The following is a brief history of Standard Steel and its predecessors:

1795 - Freedom Forge founded to manufacture iron bars and rods

1808 - Original forge destroyed by fire

1811 - Freedom Iron Works established with an annual capacity of 145 tons

1812 - Blast furnace installed

1829 - Pennsylvania Canal reached Lewistown

1833 - Company name changed to Norris Rawle and Company

1834-1835 - Completed construction of the Greenwood Furnace; annual capacity increased to 800 tons

1849 - Pennsylvania Railroad was extended west to Lewistown

1856 - Renamed Freedom Iron Company, annual capacity was 1310 tons; the first ring mill in the United States was installed to produce 2000 locomotive tires per year

1861 - Andrew Carnegie invests in Freedom Iron Company, one of his initial investments in metals industry

1865 - Company name changed to Freedom Iron and Steel

1867 - "Emma" blast furnace built

1868 - Two five-ton Bessemer converters, a rail mill, and a ten-ton steam hammer were added

1870 - Company name changed to Logan Iron and Steel; blast furnace enlarged and new crucible steel melting introduced with an additional steel making capacity of 1500 tons per year

1875 - Company name changed to Standard Steel; Charles T. Perry appointed as President

1895 - Standard Steel designed and introduced the first bolted and steel-tired railroad wheel

1895-1897 - Three open hearth steel making furnaces added and blast furnace operations ended; William Burnham appointed as President

1898 - Forge Shop built to produce railroad axles

1903 - Spring Shop constructed to produce railroad and locomotive springs

1904 - Standard Steel developed the STANDARD WHEEL, a forged-and-rolled railroad wheel which became the new standard of the American railroad industry

1917 - Two 75-ton open-hearth furnaces and a new wheel mill added

WWI - Commercial operations modified to include artillery shells and howitzer forgings

1930 - Standard Steel developed the FREEDOM WHEEL, the railroad industry's first heat-treated wheel

1939 - Standard Steel produces one-fifth of the locomotive tires in the United States

WWII - Commercial operations changed to include the production of gun barrels, tank castings and military forgings; annual steel making capacity was 160,000 tons

1958-1971 - Four electric arc steel melting furnaces replaced open hearth steel production and two vacuum arc remelting furnaces were installed for specialty steel applications; argon oxygen decarburization refining vessel installed for stainless steel making

1968 - World's largest automated axle-forging-machine and matching equipment added

1972 - Standard Steel purchased by Titanium Metals Corporation of America

1975-1979 - Ingot production converted to higher-quality bottom-poured cylindrical-ingot design

1976 - Purchased Latrobe Forge & Spring Company, an electric-furnace steel producing and forging plant

1977 - Installed the largest modern ring-rolling mill in the United States

1981 - Incorporated as Freedom Forge

1982 - Modernized the railroad wheel forge shop and introduced the S-WHEEL

1989 - Senior management team purchased Standard Steel

1995 - Celebrated Bicentennial

1996-1998 - Modernized railroad wheel forge shop, the largest investment in Company’s history.

1999 - Phased array development installed

2001 - Freedom Forge files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

2002 - Standard Steel, LLC emerges from Chapter 11 after being acquired by Citigroup Venture Capital and Farrell & Co  

2003 - Exited rolled ring product line

2004 - Closed and sold Latrobe facility to Lehigh Specialty Melting, Inc., subsidiary of the Park Corporation

2006 - Standard Steel sold to Trimaran Capital Partners and Farrell & Co.

2007 - Installed new wheel heat treating facility and enhanced wheel forge shop