XXXIII.—An Account of the Iron Mines of Caradogh, near Tabreez in Persia, and of the Method there practised of producing Malleable-Iron by a single process directly from the Ore

Extract

The ancient Greeks have laid claim to the earliest discovery of the method of manufacturing iron, but it will appear that the art was known in Persia at least as early as among the Greeks. The method of producing malleable-iron by a single process directly from the ore, is not indeed quite unknown at the present day, but it is believed to be altogether disused in Great Britain and throughout Europe; but there is no doubt that, in Britain, particularly at Castle Cough, Glamorganshire, and at Furness, near Ulverston, in Lancashire, as well as elsewhere, malleable-iron must have been known long before the discovery of cast-iron. In the 17th century, malleable-iron appears to have been made directly from the ore, in preference to the method now practised. In the Philosophical Transactions (for 1693, vol. xvii. p. 695), there is the following short notice by Mr Sturdy, of the method as then practised at Milthorpe-forge in Lancashire. “The forge is like a common blacksmith's, with a hearth made of sow-iron, in which they make a charcoal fire, and put in ore, first broken into pieces like a pigeon's egg; it is melted by the blast, leaving the iron in a lump, which is never in a perfect fusion; this is taken out and beaten under great hammers, played with water, and, after several heatings in the same furnace, it is brought into bars. They get about one hundredweight of metal at one melting, being the produce of about three times as much ore; no limestone or any other flux is used.” It has been doubted by an intelligent author (Farey on the Steam-Engine, p. 271), whether, by the process here described, the iron was really made directly from the ore, or only from pig metal. The existence, however, of a similar process at the present day in Persia, evidently the same which has been practised in that country from a very remote period, will make it appear not the least improbable that iron may have been thus produced from the rich hematite or fibrous red iron-ore of Lancashire.