History
The history of Nizhny Tagil begins with the opening of the Vysokogorsky iron ore quarry in 1696. The deposits were particularly rich, and included lodes of pure magnetic iron. The surrounding landscape provided everything needed for a successful and productive mining and smelting operation — rivers for transport, forests for fuel, and suitable climate.
The city itself was legally founded in October 1722 among settlements connected to the construction of the Vyysky copper smelting plant, owned by Nikolay Demidov. Over the following decades, the city developed as one of the early centers of Russian industrialization, and it has been a major producer of cast iron and steel.
The first Russian steam locomotive was constructed there in 1833, and the father-and-son engineers who developed it, Ye.A. and M.Ye. Cherepanov (Черепанов), were in 1956 commemorated by an 8-meter (26 ft) bronze statue (executed by sculptor A. S. Kondratyev and architect A. V. Sotnikov) which stands in the center of the Theatrical Square in the heart of downtown.
Town status was granted to Nizhny Tagil in 1919.
According to some sources, the copper for the skin of the Statue of Liberty was mined and refined in Nizhny Tagil.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)