Connecticut western news., 1877-03-02
SCIENTIFIC,

Ihe Metals m Olden TimeS.-It has sometimes been questioned whether the Egyptians had any knowledge of steel. 1t seems unreasonable to deny them this knowledge. Iron was known at the earliest time of whichwe have any record. It is often mentioned in the Bible and in Homer; it is shown in the early pain tings on the walls of the tombs at Thebes, where butchers are represented as sharpening their knives on pieces of metal colored blue, which were most robably pieces of steel. Iron has been found in quantity in the ruin ed palaces of Assyria; and in the in scriptiOns of that country letters are spoken of as having been made of iron, which is also so mentioned in connection with other metals as to lead to the SUD- position that it was regarded as base and common metal. Moreover, in the Great Pyramid, 8 piece of iron was found in a place where it must have lain for 5000 years. The tendency of iron to OXidiZe must render its preser- vation for any long period rare and ex- ceptional. The quality of iron which is now made by the races of Africa and India is that which is known as wrought iron; in ancient times, Dr. Percy says, the iron which was made was always wrought iron, It is very nearly pure iron, and very small ad- dition of carbon would convert it into steel. Dr. Percy says the extraction of good malleable iron directly from the ore requires degree of skill very far inferior to that which is implied in the manufacture of bronze" And there is no great secret in making steel; the natives of India now make excellent steel Tn the most primitive way, which they have practiced from time imme- 1ol If ir, Ind lio as early as the fourth and fifth centur- ies seems have been unlimited. The iron pillar of Deihl is 8 remarkable work for such an early period. It is single piece of wrought iron fifty feet in length, and it weighs not less than seventeen tons. How the Indians fOrg- ed this large mass of iron and other heavy pieces which tAeir distrust of the arch led them to use in the cOnstruc- tion of roofs, we do not know. In the temples of Orissa iron was used in large masses as beams or girders in roof work in the thirteenth century. The art of practiced at very early date in Great Britain. The existence long ago of tin mines in Cornwall, which are so often spoken of by classical writers, is we'll known by all. That iron was also ex- tracted from the ore is most probable, and it was largely used for many pur- poses by them before the Roman con- quest. The Romans worked out iron extensively in the Weald of Kent, as we assume from the large heaps of slag containing Roman coin which still re- main there. The Romans always avail ed themselves of the mineral wealth of the countries which they conquered, and their mining operations were often carried out on the largest scale, as in Spain for instance, where as many as forty thousand miners were regularly employed in the mines at New Carthage. Coal which was used for ordinary pur- poses in England as early as the ninth century does not appear to have been largely used in iron smelling until the eighteenth century, though patent was granted for smelting iron with coal in the years 1911. The use of charcoal for that purpose was not given up until the beginning of this century, since which period an enormous increase in the mining and metallurgical industries has taken place; the quantity of coal raised in the United Kingdom in 1873 having amounted to one hundred and twenty-seven million tons, and the pig iron to upwards of six and a half million tons.