine

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Speaker 1: what these things look like, they did like a look

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Speaker 1: like a tapering cylinder. So the top is a bit

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Speaker 1: narrower than the bottom. Uh the topmost portion of the

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Speaker 1: cylinder is called the shaft, and that's where you would

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Speaker 1: feed the fuel, the iron ore and some other materials

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Speaker 1: called flux, which is typically limestone. The purpose of the

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Speaker 1: flux is to absorb some of the other elements inside

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Speaker 1: the iron ore that you don't want corrupting your iron.

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Speaker 1: You don't want it to uh mixed with the iron

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Speaker 1: so that it makes it have properties that you weren't intending.

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Speaker 1: So you've got your your flux, your fuel in this

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Speaker 1: case coke or charcoal, and in the iron ore itself.

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Speaker 1: You would put all that down the shaft. If you

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Speaker 1: look down the cylinder, then the next section is called

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Speaker 1: the bosch. This is a roughly circular chamber where uh

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Speaker 1: it gets incredibly hot. And below the bosch, at the

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Speaker 1: base of the blast furnace was the hearth or crucible,

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Speaker 1: and that's where the molten iron would accumulate before being

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Speaker 1: drawn off by the iron master. Drawn off just means

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Speaker 1: essentially drained from the furnace chamber. So this was actually

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Speaker 1: a pretty complicated process. Uh. In fact, they were called

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Speaker 1: blast furnaces because you would blow large drafts of air

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Speaker 1: into the furnace and what we're called blasts. The earliest

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Speaker 1: blast furnaces where cold air furnaces, meaning that the the

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Speaker 1: air being blown into the furnace had not been preheated

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Speaker 1: in any way. The air would typically be forced through

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Speaker 1: an entry point that's down the cylinder. It's not at

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Speaker 1: the top, so you're not blowing air down into a chimney. Rather,

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Speaker 1: you would have an entry point inside the furnace and

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Speaker 1: air would come in there towards the bottom. You want

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Speaker 1: it near the bottom to fan the flames, and that

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Speaker 1: would allow you to keep the fire burning at the

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Speaker 1: right temperature. And you would do this with an enormous

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Speaker 1: set of bellows. So you've probably seen bellows. These are

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Speaker 1: the devices made to actually blow air into a an area,

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Speaker 1: usually some form of furnace or fire that would provide

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Speaker 1: the blast of air. And in the early Industrial Revolution

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Speaker 1: they were powered by a water wheel. And when I

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Speaker 1: say an enormous pair of bellows, I mean we're talking

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Speaker 1: a big, big piece of machinery. They would be more

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Speaker 1: than twenty ft long and four or five ft wide,

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Speaker 1: So these were huge and would create very powerful blasts

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Speaker 1: of air. Now, later iron masters would actually rely upon

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Speaker 1: steam engines to power a blower for the furnace. But

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Speaker 1: we'll talk more about steam engines towards the end of

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Speaker 1: this episode. So if you wanted to start up in ironworks.

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Speaker 1: You've just you've just decided to get into the business,

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Speaker 1: and you're an eighteenth century England, then what you would

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Speaker 1: need to do is build your blast furnace in a

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Speaker 1: in a good location, get all the stuff ready, like

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Speaker 1: the bellows and everything all prepared, and then you would

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Speaker 1: need to get your furnace up to the right temperature

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Speaker 1: before you actually started to add iron ore. Uh. You

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Speaker 1: would do this in a process that was called blowing in.

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Speaker 1: Now that involved bringing a large amount of fuel into

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Speaker 1: the furnace, whether it's charcoal or coke or whatever. You

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Speaker 1: would have to ignite the fuel and allow it to

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Speaker 1: gradually heat the furnace over about a week's worth of time,

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Speaker 1: and once it was up to the proper temperature, you

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Speaker 1: could finally get started with iron working. And when you're

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Speaker 1: ready to smell iron, you feed the fuel, flux and

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Speaker 1: iron ore into the top of the furnace. You're essentially

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Speaker 1: dumping things down this the cylinder, this chimney. Now, as

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Speaker 1: those materials fall through the length of the furnace, they

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Speaker 1: begin to heat up. There's a lot of very hot

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Speaker 1: gases that are rising up through this cylinder, and the

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Speaker 1: material passes through those hot gases getting hot before they

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Speaker 1: even get toward the heart the crucible, the fuel begins

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Speaker 1: to burn and the iron starts to heat up to

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Speaker 1: melting temperature. The iron ore reacts with the charcoal or

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Speaker 1: the coke, and that absorbs the oxygen in the iron

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Speaker 1: oxide that was locked away inside the iron ore. Now

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Speaker 1: this is a process called reduction. And while you're left

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Speaker 1: with is liquid iron and slag. Slag is actually not

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Speaker 1: that hard to get rid of. You would think that

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Speaker 1: this is a big, messy, slushy liquid that's molten hot,

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Speaker 1: but in fact liquid iron is very heavy and slag

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Speaker 1: would float to the top, so you'd have the liquid

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Speaker 1: iron underneath and the slag on top. When you are

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Speaker 1: ready to draw off the molten iron, you would open

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Speaker 1: up a tap hole located in the heart level of

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Speaker 1: the blast furnace, so towards the base of this cylinder.

