Earlier civilisations found iron so difficult to use because they could not produce such high temperatures to work iron. In fact iron has only been widely available since the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. At this time, inventors like Abraham Darby learned how to obtain large quantities of iron economically using coke. With iron at last cheap and plentiful, the people of the 19th century led the world into the engineering age. Iron is not just found as a metal.
Iron compounds are also the basis of a rich variety of natural colours, both in rocks and in nature.
Iron, along with very few other elements, possesses the property of magnetism. This property makes iron essential in compasses and inside every electric motor. Indeed, this makes iron one of the most versatile of all the elements. Iron is a dense, silvery-grey metal. It is the most widely used of all the metal elements because it is common, is cheap to produce from its ores, can be bent while cold, and is strong.