The Age of Alloy Steel

The early 20th century, Konkel argues, was a world built with steel, almost all of which was produced in one of three locations: the UK, the Upper Midwest, or Central Europe. These regions were the locomotives that drove industrialization; they were also sources of the era’s strongest militaries. Given the need for steel to

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The U.S. wasn’t alone in having lots of steel but comparatively few alloying materials. “The four leading steelmaking countries in the world,” Konkel writes, “the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France—accounted for 90 percent of the world’s steel production, but perhaps only 1 to 2 percent of the world’s manganese.” Most of the world’s

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