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Speaker 1: And typically these taps also had a little gate on them,

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Speaker 1: and the gate would go up and down, and by

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Speaker 1: setting the gate at the right height, you can allow

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Speaker 1: the molten iron to pass through and it would hold

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Speaker 1: back the slag. So that way you just get the

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Speaker 1: molten iron and the slag is left behind. Because again

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Speaker 1: the slag is floating at the top of this molten material,

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Speaker 1: So that molten iron would then run through a channel

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Speaker 1: a trench essentially, and branch off into smaller channels on

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Speaker 1: either side that acted as molds. So imagine that you've

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Speaker 1: dug into some sand, uh some some some shapes for ingots,

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Speaker 1: and you draw off this molten iron. It flows down

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Speaker 1: a large channel and then splits off into these smaller

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Speaker 1: channels that are inget molds. Essentially, that cooling iron would

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Speaker 1: solidify into the ingots, and those ingots were called pigs

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Speaker 1: And the iron is referred to as pig iron. And

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Speaker 1: you might wonder, well, where did this name come from?

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Speaker 1: Why is it pig iron? Is it dirty iron? What?

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Speaker 1: What's the deal? Well, the reason for the name is

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Speaker 1: that iron workers thought that the the little channels leading

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Speaker 1: away from the central channel were similar to suckling piglets

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Speaker 1: that were feeding from a sow. That the idea that

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Speaker 1: these little splits, these channels were like piglets. And that's

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Speaker 1: why it's called pig iron. I am not making that up.

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Speaker 1: Pig iron is sort of a transitional point for usable iron.

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Speaker 1: By the way, it's stronger than pure iron by about

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Speaker 1: a hundred times, but it's still too weak to be

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Speaker 1: of practical use for certain certain purposes like that. You

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Speaker 1: can use it for tools and stuff, but you typically

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Speaker 1: would use pig iron again by reheating it and doing

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Speaker 1: something else with it. Now, the next basic type of

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Speaker 1: iron after pig iron is cast iron, which is really

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Speaker 1: not that different from pig iron. Uh. It's the stuff

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Speaker 1: that the Darbies were making in their iron works. It

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Speaker 1: has the same high carbon content around three to four

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Speaker 1: percent as pig iron does. Now there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of examples of stuff made from cast iron. Cast iron

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Speaker 1: skillets are probably my favorite version of something made from

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Speaker 1: this material. And you would typically make a cast iron

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Speaker 1: object by pouring the iron into a mold and allowing

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Speaker 1: it to cool in that shape. And the reason you

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Speaker 1: would want to do that is because cast iron is

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Speaker 1: hard and it's brittle, which makes it very difficult to

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Speaker 1: shape even when you heat it up. So if you

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Speaker 1: pour the molten material into a mold so that it

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Speaker 1: takes whatever shape you want and let it cool, you're

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Speaker 1: in good shape. But if you let it cool at

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Speaker 1: all and then you try and work with it, it

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Speaker 1: tends to break. It tends to resist being being shaped,

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Speaker 1: so it's not terribly useful in that case. Um, So

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Speaker 1: that's why it's called cast iron. It's best used if

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Speaker 1: you cast it into molds. Cast iron, by the way,

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Speaker 1: is also prone to rust, which made it less useful

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Speaker 1: for material that was constantly exposed to the elements or

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Speaker 1: was in damp areas. Now, the next type of iron

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Speaker 1: is wrought iron w r o U g HT wrought

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Speaker 1: eye like a wrought iron fence. We produce wrought iron

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Speaker 1: by taking pig iron and heating it up again in

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Speaker 1: a different type of iron works called a finery. Now

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Speaker 1: you'd heat the pig iron up to the liquid point

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Speaker 1: and mix it with other slag materials, which lowers the

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Speaker 1: carbon content. By introducing non carbon material you create a

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Speaker 1: new alloy and the overall percentage of carbon is reduced.

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Speaker 1: As a result, wrought iron is easier to work with

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Speaker 1: than cast iron, and it's not as susceptible to rusting.

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Speaker 1: Wrought iron ended up becoming the most important type of

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Speaker 1: iron in the Industrial Revolution until people finally figured out

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Speaker 1: how to make steel on a consistent and large scale basis,

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Speaker 1: So wrought iron ended up being really the king of iron.

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Speaker 1: Once people were able to do it on a large

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Speaker 1: enough and consistent enough basis. So what's the big deal

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Speaker 1: with steel? I mean, why wasn't why steel the material

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Speaker 1: of choice? Well, steel is just another alloy of iron.

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Speaker 1: First of all, it's not like it's a totally different material.

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Speaker 1: It's an alloy. It has less carbon in it than

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Speaker 1: other types of iron, like I mentioned before, less than

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Speaker 1: two and sometimes has other materials mixed in to create

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Speaker 1: the steel. Different types of steel used different materials mixed

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Speaker 1: in with the iron, and it gives it various properties.

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Speaker 1: People have been making steel in small amounts for centuries.

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Speaker 1: It's not like it was brand new in the Industrial Revolution,

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Speaker 1: but it was a laborious process and it was easy

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Speaker 1: to mess up. You can make errors that would produce

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Speaker 1: iron rather than steel. For a long time, people weren't

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Speaker 1: entirely uh certain of the what was causing the output

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Speaker 1: to be steel versus iron. Sometimes they just thought, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: this was a good batch of iron, or not realizing

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Speaker 1: that the process they were using, or the material else

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00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:02,239
Speaker 1: they were, the fuel they were using, the materials they

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Speaker 1: were mixing with it, we're actually making a huge difference.

