Steel Company: Midvale Steel

Midvale Steel

Midvale Steel was a succession of steel-making corporations whose flagship plant was the Midvale Steel Works at Nicetown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which operated from 1867 until 1976. The company was most notable for producing high-quality steels (including many steel/" target="_blank" class="keylink">alloy steels) and for providing the casting, forging, and machining needed to use them in special applications such as heavy artillery (naval, coastal, and field); steam turbines; naval armor plate; and pressure vessels for use in chemical plants (for example, petroleum refineries). Midvale also helped pioneer the steel formulas used in the early automotive industry.

Midvale was never a particularly large company (relative to giants such as Carnegie, Bethlehem, and U.S. Steel), and the flagship Nicetown plant was, in the management's own words, "never a 'tonnage' plant". That is, unlike larger steelmakers, they did not measure their success in terms of the sheer tonnage they could manage to produce per year. Midvale's niche in the steel industry was defined early on by a scientific approach to metallurgy during the transitional era when steelmaking gradually transformed from black art to applied science. Even after the rest of the industry caught up in terms of that transition, Midvale continued for decades to maintain a niche for itself in the area of the market defined by high quality, research and development, and special applications.