Toolmaking material
A tool material must be harder than what it works and tough enough not to break while doing it, and those requirements pull against each other — which is why the history here is a sequence of compromises rather than a progression. Stone gave way to bronze, iron, steel, high-speed steel and carbide, and every one of them is still used where its particular compromise is the right one.
Red hardness is the property that changed manufacturing. A tool that softens as its edge heats limits how fast a machine can cut; one that does not is limited only by the machine, and the introduction of high-speed steel in 1900 raised cutting speeds enough that machine tools had to be rebuilt to take the loads.
Material
Aramid fibre
as cut-resistant fabric for gloves and protective sleeves, where the fibre is harder to sever than the tissue it protects
Material
Bone
needles, awls, harpoons and fish hooks — the material that made sewn clothing possible, and with it the occupation of cold latitudes
Alloy
Bronze
Copper alloyed with tin — harder than either constituent, and the first engineered material to define an age.
Element
Copper
A soft, ductile metal with exceptional electrical conductivity, and one of the first metals humans worked.
Rock
Flint
the dominant one for most of the human use of materials — knapped tools predate metal by a factor of a hundred in time
Alloy
High-speed steel
Tool steel that stays hard when it is red hot — which is what let machine tools run fast enough to change manufacturing.
Rock
Obsidian
capable of an edge finer than surgical steel, and still used for some ophthalmic scalpel blades
Alloy
Osmiridium
as a wear-resistant tip: pen nibs, phonograph styli, compass bearings and instrument pivots, wherever a point had to survive a lifetime of contact
Alloy
Steel
Iron with a controlled, small proportion of carbon — the most-used engineered material in the world.
Alloy
Tool steel
Steel that cuts, forms or shapes other materials — hard enough to hold an edge and tough enough not to shatter, which are opposing requirements.
Each of these uses is established and cited on its own. Whether something counts as an ore, for instance, depends on grade, price and era — and those qualifications are shown alongside it.