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Speaker 1: It took a long time of experimentation to figure out

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Speaker 1: the right approach. One man who improved steel making techniques

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Speaker 1: was Benjamin Huntsman, who opened a steel plant in Sheffield, England,

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Speaker 1: in seventeen forty. His steel was kind of controversial actually

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Speaker 1: at the time. His fellow countrymen considered the steel to

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Speaker 1: be too hard to be useful. These were people called cutlers,

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Speaker 1: who would take the steel produced by someone like Huntsman

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Speaker 1: and then try and shape it into useful tools, often

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Speaker 1: cutting tools. That was the main use of steel for

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Speaker 1: a really long time. But the cutlers said, no, the

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Speaker 1: steel is too hard, it's not any good. However, Huntsman

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Speaker 1: began to form relationships with cutlers who were in Europe,

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Speaker 1: not in England, so in in mainland Europe, and they

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Speaker 1: began to rely heavily on his steel and he started

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Speaker 1: to do a lot of business. Well. England at the

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Speaker 1: time was incredibly protective of its various industries. They wanted

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Speaker 1: to preserve their dominance in as many areas as possible,

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Speaker 1: including textiles and iron and uh and later on steam power.

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Speaker 1: So because of that, the cutlers in England began to

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Speaker 1: reconsider their feelings about the difficulty of working with Huntsman Steele,

391
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Speaker 1: so they began to use it as well. Now, Huntsman

392
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Speaker 1: tried to keep his methods a secret. He was one

393
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Speaker 1: of those people who decided never to patent his processes

394
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Speaker 1: because he wanted to try and maintain full control over them. However,

395
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Speaker 1: one of his competitors named Samuel Walker found out how

396
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Speaker 1: Huntsman was making his steel and began to copy him.

397
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Speaker 1: According to reports, Walker's work was never quite as good

398
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Speaker 1: as Huntsman's, but his steel was also sought after, and

399
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Speaker 1: so soon this technique of making steel began to spread

400
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:13,119
Speaker 1: outward and more iron workers began to experiment making steel,

401
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:15,679
Speaker 1: but at this stage they were still making it in

402
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:21,680
Speaker 1: fairly small amounts. By the seventeen seventies, the iron industry

403
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: in Britain was booming. Coke was the fuel of choice

404
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:29,720
Speaker 1: by this point, so this was decades after Darby had

405
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: first started using coke as fuel, and by the seventeen

406
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 1: seventies now everybody was really onto this and many iron

407
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 1: works were in production at the time. In Plymouth, a

408
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 1: man named Henry Court bought a small iron works just

409
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Speaker 1: outside the city and began to experiment with new methods

410
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Speaker 1: of producing wrought iron, and his experiments led to what

411
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 1: was called the puddling process. Now, this approach is a

412
00:25:56,720 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 1: little tricky to explain, particularly without the use of visual aids.

413
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 1: It involved heating refined iron in a furnace. So you

414
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: would first have to take iron ore and smelt it

415
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 1: through one of the processes that talked about earlier, and

416
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: then the refined iron you would get from that process

417
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Speaker 1: would be used as the main ingredient for this new process.

418
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Speaker 1: So you would take this refined iron uh and put

419
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: it in a furnace and mix it with some iron

420
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: oxides on purpose and stir the molten material using these

421
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: very long rods. And the rods had hooks on the end.

422
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:38,719
Speaker 1: And we're called either puddling bars or rabble rebbels. So

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00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:42,919
Speaker 1: I guess like the hamburglar. He says, rabble rabble right. Well, anyway,

424
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Speaker 1: they were called rabbels. You would have a worker hold

425
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Speaker 1: one of these long bars. Uh. They would sometimes be

426
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: called rabblers. This is not a joke, they really were, uh.

427
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: And of course you couldn't put them inside the furnace

428
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: they would burn up and die. So what they would

429
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:04,119
Speaker 1: do is they use these working doors that were built

430
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 1: into the sides of the furnace that would allow you

431
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: to pass a rod through the door into the furnace

432
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: itself so that you could stir the molten material from

433
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: a safe distance UH and the rattlers would stir this

434
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:24,640
Speaker 1: mixture as they would continue to blast air at the mixture,

435
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,479
Speaker 1: and that would allow oxygen to react with the iron

436
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:31,399
Speaker 1: oxides in the molten material, and impurities would form slag

437
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: that again would float on top of the iron or

438
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: would vaporize into gases that could be vented out of

439
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 1: the top of the furnace. During this process, carbon would

440
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: begin to burn off in the iron, and as the

441
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: carbon burns off, the melting temperature of the iron increases. So,

442
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:54,360
Speaker 1: in other words, in order to keep that iron molten,

443
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: you would have to increase the temperature in the furnace.

