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Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe (Latin: ferrum) and atomic number 26. Iron is a group 8 and period 4 element. Iron is a lustrous, silvery soft metal. It is one of the few ferromagnetic elements. Besides the known usage, iron has been used for making some jewelry in the form of cast iron and wrought iron. See: Berlin Iron

Historical aspects of iron

The following is from Wikipedia

The first iron used by mankind during prehistory came from meteors. The smelting of iron in bloomeries probably began in Anatolia or the Caucasus in the second millennium BC or the later part of the preceding one. Cast iron was first produced in China about 550 BC, but not in Europe until the medieval period. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron (in this context known as pig iron) using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.

Steel (with a smaller carbon content than pig iron but more than wrought iron) was first produced in antiquity. New methods of producing it by carburizing bars of iron in the cementation process were devised in the 17th century AD. In the Industrial Revolution, new methods of producing bar iron without charcoal were devised and these were later applied to produce steel. In the late 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented a new steelmaking process, involving blowing air through molten pig iron, to produce mild steel. This and other 19th century and later processes have led to wrought iron no longer being produced.