It took about 190,000 years to figure out that if you cook rocks they leak stuff that's harder than rocks and holds an edge longer. Took another six thousand after that to figure out if you combine tin and copper you get bronze. Took another 2,000 after that to figure out iron smelting, along with the discovery that iron smelted over coals is harder and stronger; steel. After that it's by and large incremental refinement, leading to better armor and tools and guns becoming feasible at less than one-shot-per-cannon levels.
At no point did people know about atoms, but they knew metals as distinct materials that could be processed from the Earth. The first time an element was formally discovered was in the 1600s, when some dude tried to boil his piss because he thought the vapor would condense into gold. Got phosphorus instead.
As the scientific method developed and metallurgy became more complex we started figuring out more and better mathematical models of alloys and how to make those alloys happen. You don't need atomic theory for that, just empiricism and a lot of resources to try incremental approaches.
Metal fatigue was discovered in 1837 when an engineer tried to figure out why very powerful chains in a mine were snapping under way less than reasonable load. Still no atoms needed.
Atomic theory is useful in chemistry since it'll tell you what you need to make molecules and how those molecules are made. It's also useful in nuclear physics.
The first time we actually saw an atom was in 1955 and by that time we were already using atomic theory in nuclear plants and weapons.
By the by, we still don't know everything about atoms. We've figured out that electrons sort of exist everywhere in an atom at once but plotting those orbital paths is almost futile; helium has 2 electrons and we can't seem to plot their orbits by any math we have.
It took about 190,000 years to figure out that if you cook rocks they leak stuff that's harder than rocks and holds an edge longer. Took another six thousand after that to figure out if you combine tin and copper you get bronze. Took another 2,000 after that to figure out iron smelting, along with the discovery that iron smelted over coals is harder and stronger; steel. After that it's by and large incremental refinement, leading to better armor and tools and guns becoming feasible at less than one-shot-per-cannon levels.
At no point did people know about atoms, but they knew metals as distinct materials that could be processed from the Earth. The first time an element was formally discovered was in the 1600s, when some dude tried to boil his piss because he thought the vapor would condense into gold. Got phosphorus instead.
As the scientific method developed and metallurgy became more complex we started figuring out more and better mathematical models of alloys and how to make those alloys happen. You don't need atomic theory for that, just empiricism and a lot of resources to try incremental approaches.
Metal fatigue was discovered in 1837 when an engineer tried to figure out why very powerful chains in a mine were snapping under way less than reasonable load. Still no atoms needed.
Atomic theory is useful in chemistry since it'll tell you what you need to make molecules and how those molecules are made. It's also useful in nuclear physics.
The first time we actually saw an atom was in 1955 and by that time we were already using atomic theory in nuclear plants and weapons.
By the by, we still don't know everything about atoms. We've figured out that electrons sort of exist everywhere in an atom at once but plotting those orbital paths is almost futile; helium has 2 electrons and we can't seem to plot their orbits by any math we have.