444
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:00,719
Speaker 1: And this is because the impurities that the carbon in

445
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: this case is getting burnt off and the melting point

446
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:08,440
Speaker 1: for pure carbon is higher than the melting point of

447
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: or not pure carbon, but pure iron. The melting point

448
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 1: of pure iron is higher than it would be with

449
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:18,400
Speaker 1: an iron carbon mix, So that meant that you had

450
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:20,920
Speaker 1: to continue to increase the temperature in the furnace. You

451
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 1: would have to add more fuel to make the temperature

452
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 1: go higher, and you would continue to do this process

453
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 1: until you've burned off enough carbon so that the mixture

454
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:36,320
Speaker 1: itself begins to change. It uh in in puddling terms,

455
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: it comes to nature. Now that means that the the

456
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: iron itself has very different qualities, and by change, I

457
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,840
Speaker 1: mean it stops being a molten liquid instead becomes kind

458
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: of a spongy mass of iron. So it's still shapeable,

459
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: it's still very you know, soft compared to solid iron,

460
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 1: but it's no longer in lick would form and it's

461
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 1: at that point that the rabblers would have to hook

462
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:08,239
Speaker 1: the masks using the rabbles or the puddling bars, and

463
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: once hooked, they then have to pull out these masses,

464
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: these these puddles or puddle balls rather of iron, which

465
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: were incredibly heavy. We're talking like eighty pounds or more.

466
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 1: And they would grab this stuff with the bar, pull

467
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: it out of the furnace and then take the puddle balls.

468
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: They're still incredibly hot to some massive hammers. Now, originally

469
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: those hammers were manually wielded by people who were known

470
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: as shinglers um, but eventually they would be used with

471
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 1: the water and steam powered hammers instead of manual labor,

472
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: which was good because being a shingler was it was

473
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: it was a specialized skill. But it also usually meant

474
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 1: you didn't live very long. You had a very strenuous,

475
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: difficult job with high degree of danger to it. So

476
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 1: the process of hammering the puddle balls would put them

477
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,520
Speaker 1: into a shape that resembled roof shingles, which is where

478
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 1: the process kind of got its name is shingling. And

479
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: you would do shingling not just to get the iron

480
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: into a new shape. It was actually meant to hammer

481
00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: out slag and other impurities, and also to hammer out

482
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: cracks that were inside the mass. So slamming a hammer

483
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: against this puddle ball would create uh, you know, smushed

484
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: the iron together so that that cracks would be would

485
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 1: be completely sealed and once heated, or once shingled rather,

486
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: you would then heat the iron again until it was

487
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: malleable and then roll it out into bars of wrought

488
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: iron or sometimes in the poles of iron. Uh. Quartz

489
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: process sped up the production of of making wrought iron considerably,

490
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: and he patented the approach in the seventeen eight ease.

491
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: So by Courts time, iron was beginning to become the

492
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:09,040
Speaker 1: material of choice. For tools and for industrial machines, largely

493
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 1: replacing wood which had previously been the material of choice.

494
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: So if you look at machines previous before, before like

495
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: seventeen seventeen, you know, really seeing a lot of wood

496
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: uh components. You know, even gears and things often would

497
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: be made of wood rather than iron. Some cast iron

498
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: was being used in gears and some other uh parts

499
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:38,239
Speaker 1: of machinery, but wood was largely the main material, with

500
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: stone being used for foundations and things like that, for

501
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: things like mills and that sort of stuff. But now

502
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: by courts time, iron has become the really important material

503
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: for tools, industrial machines. It's uh, it's really taking off.

504
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: And looking at the amount of iron produced in England

505
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: during these decades of the Industrial Revolution, you can see

506
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: how these improvements and technology really made a huge impact.

507
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: So here's an example. Just before the era of the

508
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, in seventeen forty, Britain was producing about seventeen

509
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,239
Speaker 1: thousand tons of pig iron per year. By seventy eight

510
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 1: that Amountain had increased to nearly seventy thousand tons, so

511
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand to seventy thousand, and by seventeen ninety six

512
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: you know, it's not even a full decade later it

513
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 1: was producing more than a hundred twenty five thousand tons

514
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: of pig iron and that number would just continue to

515
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: grow over the next century. So by the mid nineteenth

516
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: century you're talking an enormous amount of iron being produced

517
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: out of out of Britain and it was being used

518
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: in construction to make bridges and tunnels and iron rails.

519
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:55,520
Speaker 1: So the rails actually predated locomotives and trains. The rail

520
00:32:55,680 --> 00:33:00,400
Speaker 1: system was meant to allow carts to pass easily over land.

521
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: Uh special cards would be pulled by horses or other animals,

522
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: and it would be a while before the first steam

523
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: powered train would pull cards along rails, but the rail

524
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: system in general made it much easier to transport goods

525
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: over land. Meanwhile, there was also a lot of work

526
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: in creating transportation lanes over water. As I mentioned in

527
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: the last episode, Britain was really well positioned for the

528
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution for a lot of reasons, and one of

529
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 1: them is that it has a lot of port cities.

530
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: So shipping was a big part of British industry. But

531
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: within the countries of Britain, within England and Wales and Scotland,

532
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: in particular, it was really important to try and ship

533
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: various materials between cities, and that meant creating special waterways,

534
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 1: including canals, to connect rivers together that otherwise wouldn't easily meet.

