Why You Love This Project
Bethlehem Steel...a one-time giant, and why you love(d) this project goes deep.The Bethlehem Steel Corporation (1857–2003) was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States after Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. After a decline in the U.S. steel industry and management problems leading to the company's 2001 bankruptcy, the company was dissolved and the remaining assets sold to International Steel Group in 2003.
Ann Bartholomew and Donald Stuart Young recently talked about Steel's rich history at the Slate Belt Heritage Center in Bangor. Bartholomew and Young are co-authors of a new book, Bethlehem Steel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: a Photographic History. The book was recently published by Canal History and Technology Press in Easton.
Bartholomew compiled A Pictorial History of the Delaware and Lehigh Canals National Heritage Corridor for the National Canal Museum, and has edited and designed books on various industrial and canal-related topics for the museum. She has written various other local history articles.
Young is a metallurgical engineer who worked from 1962 to 1995 in Bethlehem Steel's home plant, primarily in the Electric Furnace Melting Department. His rich knowledge of the history and technology of steelmaking reveals itself in the photographic history of the plant.
The authors gave a slide presentation, showing the early plant before 1900 through the twentieth century to the shutdown in the 1990s.
Bethlehem Steel got its start in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution and construction of the first blast furnace began on July 1, 1861. Smoke rising from the site was a sign that it went into operation on January 4, 1863.
Smoke today, is looked upon as pollution, but back in the day it meant something else.
“The 19th century emblem of prosperity was smoke,” said Bartholomew. “Smoke was everywhere.” Bethlehem Steel became one of the largest shipbuilding companies in the world and one of the most powerful symbols of American industrial manufacturing leadership. It also became involved in the nation’s defense.
“The United States Navy was the ninth largest in the world,” Bartholomew said. “The Navy ( experienced incredible growth) after Bethlehem Steel got involved.”
Bethlehem Steel also produced steel for the San Francisco Gold Gate Bridge, and closer to home, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and the Holland Tunnel. The crowds of sports and music fans who gather at Madison Square Garden should know that the roof gets its strength from Bethlehem Steel.
The company also produced the largest piece of steel of its time in 1893 when it manufactured the axle for the Ferris Wheel at Chicago’s World Fair. It weighed 89,000 pounds.
Young went on to explain the technical side of the operation and told about the Basic Oxygen Furnace that replaced the open hearth and allowed the company to make steel eight times faster than before. “Furnaces don’t make the steel,” Young advised. “Steel was made in ladles.”
He also explained how Pig Iron got its name. Pig Iron, incidentally, is the source of the name “Iron Pigs” for the local AAA Phillies minor league baseball team.
Pig iron is derived from the traditional shape of molds used for ingots that was a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel. Such a configuration is similar in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. Pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and inclusion of small amounts of sand was insignificant compared to the ease of casting and of handling.
