Re: [tied] First iron swords on mass scale

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michal Milewski" <milewski@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 10:22 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] First iron swords on mass scale


From what I've read, if real steel was ever obtained in
ancient Europe, it was a serendipitous by-product of wrought
iron manufacture, of inconsistent and uncontrollable
quality. The Greeks and the Romans knew that the process was
possible, and that the presence of charcoal had something to
do with it, but never managed to understand the details and
so experimented at random, without much success. Europeans
did not learn much more about steel-making until about the
14th century.

The first controllable steel-making technique was developed
rather early (possibly by 500 BC) in ancient India (wootz
steel), and somewhat later in the Middle East (Damascus
steel).

I've just found another excellent article about the history
of iron and steel manufacture, very competently discussed,
with source references.

http://www.mri.on.ca/steel.html

Piotr


> Thanks. In my opinion, the origin of "steel" should be
more
> interesting than "iron", as steel was developed relatively
> late and IE smiths could substantially contribute to this
> invention.