Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
While technology did advance to the point of creating surprisingly pure copper, most ancient metals are in fact alloys, the most important being bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. As metallurgical technology developed ( hammering , melting , smelting , roasting , cupellation , moulding , smithing , etc.), more metals were intentionally ...
Metal production in the ancient Middle East. The metals of antiquity are the seven metals which humans had identified and found use for in prehistoric times in Africa, Europe and throughout Asia: [1] gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron, and mercury.
The reputation and history of Damascus steel has given rise to many legends, such as the ability to cut through a rifle barrel or to cut a hair falling across the blade. Although many types of modern steel outperform ancient Damascus alloys, chemical reactions in the production process made the blades extraordinary for their time, as Damascus ...
In making crucible steel, the blister steel bars were broken into pieces and melted in small crucibles, each containing 20 kg or so. This produced higher quality metal, but increased the cost. The Bessemer process reduced the time needed to make lower-grade steel to about half an hour while requiring only enough coke needed to melt the pig iron.
The ancient city of Wan from the Han period forward was a major center of the iron and steel industry. [43] Along with their original methods of forging steel, the Chinese had also adopted the production methods of creating Wootz steel, an idea imported from India to China by the 5th century AD.
The first crucible steel was the wootz steel that originated in India before the beginning of the common era. [55] Wootz steel was widely exported and traded throughout ancient Europe, China, the Arab world, and became particularly famous in the Middle East, where it became known as Damascus steel. Archaeological evidence suggests that this ...
The main source of ores for Japanese steel was iron sand, a sand-like substance which accumulated as an end product of the erosion of granite and andesite in mountainous regions of Japan. [13] Importantly, it was less labor-intensive to extract the ore from the sand than from hard rock.
The harder stones, such as granite, granodiorite, syenite, and basalt, cannot be cut with copper tools alone; instead, they were worked with time-consuming methods like pounding with dolerite, drilling, and sawing with the aid of an abrasive, such as quartz sand. This occurred in a process known as sand abrasion.