Nothing is more beautiful…

Nothing is more beautiful, we almost could say majestic, than the operations the iron undergoes under man’s hand.
Everywhere you see, as an anthill, men, black-faced, with powerful hands, sometimes wearing long shirts, handle heavy bulks of iron with long pliers.
[…] This iron is red-white, so luminous that you’d be blinded staring at it for a few instants.

L’Illustration, August 30 1845, in: Les travailleurs du fer, Jean-Yves Andrieux, Découvertes Gallimard, 1991