Ageless Innovation

George M. Verity of Middletown, Ohio, founded the American Rolling Mill Company (ARMCO) in 1900. From the onset, Mr. Verity had little interest in producing common steel products such as plate, bar, or other structural shapes. Sheet steel was to be his mission. Automobiles were going to use lots of sheet, as were construction products, appliances and electrical equipment. The inherent strength of steel in thin sections was going to change the economic model for this developing nation and Armco was going to be on the cutting edge of this limb of the industrial evolutionary tree.

At the time, standard sheet steel production methods were laborious and time consuming. Plates or “billets” of heavy steel were introduced in a yellow/orange hot condition to the sheet rolling mill. The sheet rollers would pass the plate/billet back and forth through an ever-closing single stand mill reminiscent to the wringing rolls of an early washing machine. Each pass would reduce the plate’s thickness and at the same time, increase its length and (less so) its width. By the time the sheet was reduced to the desired thickness, its overall size was considerably longer and wider than the original plate. Needless to say, this thin sheet was difficult to handle and keep flat. A better method was needed if sheet product was ever going to take its rightful place as an economical structural material.

Several years later an inventive and energetic engineer by the name of Charles Hook became the plant superintendent for the rolling mill. Hook was convinced that a continuous method of production was essential whereby a heavy section of steel entered the process and passed through a series of mill stands all going in the same direction, each time reducing the thickness to the desired dimension and then coiled at the last station. This coil could then be sold to steel processing centers to slit the coils to size for the end user.

Unfortunately, no supplier existed that could furnish a packaged mill. Mr. Hook would need to build his own. He found mill stands from all over and lined them up so that the sheet steel would pass through each in sequence. This was massive equipment and a massive job; one that would shake the very foundations of the corporate treasury. There was no model, no precedent for this kind of experiment.

The very first reality check came when Hook realized how the velocity of the material dramatically increased through the mill as the thickness continued to decrease. He needed to calculate (without any computing help) the velocity of the material exiting any of the coil stands and make sure the next stand was set to accept smoothly the higher roll speed input. Errors in these calculations resulted in the dreaded “cobble” whereby the steel would jam up into a compressed ribbon of useless steel sheet between any two-mill stands. Cobbles destroyed equipment, they were massive safety hazards, and very time- consuming to eradicate from the line. Every time a cobble occurred, Hook didn’t go home for the day and the Treasurer went to visit with his banker.

Finally Hook succeeded and the new continuous “hot strip” line began producing high quality sheet steel at far lower cost. From now on, coiled steel would feed the nations presses in a continuous process. Mill sheets are cut from coil like so many paper towels cut from the roll.

This kind of corporate courage was much more common in this era or at least it appears so. It still exists in companies like Corning, Intel, and Boeing, etc., but as a nation, we are in desperate need of a revival of spirit that recognizes our future fortune is directly linked to our ability to do what Americans have historically done so well. Innovation is the life blood of an industrial economy.