Anthracite iron Anthracite iron Anthracite iron or Anthracite 'Pig Iron' is the substance created by the smelting together of anthracite coal and iron ore, that is using Anthracite coal instead of charcoal to smelt iron ores — and was an important historic advance in the late-1830s enabling great acceleration the industrial revolution in Europe and North America. Unlike many seminal advances, the contributors, place and date of this epoch are well recorded within specific moments in the late 1830s. The first repeatable and reliably successful furnaces and smelts were managed by the same person in both the United Kingdom and the United
Anthracite iron differently designed furnaces. The first American smelt of Anthracite Pig Iron was performed July 4, 1840 by principal-partners David Thomas, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard at their Lehigh Crane Iron Works in their first hot blast furnace along Catasauqua Creek aided by Samuel Thomas and the employees of the LCIW, in what became Catasauqua in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The technology enabled industries the chance to produce cast iron sufficient to demand and eventually adapt production to also feed the demand to generate wrought iron and steel. These useful materials are achieved by adding additional processing — by taking pig iron