How Steel Changed
Agriculture Drastically:
The First Steel Plow
Hannah
Adams
JOHN DEERE
•Deere was born on February 7, 1804.
•He began his career as a blacksmith.
•He opened a blacksmith shop in Vermont.
•Deere soon went into bankruptcy, due to the fact that there
were too many blacksmiths in his area.
•After his bankruptcy he sold his shop to his father-in-law
and moved to Grand Detour, Illinois.
The need for the plow.
•There was observation over time that proved that crops were
more productive where the soil was loosened.
•Farmers felt the soil needed to be tilled before planting the
seeds for an increased productivity of the crop.
•Many farmers began seeing a need for a plow with a metal
other than the cast iron being used.
•Deere saw this need and the idea of the first steel plow
began with a broken steel sawmill blade.
Invention of the First Steel Plow
•The first steel plow was invented in the year of 1837.
•It was invented in Grand Detour, Illinois by John Deere.
•The highly polished steel moldboard made the cleaning
process of the plow extremely efficient and easy.
Process of Making the Plow
•The first step after the addition of the moldboard was the
addition of the pin to regulate the depth of plowing.
•The last process in the creation of the plow was a wedge to
move the earth and redeposit it in broken pieces.
•The main process of creating the plow was the lengthy
process of making steel.
Andrew Carnegie
•Andrew began his adventure in the steel industry by cofunding his first steel company, near Pittsburg in the
early 1870s.
•Carnegie was well known for his company called
Carnegie Steel Company.
Steel
•Steel was made to be an alternative to iron.
•Steel’s carbon content, ranging from .2 to 1.5 percent, made
the material stronger and harder than the well-known
wrought iron.
•The carbon content in steel was not high enough to make it
as brittle as the cast iron.
•Even though steel was a high quality metal, it was very
difficult and expensive to make.
Beginning Process of Making
Steel
•The beginning process consisted of many different stages.
•The process began with bars of wrought iron being packed
in powdered charcoal, layer upon layer, in tightly covered
stone boxes and heated.
•The first process would last several days.
•The metal would then be broken into pieces and would then
be rejoined to the charcoal powder.
•Then it would be reheated and then the outcome would be
called a blister steal.
Process Continued
•The blister steel then will continue the process of becoming
that final product.
•The process would continue by reheating the steel.
•Then the steel would be placed under a forge hammer to
give the steel a more consistent texture.
Process Continued
•Then the steel would continue the process to produce an
outcome of a higher quality steel.
•The steel would then be melted down into clay crucibles and
further refined by adding a special flux that removed fine
particles of slag that the cementation process did not
remove.
•The final product was called a crucible steel.
The Bessemer Process
•This efficient process of making steel was invented by a
man with the name of Sir Henry Bessemer.
•He reasoned that carbon in molten pig iron unites readily
with oxygen.
•Bessemer had the knowledge that a strong blast of air
through molten pig iron would convert the pig iron into
steel by reducing the amount of carbon content.
The Bessemer Process
Continued
•Bessemer then created what he called a converter in 1856.
•The converter was a large pear-shaped receptacle with holes
at the bottom to allow the injection of the compressed air.
•After this, he filled the converter with the molten pig iron
and then blew the compressed air through the metal.
•This process speed up the drawn out process of making
steel.
Converter
The importance of the steel in the
history of the first plow.
•Without the efficient process of making steel there would
have been no steel plow.
•The plow was needed to increase the production of the
resources need by the population.
•The population was growing dramatically and without the
technology of the agriculture industry growing with it there
would be a great loss in production.
Works Cited
http://thehistoryofjohndeere.yolasite.com/
http://historywired.si.edu/enlarge.cfm?ID=212&ShowEnlargement=2
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/96298/Andrew-Carnegie
http://www.americanoutdoorgrillshop.com/buy/pc/AOG-Stainless-Steel101-d4.htm
http://www.dura-bond.com/news/wpcontent/uploads/2012/04/oneok0011-e1334952351410.jpg
http://www.east-buc.k12.ia.us/04_05/US1/KA/ka2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bessemer
http://www.okgenweb.org/~okgreer/brnkfarm.html