Iron and Steel - Manufacture of Iron in central India (Franklin, 1835)

[Katha Vivekananda Kendra]

Excerpts from Dharampalji’s book Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century (1971)

Charcoal is universally used in India for smelting iron, as the natives have no knowledge of coal, nor could they use it with their present refineries, because they are totally inadequate to the reduction of highly carbonised metal.

Their smelting furnaces, though rude in appearance, are nevertheless very exact in their interior proportions, and it has often surprised me to see men who are unquestionably ignorant of their principle, construct them with precision, in so simple a manner.

The iron was made over to Captain Presgrave of the Sagar Mint (an officer Very capable of judging with regard of its quality). He wrought it up into bars and rods for an iron suspension bridge on which he was then employed and the following is his report. 

“I tried all the descriptions of ore and made experiments on roasting it – result of which could only be ascertained by making the iron, the first six marks constituted the bulk of the quantity submitted for trial, and their iron results may be safely taken as a fair average; the other three are the result of my experiments on roasting of the ore – previous to smelting. The first six marks, afford bar iron (as far as my knowledge allows me to judge) of most excellent quality, possessing all the desirable properties of malleability, ductility at different temperatures and tenacity for all of which I think cannot be surpassed by the best Swedish iron; the second description consisting of three last numbers in the accompanying statement has produced very good bars, but in forging and working it up, the iron appears somewhat harder, probably from it still containing a portion of carbon; the different marks varied in yielding from 50 – 60.25 % in bars, the average from the whole being rather more than 55.74 %”.

By K. Kesava Rao
Department of Chemical Engineering
Indian Institute of Science
Bengaluru 560012, India
kes...@iisc.ac.in

...To be continued ...

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