535
00:33:56,680 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of canals, but one really

536
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: impress of iron structure was the Potka Sulta Aqueduct, also

537
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: known as the Stream in the Sky. Now that name

538
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: is Welsh, if you could not guess before, and that

539
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: means I've probably butchered the pronunciation, as the Welsh believe

540
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 1: language is something no one should ever be able to

541
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: actually speak. But this aqueduct was a raised waterway that

542
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 1: allowed this canal to cross over a valley. Now, the

543
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:33,800
Speaker 1: goal here was to have a canal connecting two different

544
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:38,439
Speaker 1: rivers together, but there was a valley in the way,

545
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: and how would you get the water to cross over

546
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,839
Speaker 1: the valley. You could build a series of locks which

547
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: would allow you to very slowly lower or raise a

548
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 1: barge in a series of stepped approaches, but that takes

549
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: a lot of time. It's not terribly efficient if you

550
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:01,799
Speaker 1: want to get a lot done so and dead. There

551
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: was a guy named Thomas Telford who proposed this raised

552
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: aqueduct that would bypass the valley entirely by going over it.

553
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:14,799
Speaker 1: So essentially you're looking at a big iron trough and

554
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:19,840
Speaker 1: that holds all the water. Use arch stone pillars to

555
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: support the trough, and you can see pictures of this

556
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: or video even of this particular aqueduct, and it is

557
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,480
Speaker 1: pretty amazing to look at. So a barge could float

558
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 1: down the canal and over the aqueduct without having to

559
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: descend into the valley, and this saved a lot of time. Now,

560
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: Telford's original design was met with a lot of skepticism,

561
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: but he was allowed to build it and it ended

562
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: up working out just fine. So it was a big

563
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 1: success in the Industrial Revolution and really proved how far

564
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: the the industry had come as far as iron production

565
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: and making sure it was reliable and safe. And it

566
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:05,040
Speaker 1: also added a lot of confidence to areas like architecture

567
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: for everything from bridge building to tunnels and stuff like that. Now,

568
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:13,759
Speaker 1: it wasn't until eighteen fifty six that the steel industry

569
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: really took off. That's when a man named Henry Bessemer

570
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 1: came up with a method to produce steel in large amounts.

571
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:24,760
Speaker 1: So before the most reliable processes would only produce small

572
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: amounts of steel over time, which made steel difficult to

573
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: produce in quantities large enough for it to meet demand,

574
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,440
Speaker 1: and it also meant that the price was really high.

575
00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 1: But Bessemer came up with a lot of improvements. So

576
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 1: Bessemer's father was an engineer, and Bessemer himself took after

577
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 1: his dad. He was largely self educated and learned about

578
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: engineering by observing his father's work and doing his own experiments.

579
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: He generated an enormous fortune before ever getting into the

580
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:56,920
Speaker 1: steel business by producing a type of powder that was

581
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:00,800
Speaker 1: used in gold paints, and at the time, gold paints

582
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:03,680
Speaker 1: were in really high demand in Britain and in Europe.

583
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: So he made a fortune off that and then used

584
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: that to fund his other experiments. He also created a

585
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: machine designed to crush sugarcane, but it was in the

586
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: steel industry that he became a legend. So Bessemer was

587
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: trying to create a harder type of iron, and it

588
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: was all out of necessity. It's kind of a funny story.

589
00:37:23,719 --> 00:37:26,640
Speaker 1: He had developed a type of artillery shell and he

590
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:29,799
Speaker 1: was trying to sell it to the French. But the

591
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 1: French were looking at his his artillery shell and they said,

592
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:36,799
Speaker 1: we can't take this because our cannons are made out

593
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: of cast iron, and they wouldn't be strong enough to

594
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:44,799
Speaker 1: fire this artillery shell without exploding, which in war would

595
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 1: be not an incredibly effective tactic. So Bessemer decided that

596
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:53,400
Speaker 1: the best way to solve this problem would be to

597
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 1: create a stronger type of iron so that the French

598
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: could make their cannons out of that, and then he

599
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: could sell the shells he had created to them. So

600
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 1: it was a roundabout way of doing things, but ended

601
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:09,280
Speaker 1: up working out pretty well. So Bessemer started by using

602
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,880
Speaker 1: a blast furnace much like the one I've already described

603
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: earlier in this episode. As he experimented, he found that

604
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 1: oxygen in the furnace would remove some of the carbon

605
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 1: from the pig iron that he was using inside the furnace,

606
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: Blowing air through the purified iron caused it to heat

607
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 1: up more, and the oxygen was heating up the remaining

608
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: carbon inside the melted iron, as well as silicon, and

609
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 1: this made the resulting molten material easy to pour, and

610
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: the process became known as the Bessemer process. The result

611
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: was that you would get these slag free ingots of metal.

612
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,839
Speaker 1: Combining this approach with a discovery from another engineer named

613
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 1: Robert Forrester R. Mushnitt. Bessemer could use an iron manganese

614
00:38:54,960 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: alloy to remove extra oxygen from the decarburized iron, and

615
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: this is what allowed him to create steel. Now, Bessemer

616
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: hit a snag when he discovered his process really only

617
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 1: worked if he used phosphorus free iron ore. So if

618
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: you remember I mentioned materials like phosphorus and sulfur turn

619
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 1: iron brittle, so it becomes less useful, it'll shear off.

