Introduction to the industry
Metals have accompanied mankind since ancient ages, and steel, if we begin to follow it from the moment of its historically famed damascene form - for some millennia. From the era of craftsman-like small-scale production to today's form of industrial mass production, steel has covered an intricate path lined with significant innovations in production processes, development of range and quality of products, and perpetually growing productivity of labour, improving economies and ecological load. In addition, a radical change in relationship to the customers is occuring at the end of this century, namely by a pronounced shift of readiness towards the needs and requirements of these customers. Steel's indisputable significance is confirmed by the fact that it has become the second most mass-produced commodity after cement production, attaining the world-wide production volume of approx. 750 mil tons yearly.
The art of iron production from ore arose in connection with the practices of copper and lead technologies in Anatolya, in northern Syria and possibly also in part of Iran. Iron ores were added as fluxes for treatment of sulphide copper ores. Iron drops, which the local manufacturers identified already 3000 years BC, comparing these with meteoritic iron, already hinted at the existence of the possibility of producing iron, but this only occurred practically 15 centuries later. Since that time, it is necessary to reckon that only small amounts of this, in that time, rare metal dedicated to the highest strata of population or to the sovereigns and their courts could get out of this area, most probably as gifts only. The first occurrence of an iron object in our region on the territory of Slovakia is dated back to the 15th century BC, i.e. to the Bronze Age. This was the haft of a dagger. The first occurrence in Bohemia is dated back to