Backward linkages to industrial research in steel, 1870-1930

Following Nathan Rosenberg's lead, this dissertation emphasizes the incremental, cumulative innovations that followed on the heels of major innovations in steel products and processes, innovations which, though economically important, have been neglected. Crucial inducements for these incremental improvements to steel were the early industrial testing activities by steel consuming firms, and the subsequent interaction and cooperation between steel consuming and steel producing firms. This study concludes that a substantial amount of backward-linked industrial research into steel developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through efforts of prominent steel consuming firms and technical associations to improve steel products and processes. The type of industrial research that developed in the manufacture and processing of steel was part of an important transition in American industry from the use of rule-of-thumb methods to the use of scientific methods. This backward-linked industrial research brought together firms and technical associations interested in improving the quality of steel materials, and, in so doing, helped to promote the development of broadly—based cooperative industrial research efforts in the 1910s and 1920s.