The early Ford axles were known to be short-lived. Henry Ford started attending European Car Races, and noticed that the French cars had tiny axles in comparison to the cars from other countries. He found an old French axle discarded in a trash bin and shipped it back to the USA and asked his Metalurgist to analyze the steel alloy. The result of the analysis was that it was just ordinary steel with just an unusual impurity. Ford asked what the impurity was, and the answer was "vanadium."
Ford axles started lasting a lot longer afterwards.
That was one of my late Father's favorite stories.
Sounds like reverse engineering.. Pardon the weak pun..
That is pretty neat. I always wondered why so many of my hand tools had vanadium engraved on the side.
> The early Ford axles were known to be short-lived. Henry Ford started attending European Car Races, and noticed that the French cars had tiny axles in comparison to the cars from other countries. He found an old French axle discarded in a trash bin and shipped it back to the USA and asked his Metalurgist to analyze the steel alloy. The result of the analysis was that it was just ordinary steel with just an unusual impurity. Ford asked what the impurity was, and the answer was "vanadium."
That is probably partly true. Here's a different version of the story. Note that Ford began using vanadium steel in the cars his company made before the Model T went into production.
http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/ModelT.html
Yep... And you'd probably get sued for it today. Witness Apple Computers, which has seemed to replace innovation with "patenting and suing".
All of the axles arrived in rural areas long before 3/4" water pipes and gas pipes were ever installed and recycled into "irons". Rebar was unknown then and there.
Once the move from stones to irons was made by surveyors it was going to be dependent on what could be found at low cost at the local junkyard.