Did a Victorian invent the Steel?

Answer 1

No, steel has been around for many Centuries before the Victorian era.

The earliest known example of steel production is from an artefact excavated in Anatolia, Turkey, dating from around 4,000 years ago. Other ancient steel has been found in East Africa dating back to 1400 BC, and in the 4th CenturyBC steel weapons such as the Falcata were being produced on the Iberian Peninsula. The Roman military used Noric Steel, and the Chinese of the Warring States used quench-hardened steel. During the Chinese Han Dynasty, which lasted from about 200 years BC up until the early 3rd Century, created steel by melting together wrought iron with cast iron.

Evidence of high carbon steel has been found in Sri Lanka dating back 400-500 years BC. Crucible steel, made by slowly heating and cooling pure iron and carbon, is first known to have been perfected in the city-state of Merv in what is now Turkmenistan, in the 9th-10th Centuries.

What the Victorians DID invent was the Bessemer Converter Furnace, which ennabled steel to be produced cheaply and in large quantities and was introduced by Henry Bessemer in 1858. However, mass-production of steel was in operation in England and Europe ever since the Industrial Revolution began about a Century earlier, when Benjamin Huntsman introduced the Blister Process in the 1740s.