620
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: And Bessemer was just by chance using iron ore that

621
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:28,359
Speaker 1: didn't have a high phosphorus content. So when he was

622
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,839
Speaker 1: doing his experiments, everything was coming out great. But then

623
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:35,880
Speaker 1: when iron workers at large began to try his very process,

624
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: they started getting very different results because much of that

625
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 1: iron ore in Britain contained phosphorus. Bessemer found the source

626
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: of iron ore in northwestern England that was free of phosphorus,

627
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: but that solution wasn't ideal because it meant that you

628
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:54,879
Speaker 1: had to get all your iron ore from one place. Now,

629
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: another improvement in eighteen seventy seven made Bessemer's approach more useful.

630
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: Uh there was a another person named Sydney Gilchrist Thomas

631
00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:08,000
Speaker 1: who created a furnace lining that removed phosphorus from the

632
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:10,920
Speaker 1: iron ore as it was heating up, which meant that

633
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: iron workers didn't have to rely exclusively on that phosphorus

634
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: free iron ore from Northwest England. The end product of

635
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: this process was called mild steel. Now. It's called mild

636
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: steel because it was different from the steel produced by

637
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: the earlier methods, the kind that that court was known for,

638
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: because it didn't it wasn't it wasn't as hard, it

639
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: wasn't only useful for cutting tools, which is pretty much

640
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 1: what all the hard steel was used for in earlier versions.

641
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 1: It was easier to work and became the material of

642
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: choice for applications like girders, rods, wires, rivets, and other uses.

643
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: So while iron had replaced wood earlier, now steel was

644
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: beginning to replace iron. In the late eighteen sixties, there

645
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: was a new process US called the open hearth process

646
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 1: that rivaled the Bessemer approach. Now. This technique was created

647
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 1: by a German engineer living in England and his name

648
00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: was William Siemens. Siemens found a way to use the

649
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,600
Speaker 1: waist heat generated by a furnace to feed back into

650
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: the furnace itself to increase the temperature inside the furnace.

651
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: So what you would do is that you would have

652
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: this hot air being given off by the furnace and

653
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:31,280
Speaker 1: he would pump that air back into the furnace using

654
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: that same pathway, which meant that the air being blasted

655
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: into the furnace was already preheated, so it was no

656
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 1: longer the cold air blast. This is a hot air

657
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 1: blast that in turn made the flame temperature hotter and

658
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: using a combination of pig iron and scrap wrought iron,

659
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: iron workers could use this technique to produce steel quickly.

660
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 1: William Siemens would go on to invent the electric furnace

661
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: in E nine, which provided another enormous boost to the

662
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:04,760
Speaker 1: steel industry in England. He also worked in electric telegraphy

663
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,439
Speaker 1: and in lighting, so this is also the era where

664
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: people are experimenting with those technologies. Uh. William Siemens and

665
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:15,720
Speaker 1: Henry Bessemer both were knighted for their contributions to Britain.

666
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: So that was very interesting because William Siemens, obviously he

667
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: was German born, but became an English citizen and became

668
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 1: a knight and Bessemer was a self taught man who

669
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,279
Speaker 1: became a knight. So very interesting that both of them

670
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: were able to create such important contributions to the entire nation. Now,

671
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: both the Bessemer process and the open Hearth process significantly

672
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 1: reduced the amount of time it took to convert iron

673
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: into steel, and that created a new industry in Britain.

674
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 1: Before long, steel replaced iron and all those applications, just

675
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 1: as iron had replaced wood back in the eighteenth century.

676
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 1: But now we've got to backtrack a little bit to

677
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 1: talk about steam engines. So all that's going on with

678
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: the iron and steel industry from the seventeen forties up

679
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 1: until the late eighteen hundreds, but steam engines actually go

680
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 1: back before the Industrial Revolution. Now, in October two thirteen,

681
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: text Stuff did a full episode about steam engines and

682
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: how they work. So I'll try to be brief, because

683
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: you can always go back and listen to that episode

684
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: for a more detailed account of how steam engines came

685
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 1: about and the developments over time. But here's the submarine.

686
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 1: First of all, we've known about steam for quite some time.

687
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: The ancient Greeks were aware of steam's ability to do work,

688
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really until the Industrial Revolution that anyone

689
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:41,240
Speaker 1: made real practical steam engines. And part of the reason

690
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: for that is that steam is incredibly dangerous. Not only

691
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 1: can it be hot enough to cause devastating burns, but

692
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do useful work, you have to

693
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: put it under pressure, and that means you have to

694
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 1: have material strong enough to deal with that pressure to

695
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: contain the steam without fay link, because if there is

696
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:05,359
Speaker 1: a failure, your device is going to fly apart, and

697
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: what you've really created is a steam powered bomb, not

698
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:13,720
Speaker 1: entirely useful for industry, So it took a long time

699
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: for engineers to figure out ways to harness steam in

700
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 1: a way that wasn't inherently dangerous every time you used it.

