Mike McCann, age 9, of Peterborough, Ont., Canada, for his question:
Who invented iron?
We have copper coins and rings of gold, but most of our metal things are iron or steel that is made from iron. These sturdy metals make our bridges and railroads, our pots and pans, our telephone wires and tv towers. Iron is so important to us that we live in the iron age.
Our round earth is covered with a thick and solid skin. It is made from patches of soil and sand and from many layers of different rocks. There are hard stones for building things and hidden in the ground there are all sorts of metals for making things. There is lots and lots of iron. But it is mixed with hemanite and limonite, with magnetite and taconite. These rocky stones with such fine names are iron ores. We must melt the ore in a hot furnace to separate the iron metal from the stony mixture.
Iron ores have been in the ground for millions of years. They were there ages ago when the story of the human family began. The lovely world was full of wonderful secrets. But it did not help the first people to feel at home. They had to learn how to make themselves safe and comfortable. So they tried and toiled, they searched and struggled. And through the ages they learned step by step how to be at home here.
The first tribes used stones to make knives and axes. We say that they lived in the stone age because most of their things were made of stone. Some of the tribes learned to use campfires for cooking. Some found lumps of tin and copper and hammered these soft metals to make tools. If copper and tin fell into a campfire, it melted together and made a harder metal called bronze. Some tribes found how to make bronze 'by accident. They used bronze to make knives and axes and the bronze age of history
Much later, some of the tribes found how to make iron. But first they had to make hotter fires. For iron ore needs a hot furnace to make it melt and give up its metal. Perhaps a lump of ore once fell into a hot charcoal fire. Perhaps a metal worker was testing different ores in his furnace. We do not know who first found out how to make iron . But we think it happened in turkey. Other countries soon learned the trick and soon made most of their tools and weapons of iron. The iron age in which we live began about 3,000 years ago.
Early metal workers did not have fires hot enough to melt iron. They could not pour liquid iron into molds. They softened their iron ore in a charcoal furnace. Then the soft wad of metal was taken out and hammered into shape. Later, hotter furnaces were invented and liquid iron was shaped in molds. And later, metal workers learned how to make their bars of iron metal into sturdy steel.