Human metallurgy's existence or early indications dates back from fifth and sixth millennium BC and was observed in the archaeological locations of Serbia. An example of this include copper axe from 5,500 BC that belongs to the Vincha culture. Other indications of human metallurgy are recovered from the third millennium BC in places like Portugal, Spain, and United Kingdom.

Even so, the furthest beginnings cannot be defined distinctly and new breakthroughs are continuous and ongoing. Historical developments in metallurgy when it comes to ferrous can be discovered in a huge diversity of cultures and civilizations in the past. Noteworthy of interest are the many applications, uses, and machines related or involved in metallurgy were probably laid down in ancient China compared to performance of Europeans who also dominated these crafts.

The innovative makings of furnace, cast iron and steel are examples produced from ancient China. However, advanced studies and research hints that Roman technology exceedingly the widely used until now due to its sophistication. This is in particular for mining methods, forging and extraction of metals. An instance was the expertise of hydraulic mining methods well even before Chinese or any other civilizations at that period. Up until the 18th century, the iron works has been restrained by consumer uses. The smelting or extracting of metals through heat such as iron needs huge amounts of expensive charcoal, with the effect that ironworks mostly placed inaccessibly in the center of forests.

In 1709 at Coalbrookdale on the river Severn, an ironmaster named Abraham Darby made a discovery that coke can be utilized in lieu of charcoal when extracting pig iron through heat. During the early phases of the Industrial Revolution, Severn region became the center of iron production in Britain. Few months in 1779, the very first iron bridge built by Abraham Darby over the Severn just downstream from Coalbrookdale has over a hundred feet single span.

The next few years Henry Cort, also an ironmaster with a mill in Hampshire, patented two methods of long–lived importance in the story of metallurgy. One method in 1784 known as puddling is an innovation in a furnace, which agitates the molten iron so that air mixes with it. Oxygen mixes with carbon in the metallic compound that leaves almost pure iron. Pure metal is different with cast iron due to its malleability and not prone to brittleness. This makes the metal capable of hammered and form it is a much more usable metal in industrial processes than cast iron.