Throughout history, the use and workmanship of metal has been closely associated with the very notion of civilization. Never was this connection more apparent than during the Metallurgic Age, which coincided with England's Victorian era and the Gilded Age in America. This era, covering essentially the 19th century, saw unprecedented advances as a passion for technology and learning fueled a period of discovery and of practical application of the sciences. This work explores in depth the connection between Victorian creativity and the advance of engineering. It examines this age of accelerated...

Few people know anything about the founder of the brand H. J. Heinz. Heinz was well known for his humane treatment of his employees, customers, and suppliers. He built a commercial empire by his use of industrialized food processing. This book includes over 40 photographs, many of which are being published for the first time.

The great steel-making town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, traces its history to the bloody defeat of General Edward Braddock in the early days of the French and Indian War. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Braddock happened to be the hometown of so

The "Pig Iron Aristocracy" of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania not only was the foundation of American manufacturing, but the root of our present day political parties. It is a little known story, but it has popular appeal throughout the Midwest

Henry Clay Frick, reviled in his own time, infamous in ours, was blamed for the Johnston Flood (which killed 2,200 people) as well as the violent Homestead Strike of 1892 and survived multiple assassination attempts, yet at the same time was an ardent philanthropist, giving over $100 million during his own lifetime and insisting on anonymity. This biography explores the contradictions in this great industrialist's nature and avoids the extremes of both hagiography and denunciation.

Edward Drummond Libbey was a glassmaker, industrialist, artist, innovator and an art collector. Both practical and creative, Libbey forever changed the glass industry with the automatic bottle-making machine and automatic sheet glass machine. This work examines the long career of Libbey, particularly his innovation of American flint cut glass, his contributions to the middle-class American table through affordable glassware, and his enormous art glass and painting collections, which eventually formed the basis for Toledo Museum of Art's collection. Both an historical and critical examination...

In the 1890s, the Carnegie Veterans Association began as a group of boyhood friends and older Andrew Carnegie steel partners united to share business ideas, but it evolved into a powerful secretive network in American business circles. By 1925, these Carnegie lieutenants controlled more than 60 percent of the country's industrial assets. Haunted by their past with Carnegie Steel, they demanded a new ethical relationship with labor and adopted a philanthropic philosophy of paternal capitalism, building libraries, churches, schools, and hospitals. Ultimately, their experiments in industrial...

Henry Ford and George Washington Carver had a unique friendship and a shared vision. This book details their paths to "green" manufacturing and the start of the chemurgic movement in America. It covers a number of little known projects such as their efforts to use ethanol as a national fuel, the use of soybeans for plastic production, and the use of waterpower for factories. This study of their collaboration shows how capitalism can drive the green movement and expand American industry.

The history of aluminum: metallurgy, engineering, global business and politics and the advance of civilization itself. The earth s most abundant metal, aluminum remained largely inaccessible until after the Industrial Revolution. A precious commodity in 1850s, it later became a strategic resource: while steel won World War I, aluminum won World War II. A generation later, it would make space travel possible and the 1972 Pioneer spacecraft would carry a message from mankind to extraterrestrial life, engraved on an aluminum plate. Today aluminum, along with oil, is the natural resource driving...