Midvale Steel

Midvale's niche in the steel industry was defined early on by a scientific approach to metallurgy during the transitional era when steelmaking gradually transformed from black art to applied science.

Even after the rest of the industry caught up in terms of that transition, Midvale continued for decades to maintain a niche for itself in the area of the market defined by high quality, research and development, and special applications.

Nicetown's proximity to one of the principal locomotive-building plants of the western hemisphere, the Baldwin Locomotive Works (which at the time was just a few rail-served miles away in the Spring Garden neighborhood), was another benefit of the site.

In 1872, Sellers brought in a Yale-trained chemist with a talent for organization named Charles Augustus Brinley, who used applied science to straighten out the steelmaking formulas and processes, along the way analyzing and salvaging the scrap that had accumulated during Butcher's tenure.

By the Centennial Exposition in 1876, they "were making Midvale into a company as congenial to a scientific approach to industrial problems as could be found anywhere in America".

During this time he developed the core of his philosophy of scientific management, which later became enormously influential (and often controversial) throughout the field of industrial engineering.

(In fact, they built their armament businesses largely on offering the U.S. War Department domestic alternatives to buying from Krupp.)