The story of the introduction and growth of the technology of metals in the North American colonial period entails significant developments beyond the transfer of the technology from the Old World to the New. In the struggle to create an indigenous industry, in the efforts to encourage and support the work of metals craftsmen, in the defiance of British attempts to regulate manufacturing of metals, the colonial society developed a metals technology that became the basis for future industrial growth. The author traces colonial industrial development from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries in nine chapters: u201cBefore Jamestown,u201d u201cMetals in the Early Colonies,u201d u201cCopper in the Colonies,u201d u201cColonial Iron: The Birth of an Industry,u201d u201cMetals Manufacture in the Colonial Period,u201d u201cColonial Iron: Regulation and Rebellion,u201d u201cMetals and the Revolution,u201d u201cThe Critical Years,u201d and u201cReflections on the End of an Era.u201d