Hacker News Reader

Comment by orange_joe | Hacker News Reader

I love low tech magazine, but the citation for “African and Asian metallurgists developed high quality steels much earlier and this knowledge eventually allowed Europeans to do the same on a much larger scale?” Is an article in the same publication (low tech magazine) that hasn’t even been written. It makes the whole article feel fast and loose when making such a revisionist claim with a pretend citation.

View on HN

I think India famously produced wootz steel quite early, right?

Anyway, I’m not really sure what they mean, I’d assume steel was invented in a bunch of places. Is getting carbon into your iron a rare accident to make? I’d both be shocked if European steel makers didn’t integrate information from around the world, and if they didn’t integrate information from local sources. (like the Celts, famously fans of the stuff, right?)

It’s a little ambiguous, but it seems as though they’re specifically talking about industrial steel making as it emerged in the 18th century (the Bessemer Process).

“That is a little-known fact in the Western world, where steel production only took off in the nineteenth century with fossil fuels”

Was the sentence immediately prior.

Regardless, making a claim and citing an article you haven’t written/published is essentially very weak.

It's more getting carbon out of your iron bloom than getting it in that's difficult. "Cast iron" and "wrought iron" have even more carbon than high-carbon steels, let alone low-carbon steels.

Wootz (and Damascus) steels for example were of much higher quality than what was usually produced in Europe. I can't say if this is what gave European smiths the knowledge they needed to create their own quality steels, or if it was a case of parallel invention, but for a time Asia was producing much better stuff.

Can't find the source I want to share, but my understanding is that it was developed accidentally in multiple places, as it's a matter of accidentally getting the carbon content of the iron correct to make steel. Then you pass down your accidents and people gradually improve on it. It wasn't until relatively recently that we understood the chemistry of what's going on and were able to reliable make different grades of steel.

Found it, this blog is great if you're interested in the history of blacksmithing: https://acoup.blog/tag/blacksmithing/

I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to state that non-European cultures were making and working steel. I think it’s fairly revisionist (a narrative outside the academic mainstream) to state they passed this knowledge to Europeans and this knowledge was useful in at scale steel making (implying that Bessemer process has its origins outside of Europe/America).

Late modern Europeans were aware of crucible steel, and tried really hard to replicate them - IIRC this involved expeditions to India ? - (and seem to have succeeded) :

https://www.thoughtco.com/wootz-steel-raw-material-damascus-...

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-rise-of-steel-par...

https://www.sanskritimagazine.com/tale-crucible-wootz-steel-...

Africa probably refers to the Haya people of Tanzania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haya_people), developing carbon steel 2000 years ago. And it's well known for Turkey, China, and India right? I don't know about the part about knowledge transfer, there is also Celtic steel going back 2800 years, but 4000 for Asia with Anatolia.

Conflating Asia with Asia Minor/Middle east muddies things (there is a lot of history going on in both places), but then the implication is Europe didn't know about steel till fairly recently seems at odds with current understanding -it appears to go as far back as the African instance and perhaps further back. So, there may be some nuance with regard to purity or method or composition, but without putting that forward, it appears really sloppy in this area --so where else is he or she playing fast and loose?

"That is a little-known fact in the Western world, where steel production only took off in the nineteenth century with fossil fuels. However, Asian and African metallurgists developed high-quality steels much earlier, and this knowledge eventually allowed Europeans to do the same – on a much larger scale."

Did it "take off" elsewhere? What does take off mean? Oh, is the topic high-quality? What is that? What defines high-quality? Try to be a little precise rather than throw things out there.

It may also refer to this, going back 4000 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery#Sub-Saharan_Africa

More in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa

They mention inhomogenous steel there though, it sounds like the Tanzanian one was more purely directed at making steel instead of iron.

> Is an article in the same publication (low tech magazine) that hasn’t even been written.

It seems particularly odd as a first citation too.

I assume the article is written, but is unpublished. Better, but less than ideal.

I don't know about Africa, but it is not exactly controversial that China and other places had high quality steel before Europe.

Please provide citations and what is meant by "high quality", and if you are referring to at scale using blast furnaces vs small artisanal production.

AFAIK Serendib had "large" artisanal "blast" furnaces making "high tech" crucible steel maybe as far back as 300 BC :

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/06/science/ancient-smelter-u...

Very cool, thanks for the link!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com