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Art. XXVIII.—On Indian Iron and Steel; in a Letter addressed to the Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2011

J. M Heath
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Extract

In the month of June, 1837, the Managing Directors of the Indian Iron and Steel Company received a letter from Robert Clerk, Esq., Secretary to the Madras Governor, forwarding a copy of your letter of the 17th of February, 1837, addressed to the Governor of Madras, requesting information on the subject of wootz*, or Indian steel: the purport of Mr. Clerk's letter was to ask us to furnish the information and specimens required by you, provided we could do so without inconvenience or detriment to our own interests.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 5 , Issue 10 , July 1838 , pp. 390 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1838

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References

* Wootz, or oots, is probably the name of steel in the Guzerattee language in use at Bombay, from which place the first specimens of Indian steel were sent to England under that name.

* Mr. Mushet took out a patent for this process, but, owing to causes entirely unconnected with the merits of the discovery, it was never successfully carried into practice.

† The patentee of the Indian-rubber waterproof fabrics. Mr. Mackintosh also took out a patent for his process for steel-making; but although I have seen samples of the steel made in this way, yet the process was not found to answer on a large scale: it was found impossible to keep the chambers in which the bars of iron were suspended air-tight at the very high temperature to which it was necessary to raise them in order to enable the iron to combine with the gaseous carbon.