Just realized the old steel mill in Gary, Indiana poured over 2 million tons of steel in 1973 alone. Read it in a library book about industrial history.

3 comments

3 Comments

Read an article that said the mill's main furnace was so big it could melt a whole car in under a minute. That kind of power is just wild to think about now. It really puts that 2 million ton number into some kind of crazy picture. Makes you realize how much sheer physical stuff we used to move and make. The scale of it all is just gone, like danielwhite said. Hard to even imagine the heat and noise jade's grandpa talked about.

jade_hernandez18d ago

My grandpa worked there, and his stories about the noise were just unreal.

danielwhite18d ago

That kind of output is hard to picture now. It feels like we've traded that raw, physical scale for a different kind of production, one that's quieter and less visible but just as constant. You see it in the endless data centers and server farms humming away 24/7.