IN the year 1608 the British East India Company purchased seventeen tons of pig-iron — subsequently declared by Sir Thomas Gates to be “as good as any in Europe ” — for four pounds sterling per ton.

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, a broken part on a machine could have meant weeks or even months of lost production while waiting for a replacement. Luckily, Rochester Iron Works, with ...

Iron is one of the cheapest and most abundant metals on the planet, unlike nickel and cobalt, which are used in lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles, and ubiquitous devices, from mobile ...