Creusot steam hammer

The Creusot steam hammer was a giant steam hammer built in 1877 by Schneider and Co. in the French industrial town of Le Creusot. With the ability to deliver a blow of up to 100 tons, the Creusot hammer was the most powerful in the world until 1891, when the Bethlehem Iron Company of the United States purchased patent rights from Schneider and built a steam hammer of almost identical design but capable of delivering a 125-ton blow.

The Creusot hammer still exists, although it is no longer operational, and is a tourist attraction in the town of Le Creusot, where it was built. With few remaining rivals, the hammer today is once again the largest of its kind in the world.

The Creusot steam hammer was named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1981.

In 1836, Joseph Eugène Schneider and his brother Adolphe Schneider purchased a derelict ironworks in Burgundy, near the town of Le Creusot, and founded Schneider Brothers & Co. (later renamed Schneider & Co.). Two years later the company produced the first steam locomotive to be built in France. Eugène Schneider along with the company's chief engineer, François Bourdon, developed the world's first true steam hammer at the Schneider works in 1841. Schneider and Co. went on to build 110 steam hammers of all sizes between 1843 and 1867, 26 of which were employed by the firm itself. As the jobs grew more demanding, the hammers grew correspondingly larger, and the Schneiders eventually saw a need for a hammer of colossal proportions.

The Creusot steam hammer was completed in 1877, and with its ability to deliver a blow of up to 100 tons, eclipsed the previous record set by the German firm Krupp, whose steam hammer "Fritz", with its 50-ton blow, had held the title as the world's most powerful steam hammer since 1861. In celebration of this technological achievement, a full-scale wooden replica of the Creusot hammer was built and displayed at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878.

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