Cast iron is an alloy of iron and carbon. The Chinese are generally thought to have produced the first objects of this metal in 513 B.C., while the first iron foundry in England has been recorded in Lincolnshire in A.D. 1161.

It was during the fourteenth century that the importance of cast iron became evident in metallurgy. Cast iron was first used to make cannon balls and then to make the cannons themselves and thirty of these weapons were made at the Siegen foundry in Germany.

It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that cast iron achieved a position of real importance. Larger furnaces had to be built to make it and water power was used to work the bellows system to produce the great heat needed in the furnaces. Soon many foundries employing hundreds of workers began to produce cast iron.