What makes steel such a universally used metal? If we didn’t have steel, what’s the next most universally applicable metal?
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When you talk about materials, you have several things to consider and you very often need to compromise between them:
Is it cheap?
Is it durable?
Is it easy to make items with this material?
What are you going to use it for?
Steel is ubiquitous because it scores a “good enough” for everything. Take the transition from the bronze age to the iron age for example. Bronze can be cast at a much lower temperature than Iron or Steel. So it’s much easier to make items with bronze than with iron. However, bronze is a mixture of tin and copper and tin is pretty rare and thus pretty expensive. On top of that, bronze is relatively “soft” for a metal, so you cannot always use it. Iron on the other hand is very cheap. Like dirt cheap, because you have so much of it everywhere in Earth’s crust. So everyone with an oven in 1000 BC could smelt using iron because they likely had an iron source nearby. However, it is very easy to oxidize (=rust) which can happen during the smelting process. So Iron gets a high score in pricing, but a low score in durability or easiness of use.
And then came Steel. Now, steel is very hard, so you can use it for pretty much anything. Steel is primarily iron, so it’s also very cheap. With the carbon alloying you use (+other metals like chromium), you also prevent rusting, so it’s also durable. People then started to use steel more and more.
So it’s always a matter of compromising. If you need a lot of it and you need it to be durable, the price becomes a problem, so you use steel. If you don’t need a lot but you need it extra-durable, you’ll probably use nickel or chromium. If you need something for electric conduction, you’ll use copper or gold. If you need something very light, you’ll use aluminum.
All metals have an application, but when it comes to pricing, steel beats them all.
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