Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

steel

(Encyclopedia)steel, alloy of iron, carbon, and small proportions of other elements. Iron contains impurities in the form of silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and manganese; steelmaking involves the removal of these imp...

steel industry

(Encyclopedia)steel industry, the business of processing iron ore into steel, which in its simplest form is an iron-carbon alloy, and in some cases, turning that metal into partially finished products or recycling ...

steel wool

(Encyclopedia)steel wool, abrasive material composed of long steel fibers of varying degrees of fineness that are matted together. The coarser grades are used to remove paint and other finishes, the finer grades fo...

Olcott, Henry Steel

(Encyclopedia)Olcott, Henry Steel, 1832–1907, American religious leader and author, cofounder of Theosophist movement, b. Orange, N.J. After working as an agricultural scientist and a lawyer, he and Helena Blavat...

European Coal and Steel Community

(Encyclopedia)European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 1st treaty organization of what has become the European Union; established by the Treaty of Paris (1952). It is also known as the Schuman Plan, after the Fren...

Gary

(Encyclopedia)Gary, city (2020 pop. 69,093), Lake co., NW Ind., a port of entry on Lake Michigan; inc. 1909. Gary was founded by the U.S. Steel Corporation, which pur...

Mittal, Lakshmi Narayan

(Encyclopedia)Mittal, Lakshmi Narayan, 1950–, Indian steel tycoon. He worked at his father's small Kolkata (Calcutta) steel mill before he bought (1976) a mill in Indonesia and began to build his steel empire. He...

Schwab, Charles Michael

(Encyclopedia)Schwab, Charles Michael shwäb [key], 1862–1939, American steel magnate, b. Williamsburg, Pa. He started as a stake driver in Andrew Carnegie's steelworks and rose to become (1897) president of the ...

Browse by Subject