![]() ![]() Until steam-powered coal mines became more efficient, the cost of coal alone hindered development. While steel has been known to ironsmiths for centuries, before the 1850s it was very costly to produce, both because blast furnaces required immense amounts of fuel and turning high-carbon pig iron into steel required multiple processing steps. ![]() interests in the America’s safe from European intervention – and to enable overseas expansion in 1898. The US Navy, in turn, would use these new technologies both in support of its traditional mission-enforcing the Monroe Doctrine and keeping U.S. It was thus a perfect material for the new, engineering-focused maritime industries of the late 19 th-century. Steel itself is a low carbon iron alloy, possessing high strength (both compression and tension) and toughness (absorbing significant energy before breaking), it can be made into virtually any shape and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. ![]() These, in turn, were enabled by the ubiquity of steel, without which modern industrial civilization could not flourish. The defining characteristics of this period are steam power, rail roads, and industrial manufacturing. This process could only take place owing to the rapid industrialization experienced in Europe and the United States during the late 19 th-century, with an explosion of scientific inventions, engineering capabilities, and improved manufacturing processes that dramatically changed the world. But while Monitor was dramatic, both in shape and symbolism, the slow, coastal monitor itself was just one signpost in the long, evolutionary change that took navies from sailing ships to steel battleships in one generation. Navy, with their traditional rigging and sails. The low, iron-covered hull with its distinctive round turret is very different from the wooden-hulled steam frigates that made up most of the Civil War U.S. When most people think of Civil War-era naval technology, it is generally USS Monitor that comes to mind. ![]()
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