Basically, smelting is the process of melting down ore in order to separate its metallic components from impurities. Smelting was the second of the three basic steps of iron manufacture. Later, revolving fans and single- or double-acting bellows maintained air flow, while allowing miners to dig to new depths. The simplest form of ventilation, sufficing only for the shallower mines, was merely the flapping of cloths to circulate air. Rather than limit the depth that the mines could extend, ventilating machines were developed as a solution. Delving deeper beneath the surface of the earth led to a second complication for the miners: less oxygen for those working in the elongated tunnels. A third type, rag-and-chain pumps, were powered manually and used balls stuffed with horsehair, spaced along the chain, that acted as one-way pistons. Waterwheels also powered the more sophisticated suction-pumps, which drew by means of pistons. These were powered by animals on treadmill, by hand and even by waterwheel. The simplest type of pump was a series of dippers attached to a chain. In response to flooding, drainage pumps were devised for the removal of water from the mine. Agricola wrote that mines were most often not abandoned because they were barren of ore, but because they were flooded. Another example of this style of thinking was the invention of the wagon mounted on wooden rails and drawn by animal power, an early forerunner of the locomotive.Ĭomplications in the mines, such as flooding and ventilation difficulties, inspired medieval miners to create often inventive means of overcoming them. This search for labor-saving devices was characteristic of medieval man, as well as the American colonist, and will be addressed in further depth below. A labor-saving innovation particular to the Middle Ages was the wheelbarrow, which gave one man the transporting power of two. Other hauling implements, such as windlasses, employed cranks powered both by man and by animals. Buckets, wooden and ox-hide bound by iron were the basic ore-moving devices. The ore reaped by these tools then needed to be hauled to the surface through a variety of means. Necessary for the initial stages of the mining process, a miner's tools were generally constructed of iron with wooden handles and included a shovel, pike, hoe, pick, hammer and wedge. From this text, we know that the technology developed for mining in the Middle Ages included tools for digging and splitting rock, hauling implements, drainage pumps and ventilating machines. Much of what we know today about medieval mining methods comes from the great textbook on mining, De re metallica (On metallic matters), written in 1556 by Georgius Agricola, otherwise known as Georg Bauer. Although much of the earliest iron ore used in Europe was found in exposed areas of earth that did not require much digging, these surface deposits were exhausted by the twelfth century and means of acquiring the increasingly popular iron ore that was more deeply buried needed to be devised. In effect, mining is the extraction of an ore or minerals, for example iron ore, from the earth, generally by means of tunneling or excavation. As will be argued in more detail below, these practices were basically identical to those used in colonial America. Iron manufacture in the Middle Ages was comprised of essentially three practices: mining, smelting and smithing. The discussion of the development of this technology in the Middle Ages and its similar adaptation in the colonies is the goal of this essay. In addition to powering the bellows of the blast furnace, waterpower was also applied to numerous other applications, including the washing and grinding of iron ore, the drainage of mines, the wire-drawing mill, the slitting mill, and the tilt-hammer. The blast furnace used waterpower to increase draft and, therefore, temperature, allowing iron to be smelted much faster, cheaper and with the option of creating cast or wrought iron. Owed to the Middle Ages are two vital technological innovations that abounded in the American colonies, the blast furnace and the application of waterpower to almost every stage of the iron manufacture process. Economic, technical and, most importantly, natural resources in the colonies made the medieval method of iron manufacture distinctively attractive and efficient, as opposed to the strikingly different method used concurrently in early modern Europe. Although often deemed a stagnant and uninventive period, the Middle Ages, on the contrary, gave birth to a wealth of technological innovation that would long remain particularly suited to the needs of colonial American iron workers. Europe, between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, saw an unprecedented surge in iron manufacture technology that would quickly spread throughout the western world, including the American colonies.
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