Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool MakersSmiles, Samuel
History
Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers
Smiles, Samuel
Industrial arts -- Biography; Iron industry and trade -- Great Britain -- Biography
[5] It may be mentioned in passing, that while Zinc is fusible at 3
degrees of Wedgwood's pyrometer, Silver at 22 degrees, Copper at 27
degrees, and Gold at 32 degrees, Cast Iron is only fusible at 130
degrees. Tin (one of the constituents of the ancient bronze) and Lead
are fusible at much lower degrees than zinc.
[6] The Romans named the other metals after the gods. Thus Quicksilver
was called Mercury, Lead Saturn, Tin Jupiter, Copper Venus, Silver
Luna, and so on; and our own language has received a colouring from the
Roman nomenclature, which it continues to retain.
[7] I. Samuel xiii. 19, 20.
[8] II. Kings xxiv. 16.
[9] Papers on Iron and Steel, 363-4.
[10] Dr. Livingstone brought with him to England a piece of the Zambesi
iron, which he sent to a skilled Birmingham blacksmith to test. The
result was, that he pronounced the metal as strongly resembling Swedish
or Russian; both of which kinds are smelted with charcoal. The African
iron was found "highly carbonized," and "when chilled it possessed the
properties of steel."
[11] HOLINSHED, i. 517. Iron was also the currency of the Spartans,
but it has been used as such in much more recent times. Adam Smith, in
his Wealth of Nations (Book I. ch. 4, published in 1776), says, "there
is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am
told, for a workman to carry nails, instead of money, to the baker's
shop or the alehouse."
[12] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. London, 1849, p. 140.
[13] See Dr. Pearson's paper in the Philosophical Transactions, 1796,
relative to certain ancient arms and utensils found in the river Witham
between Kirkstead and Lincoln.
[14] "In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts the iron is made at this
day of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown by in the Roman time;
they then having only foot-blasts to melt the ironstone; but now, by
the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of Bellows twenty feet
long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders which could not be
forced from it by the Roman foot-blast. And in the Forest of Dean and
thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there ave great and infinite
quantities of these cinders; some in vast mounts above ground, some
under ground, which will supply the iron works some hundreds of years;
and these cinders ave they which make the prime and best iron, and with
much less charcoal than doth the ironstone."--A. YARRANTON, England's
Improvement by Sea and Land. London, 1677.
[15] M. A. LOWER, Contributions to Literature, Historical, Antiquarian,
and Metrical. London, 1854, pp. 88-9.
[16] This famous sword was afterwards sent by Richard I. as a present
to Tancred; and the value attached to the weapon may be estimated by
the fact that the Crusader sent the English monarch, in return for it,
"four great ships and fifteen galleys."
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