History
The Chinese were making pig iron by the later Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC). In Europe, the process was not invented until the Late Middle Ages (1350–1500). Actually the phase transition of the iron into liquid phase in the furnace was an avoided phenomenon, as decarburizing the pig iron into steel was an extremely tedious process with medieval technology.
Read more about this topic: Pig Iron
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There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)