Inventions & Discoveries · Tools and materials

Cast iron

8th century BCE · 8th century BCE

Cast iron is an iron–carbon alloy with more than 2% carbon, valued for its relatively low melting temperature; the earliest known cast-iron artefacts, from what is now Jiangsu in China, date to the 8th century BCE. Its production became widespread in China by about the 5th century BCE, and blast furnaces allowed the mass production of cast-iron agricultural tools. Burgundy used it for cannons and shot in the 15th century, and from the late 1770s, when Abraham Darby III built the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, it was used for bridges and buildings.

Cast iron
Image: Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

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First known
8th century BCE
Where
Jiangsu, China
Credited to
Zhou dynasty

NoteWhether Europe's blast furnaces of the 12th and 13th centuries arose independently or from Chinese knowledge is uncertain.

Built onBronzec. 4650 BCEIron smeltingc. 2500 BCE
Led toIron ploughc. 500 BCECannonby 1288Bessemer process1856

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Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Cast iron. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/cast-iron
MLA
“Cast iron.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/cast-iron. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Cast iron.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/cast-iron.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Cast iron’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/cast-iron (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