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Stories from PA History
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Making Steel Glossary

"Hunkies" or "Huns":
Offensive Slang - Used as a disparaging term for a person, especially a laborer, from east-central Europe American Heritage Dictionary


Blast furnace:
A large structure in which iron ore is heated and smelted, separating the molten iron from other elements in the ore to make iron. Iron ore and fuel (charcoal, anthracite coal, bituminous coal or coke) are loaded into the furnace. Air is blasted into the structure to help ignite and burn the fuel which heats the iron ore.


Coke:
Bituminous coal that is burned under controlled conditions to drive off volatile matter (gases expelled when coal is burned), leaving carbon and ash from the coal fused together in the form of coke. With its higher proportion of combustible carbon, coke generates more heating power than bituminous coal does.


Coke oven:
An oven in which bituminous coal is burned under controlled conditions to drive off volatile matter (gases expelled when coal is burned), leaving carbon and ash from the coal fused together in the form of coke. Coke generates more heating power than coal does.


Hot blast:
An apparatus that recycles hot gases blown out the top of a blast furnace into the air that is blasted into the furnace, preheating the air blast and raising the temperature inside the furnace. Hot blast improved the efficiency of charcoal furnaces over cold-blast furnaces. It also made possible the use of anthracite coal and bituminous coke as fuels, which ignited and burned at higher temperatures than charcoal did.


Pinkertons:
The Pinkerton Detective Agency, was the inspiration of a Scottish immigrant by the name of Allan Pinkerton. At a time when the nation's towns and cities did not have large numbers of law enforcement bureaus, Pinkerton's agents took on many difficult assignments; cases ranged from financial and property thefts to government overthrows to murder.(http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters2/pinkerton/)


Pluck:
Resourceful courage and daring in the face of difficulties; spirit.




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