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I mean, of course once you invent serious industrial scale processes, you can set up a serious business. But the lag time between "invention of steel" and "invention of the Bessemer process" was a lot bigger than the lag time between "invention of Apple I" and "invention of Apple II".

Yep. And Rockefeller started refining oil soon after the discovery of subterranean oil.

>The first component of what was to become US Steel opened in 857

I'm such an idiot that I read that and didn't even think it was a typo. I was really impressed that the company had lasted that long, with that belief propped up by the fact that steel itself by far predates the Roman Empire. Sure, the steelmaking process we use now is pretty new, but battles in Ancient China and Rome were fought using steel weapons.