I've read that cast-iron cookware was popular for hundreds, if not thousands, of years because it was cheap to make before civilisations got good at refining metals. I've also read that it was the most common thing used in kitchens until Teflon-coated cookware was invented in the 1950s.
But we got better at mass producing other metals way before that, so why did it take until then for cast iron to fall out of favour? Why didn't carbon steel or stainless steel take over as soon as the technology to make them was cheap enough?
Well, it's more of an evolution...as with many engineering tasks, every choice had benefits and drawbacks.
Cast iron, because it has a very high carbon content, has a reasonably low melting point of around 2,100 degrees F, 500 degrees lower than steel. A blast furnace, fueled with charcoal could reach that. So, in the 18th and 19th c. , cast iron was used to make things like kettles, pots, pans, parts of stoves.The same furnace that would be smelting iron from ore and casting it into ingots, or pigs, for working into wrought iron could also be casting these items for sale.
Cast iron still is used to make cookware, of course. As it can crack rather easily, cast iron pots and pans need to be somewhat heavy to be durable, which makes them better able to distribute heat evenly for cooking. Cast iron's coarse structure and oxidized surface also helps it hold and absorb polymerized oils , which keeps those pancakes from sticking.
Cast iron can rust and give an iron taste to acidic foods ( like tomato and fruit sauces) . Stainless steel won't rust, but on the other hand, is a poor heat conductor, which means that a sheet metal stainless steel pan tends to have hot spots, and its untarnished surface can be more adhesive to food. Those two qualities made it more sticky, and that's why stainless pans are often clad with copper to minimize that. Copper transmits heat very well, is wonderfully malleable stuff, doesn't rust. If you had walked into a nice kitchen in the 18th and 19th c,, you likely would have found quite a lot of pans made from copper. You would find copper kettles for heating water, copper saucepans, copper washtubs.....often they were tinned inside, so the copper wouldn't taint the food.. And as copper is easy to solder, a traveling tinker could patch a copper pot if it cracked or got a hole. There were a number of tinkers needed, because that malleability also meant that a copper pot could be bent or dented. 19th c. coppersmiths made saucepans and pots with very sharp-edged bases that could actually wear through and crack.
Aluminum is light, doesn't rust, conducts heat well and works easily. In the 19th c., it was generally very expensive ( circa 1860, it was worth more than silver). but in the 20th c. refining it became cheaper and it had mostly displaced copper by fairly early in the 20th c. Aluminum has a high heat expansion rate, however, and so aluminum pans have a problem with warping and buckling, - more with thin stamped ones, but still a problem with cast aluminum ones. Their production costs are so low, however, that most cookware now is likely of aluminum.
Teflon may also not be the last word. PTFE coatings were thought to be the greatest invention since sliced bread in the 1960's , but it was discovered that they had their own contamination dangers and the formula for them has now been changed.
Considering the benefits and shortcomings of all these materials, there are still plenty of people ( including me) who happily posses a cast iron griddle.