701
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: The development of the early steam engines actually predates the

702
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution. In a guy named Thomas Savory patented a

703
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:35,719
Speaker 1: device meant to draw water from mines using steam, and

704
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:39,319
Speaker 1: it would allow mining operations to continue. It worked on

705
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:42,799
Speaker 1: the principle of vacuum power, so the device would fill

706
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: a chamber with steam. You would have a boiler, so

707
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:49,880
Speaker 1: you've got essentially a pot filled with water, and you

708
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 1: put heat to the pot. The water begins to boil

709
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 1: and gives off steam. Uh, there's a pipe leading from

710
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: the pot to a chamber, so the chamber fills up

711
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: with steam until you've got a nice amount of steam

712
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:07,359
Speaker 1: built up inside that chamber. You would then cut off

713
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: the pathway between the chamber and the boiler. There would

714
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: be another line leading from the chamber down into a mine,

715
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: and the end of the line would be under the

716
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: water level. As the steam cools, it condenses, and when

717
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: it condenses, it's taking up less space, which is creating

718
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 1: a vacuum that's negative pressure. So this vacuum would start

719
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:37,319
Speaker 1: to pull the water from the pipe. You know, the

720
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: water that's in the mine that there's an end of

721
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: a pipe that's underneath that water level, would pull water

722
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 1: up the length of that pipe into the chamber. Now,

723
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: once you've got a chamber filled with water, you have

724
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:52,359
Speaker 1: to get rid of that water. And often the way

725
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,799
Speaker 1: they would do that is they would close off the

726
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,720
Speaker 1: pathway down the pipe that goes down into the mine

727
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 1: and heat it up and then expel the water with

728
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 1: using steam power. Sometimes they would go upwards of eighty feet,

729
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:11,240
Speaker 1: or sometimes it would explode. Even if it worked properly,

730
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: the invention had pretty tough limitations. It was really limited

731
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 1: to shallow depths. You couldn't go very deep with this

732
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: because the vacuum power wasn't strong enough to pull water

733
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: up more than a few feet or so comparatively speaking

734
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: to other types of pumps. Then alone came a guy

735
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 1: named Thomas Newcomen who would come up with a significant

736
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 1: improvement over savories approach, and he used a steam powered

737
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: water pump. Now, the best way to imagine this is

738
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 1: imagine a giant seesaw. Alright, one end of the seesaw

739
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: is weighted down, so it's naturally in the down position

740
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 1: at any given time. That's the pump end. That's the

741
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 1: end that is attached by a chain to a pump

742
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:07,040
Speaker 1: that is designed to pull water up from underground. The

743
00:47:07,040 --> 00:47:09,439
Speaker 1: other end of the pump, which is up in the air,

744
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:13,240
Speaker 1: is attached by a chain to a steam piston inside

745
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:16,840
Speaker 1: a cylinder. So you've got a cylinder and a piston.

746
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:20,080
Speaker 1: The piston is in the up position. It's dangling from

747
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:23,560
Speaker 1: the chain that's on the upper part of the seesaw.

748
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,760
Speaker 1: Now new Cooman's invention would fill the cylinder with steam. Again,

749
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: you would have a boiler that would boil water, generate steam.

750
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: Steam would fill this cylinder up, and then you would

751
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:40,240
Speaker 1: cool the cylinder cylinder down, which would cause the steam

752
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:43,800
Speaker 1: to condense, creating a vacuum, and that vacuum would pull

753
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: on the piston, so you have a pulling force that

754
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:51,400
Speaker 1: would pull on the upper end of the seesaw, pulling

755
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 1: it down, making the lower end of the seesaw go

756
00:47:54,200 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 1: up and pump water out of the mine. So again

757
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:02,360
Speaker 1: it's using steam as a vacuum source, not as a

758
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: pushing source. It was never used to push in those

759
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 1: early steam engines, only to pull, and that was largely

760
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 1: because the materials being used to create the cylinders and

761
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 1: boilers weren't strong enough to hold steam under greater pressures.

762
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: So it was just too dangerous to create a steam

763
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,360
Speaker 1: engine that you steam as a pushing power. At that time,

764
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: it made way more sense to create the pulling power

765
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:28,360
Speaker 1: because it was much less dangerous. Now Newcoming's invention worked,

766
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: but it was inefficient, and that's largely because it required

767
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: you to heat the cylinder that has the piston in it.

768
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: You have to heat it up and then you have

769
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: to cool it down, and you have to heat it

770
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: up and cool it down over and over again, which

771
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:43,440
Speaker 1: meant that you had to expend a lot of extra

772
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 1: energy just to get the cylinder at the right temperature

773
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: each time. And it also meant that heating it up

774
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:51,760
Speaker 1: and cooling it down would create a lot of stress

775
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: on the material, so you'd have to replace the cylinder

776
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:59,200
Speaker 1: fairly regularly because if you kept doing it indefinitely, it

777
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 1: would become too week to operate safely. But that all

778
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 1: changed when a fellow named James Watt came around. James

779
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 1: Watt invented a device called a condenser in seventeen sixty five.

780
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:15,880
Speaker 1: So the condenser was a pretty simple idea. It was

781
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 1: a separate chamber that allowed steam to condense. And by

782
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:23,319
Speaker 1: creating a separate chamber, you didn't have to change the

783
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,000
Speaker 1: temperature of the cylinder anymore. You just kept the cylinder

784
00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 1: at a high temperature. You didn't have to lower it

785
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: at all because once the steam was created in the cylinder,

786
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: it could pass into the condenser chamber, cool down and

787
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:40,359
Speaker 1: create that vacuum poll So this was a huge improvement

788
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: on the efficiency of the newcoming engine. So what really

789
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:47,480
Speaker 1: made a big contribution here now late in his career,

790
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: what would make something else that he was even more

791
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: proud of. He thought that this was his most important

792
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 1: invention out of everything he did. It was a solid

793
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 1: mechanism that allowed the up and down most of the

794
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: piston to translate into the arc motion of that see

