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Wrought In Medicine: The advance of urbanism brings us befouled rivers, vanishing privacy, and lives full of strain and tension. For all the miracles that atomic energy has wrought in medicine, industry and power generation, there hangs over us the spectre of nuclear war. We will likely know when the first intercontinental missile of World War III comes, should that happen, in a routine computerized check, on a millisecond time scale, of the inventory of space debris; and the decision to retaliate, to enter total war, will probably be made on computer-based advice.
In the meantime, with the substitution of steel for wrought iron, armor became steadily better able to resist such increased blows. Compound armor, with hard-faced steel plate to resist penetration cemented to wrought iron backing to prevent cracking, appeared in the 1880's. After further experiments by the American Hay-ward Augustus Harvey and the Frenchman Joseph Eugene Schneider, the Krupp Works of Germany produced a plate, soon adopted by most navies, that combined great toughness with reduced weight. Krupp plate 5.75 inches thick gave as much protection as 12 inches of compound steel or 15 inches of the old wrought ir For the same overall weight, therefore, a batl ship could protect more of its hull or increase guns or speed.
Wrought iron is softer than cast iron and has less carbon and other impurities in it. It is not brittle and may be hammered into bars, rolled into plates, or drawn into wires. It can be hammered or bent to almost any shape and holds the shape to which it is bent. For this reason it is called a malleable material (derived from Latin, malleus, a hammer). Wrought iron may be welded; that is, separate pieces may be joined together by hammering when they are red-hot.
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