Abstract :
Introduction and historical. Twenty years ago electricity, except for lighting purposes, was virtually unknown to the iron and steel industries, while to-day in all of the steel works in this country it is used as a motive power for most of the auxiliary machinery, from the ore docks to the loading beds. The electric drive is utilized in ore unloaders, ore bridges, car dumpers, bin-filling cars, scale larries, blast-furnace skips, hot-metal mixers, electric cranes of all sizes and descriptions, open-hearth charging machines, ingot buggies, gas producers, roller tables, lifting tables, transfers, hot-bed apparatus — in short, a multitude of machines too numerous to mention here. This development has been such that it would probably be no exaggeration to say that the steel industry in this country would never have reached its present proportions without the use of electric motors. As a further gauge of progress, it is significant that the larger electric manufacturing companies have been forced to establish special departments to look after the business of the steel industries.