795
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:08,760
Speaker 1: saw pump I was talking about now. As I mentioned,

796
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:11,799
Speaker 1: earlier models used a chain to connect the pump to

797
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: the piston. And there's a limitation right there, right because

798
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 1: if you have a chain, you can only pull. You

799
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: can't push a chain or a rope. If you try

800
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:24,279
Speaker 1: and do that, you don't get any useful work out

801
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:29,279
Speaker 1: of that. But by the late seventeen hundreds, you could

802
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 1: actually create materials strong enough to contain steam under a

803
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:38,440
Speaker 1: decent amount of pressure. So what created this solid mechanism

804
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: instead of a chain that would connect the end of

805
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:44,879
Speaker 1: a of a of a pump, you know, the the

806
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: working in not the not the pumping end, but the

807
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:51,360
Speaker 1: other end to the piston. And because it was solid,

808
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:55,120
Speaker 1: it could push or pull, and the up and down

809
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 1: motion of the piston was translated into this arc motion

810
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:03,359
Speaker 1: of the pump going seesawing back and forth. And that

811
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: meant that you could actually use the piston to push

812
00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: and to pull so by pumping steam into the cylinder,

813
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:13,799
Speaker 1: you could push the piston up, and by allowing the

814
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: steam to condense, you could pull the piston back down.

815
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:20,839
Speaker 1: That meant you created a double acting piston. And this

816
00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:23,359
Speaker 1: meant that you could make a steam engine much more

817
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: efficient because it could work in both directions. Now, the

818
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: steam engine had an enormous impact on both the textile

819
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 1: and the iron industries, So that's kind of why I've

820
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 1: put it here at this point to talk about how

821
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: it affected the other two industries I've already covered in

822
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: this series. So factories began to use steam power in

823
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: place of water wheels, or in addition to water wheels.

824
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 1: Steam power freed up factories from having to be placed

825
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:53,759
Speaker 1: alongside a river. You could actually put a factory anywhere

826
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:58,440
Speaker 1: by creating steam engines to provide the power for whatever

827
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,240
Speaker 1: it was you were doing. So there were steam powered

828
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:05,440
Speaker 1: looms and textile mills and steam powered blowers and iron works,

829
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to have the river to provide

830
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: the water wheel power. Or you could even use a

831
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 1: steam engine to pull water to continuously supply the water

832
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: wheel with enough water to turn and provide the mechanical

833
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: power that you needed, So there were combinations as well.

834
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:27,840
Speaker 1: Harnessing steam made these industries more efficient, and that led

835
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:31,400
Speaker 1: to lower prices on goods, and it also increased a

836
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:35,319
Speaker 1: need for workers. You began to be able to produce more,

837
00:52:35,360 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 1: but you needed more people to work on the stuff

838
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: you were doing. And that was great news for the

839
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: population of Britain because the population was growing and there

840
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:45,839
Speaker 1: weren't enough jobs to go around otherwise. So this was

841
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: creating a demand for jobs um and there were plenty

842
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 1: of people to fill those jobs. And the Industrial Revolution

843
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: was producing something besides just iron and cloth. It was

844
00:52:56,160 --> 00:53:00,759
Speaker 1: producing the working class. Now that kind of leads me

845
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:03,279
Speaker 1: to the conclusion of this episode. There's a lot we

846
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: could talk about with steam, obviously, including the development of

847
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 1: the locomotive and steamships, but I'm going to save that

848
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: for the final episode. So I'm going to conclude the

849
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 1: series on the Industrial Revolution with the next one, and

850
00:53:16,280 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: we'll look at how transportation was changing, including those steamships

851
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 1: and locomotives. We'll talk about some of the conflicts that

852
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:26,839
Speaker 1: are going on around the same span of time, so

853
00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:30,480
Speaker 1: that includes the American Revolution that took place during the

854
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution in England as well as the Napoleonic Wars

855
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: and the American Civil War, and there were other conflicts

856
00:53:38,440 --> 00:53:40,920
Speaker 1: as well, so that was a big part of what

857
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:44,959
Speaker 1: was driving innovation as well. It became a necessity for

858
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: the war efforts to create iron and steel products more

859
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 1: efficiently and as well as textiles and other elements as well.

860
00:53:52,719 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: So that's gonna be part of the discussion in the

861
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: next episode, and we'll also explore the development of the

862
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 1: working class, the condition ends that workers experienced and how

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00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: that pushed us into the modern era largely because of

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00:54:05,719 --> 00:54:08,880
Speaker 1: what technology was allowing us to do. And it wasn't

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Speaker 1: all good. It was. Some of it was pretty grim.

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00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into some some rough stuff in the

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00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 1: next episode. But if you guys have suggestions for future

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00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: episodes of Tech Stuff, you should let me know, and

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00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: it could be about the technology or a process or

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00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: a company or personality in tech. And also if you

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00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: have suggestions for any interview subjects you would like me

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00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: to talk to or people you would like to have

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00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:35,919
Speaker 1: on the show as a guest host dropped me a line.

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00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 1: My email address is text Stuff at how Stuff Works

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00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:45,280
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can contact me on Facebook for Twitter,

876
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:49,439
Speaker 1: I've gotten to handle text stuff. HSW, and I'll talk

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00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:57,840
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and

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00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:04,960
Speaker 1: bathans of other topics because it has to. What's that coming, really, really,