Anthracite iron facts for kids

Anthracite iron is iron smelted using anthracite coal, and is a form of pig iron. Anthracite Iron aided the industrial revolution by allowing iron production to skyrocket.

Creation of the Process

Charcoal prices rose so it was more expensive to create iron. So anthracite was used instead.

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  After experimenting for nearly a decade in two (cold) blast furnaces built in Mauch Chunk, LC&N Co.'s White and Hazard went recruiting in Wales after news reached them Anthracite pig iron was regularly and reliably being produced in George Crane's Yniscedwyn Iron Works, by David Thomas. Catasauqua Creek, about 6 miles below the Lehigh Gap and 14–15 miles (23–24 km) from the company offices in Mauch Chunk, was chosen for a new joint venture by LC&N and David Thomas, the Lehigh Crane Iron Works. After building infrastructure, including a firebrick works, a second blast furnace was under construction when on July 4, 1840, the first hot blast furnace in North America produced Anthracite pig iron, a necessary precursor (feed stock) to producing wrought iron and cast iron. In that moment, the world changed.