Drew,
Thanks for the chronological table.
Remember the saying 'What goes round, comes round'?
Well I note that history shows the important role played in iron and steel production by India.
Here are a couple of maybe historic anecdotes.
As a young apprentice engineer in Birmingham I was brought up with such Industrial Giants in and around Birmingham as Guest Keen Nettlefold (GKN)possibly the largest manufacturer of threaded fasteners in the World and Round Oak Steelworks the company famous (infamous?) for producing the barrel for Saddam's Supergun.
Sadly both companies are now gone, Round Oak is now a shopping mall and all of GKN's threaded component manufacturing machines were bought by an Indian and shipped to India to produce fasteners there.
Result is we now buy fasteners from India that shred their threads like helicoils, nuts supplied blank without threads cut, spring washers without spring, etc., because they are cheap.
To me it all harks back to when W.W.Greener complained about Belgian Damascus and forced the Birmingham Proof house to conduct its trials documented in Richard Akehurst's book.
Bring on the Revolution (Industrial of course).
