English engineer Henry Bessemer patents the Bessemer Process, the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron. By blowing air through the molten metal to burn off impurities, the process removes a major manufacturing bottleneck, dropping the cost of steel production drastically. This technological leap enables the rapid expansion of railroads, skyscraper construction, naval dreadnoughts, and large-scale suspension bridges worldwide. The iron age gives way to the steel age, accelerating global industrialization and corporate concentration.

Mass steel production introduces a sharp, urban modernist lexicon into late 19th and early 20th-century poetry. The image of the steel girder, the locomotive, and the towering cityscape replaces classic pastoral motifs. Modernist poets like Walt Whitman (in his later works) and later Carl Sandburg celebrate the raw, muscular power of steelworkers, using free verse structures that mirror the rhythm, scale, and noise of the Bessemer foundries.