Etna Iron Works

The Etna Iron Works (sometimes rendered as Ætna Iron Works) was a 19th-century ironworks and manufacturing plant for marine steam engines located in New York City. The Etna Works was a failing small business when purchased by ironmolder John Roach and three partners in 1852. Roach soon gained full ownership of the business and quickly transformed it into a successful general-purpose ironworks.

Roach took advantage of the American Civil War to transform the Etna Works into one of New York's leading manufacturers of marine steam engines. By the end of the war, he was in a position to acquire the businesses of most of his major New York competitors, who had fallen on hard times. Roach subsequently consolidated his operations at the Morgan Iron Works, and some time afterward rented the Etna Works to the inventor Thomas Edison, who turned it into a dynamo factory. The Roach family sold the former Etna Works property in 1887. The Etna Works buildings, along with the street on which they were located, were later liquidated in a city redevelopment.

Ironworks

An ironworks or iron works is a building or site where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and/or steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.

Ironworks succeed bloomeries when blast furnaces replaced former methods. An integrated ironworks in the 19th century usually included one or more blast furnaces and a number of puddling furnaces and/or a foundry with or without other kinds of ironworks. After the invention of the Bessemer process, converters became widespread, and the appellation steelworks replaced ironworks.

The processes carried at ironworks are usually described as ferrous metallurgy, but the term siderurgy is also occasionally used. This is derived from the Greek words sideros - iron and ergon or ergos - work. This is an unusual term in English, and it is best regarded as an anglicisation of a term used in French, Spanish, and other Romance languages.

Varieties of ironworks

Primary ironmaking

Ironworks is used as an omnibus term covering works undertaking one or more iron-producing processes. Such processes or species of ironworks where they were undertaken include the following:

Iron Works

Iron Works may refer to: