pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 5)
enterprise was reorganized as the Allegheny Bessemer Steel
Company with an increased capitalization of $700,000. The
principle owners of the reorganized company, E. F. Clark of the
Solar Iron Works and William G. and D. E. Park of the Black
Diamond Steel Works, expanded upon the original conception of the
enterprise (manufacture of ingots and blooms) to include the
production of finished rails. Carl Amsler, a consulting engineer
for Mackintosh, Hemphill & Company, supervised the building of
the entire establishment. 1
Under Amsler's direction, the new works was constructed to
take full advantage of the revolutionary developments taking
place in steel mill technology and layout design, thereby
creating the basis for increased "throughput" within the
facility. 2 The productive facilities of the new mill—a cupola
house, a combined converting and blooming mill building
containing two 7-ton Bessemer converters and 32" blooming mill,
and a rail mill building—were fully integrated and synchronized
with the existing Pittsburg, Virginia, and Charleston Railroad to
facilitate the movement of materials in the works. In addition,
the mill contained a blacksmith and machine shop as well as a
boiler house for each building which housed equipment involved in
the productive process.
"Furnace, Mill, and Factory," The Engineering and Mining
Journal 41(June 26, 1886): 467; "Furnace, Mill, and Factory," The
Engineering and Mining Journal 45(February 18, 1888): 130; "New
Works of the Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company," American
Manufacturer 44(January 25, 1889) : 15; Stephen L. Goodale,
Chronology of Iron and Steel (Cleveland: 1931), 212; James Howard
Bridge, The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company (New York:
1903), 174-5; and Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh:
1989), 497.
2 My use of the terms "steel mill technology," "layout
design," and "throughput" are synonymous with Alfred D. Chandler's
use of "technological change," "organizational change," and
"throughput" in The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in
American Business (Cambridge: 1977), 240-1. "Technological change"
or "steel mill technology" refers to innovations in materials,
power sources, machinery, and other industrial artifacts.
"Organizational change" or "layout design" refers to innovation in
the ways such artifacts were arranged. This, in turn, affected the
ways in which the movements and activities of workers and managers
were coordinated and controlled. Throughput refers to the ways
each of the above factors or any combination of them helped to
increase the speed or volume of flow of materials through the
processes of a single plant or works.