Chinese Priorities in Cast Iron Metallurgy

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Everyone will, I am sure, be disposed to accept interpretation of Prof. Smith and Mr. Eichner that Filarete was describing a granulation process. The words the metal takes form imposed upon it by its nature as a metal, not by being poured into a mold, are surely quite significant, and there can be no doubt that at that time (and indeed long afterwards) it would have been convenient for many purposes to have cast iron end-product in form of small lumps rather than pigs. So far I do not remember coming across any parallel description of a granulation process in Chinese texts, but we may do so at any time; though remarkable antiquity of Chinese iron casting (fully accepted by Mr. Wertime, for instance, in his The Coming of Age of Steel) makes it likely perhaps that we should look for it in writings of Han time rather than Sung or Ming. It was a pleasure to see that Prof. Smith identified object in Filarete's Figure 2, which looks like a kitchen rolling-pin attached to legs of a grasshopper, as part of bellows-blowing mechanism rather than two air-pipes leading to a common tuyere. Indeed, second interpretation had never occurred to me at all. It would, however, be difficult to accept his suggestion that is axle of a waterwheel with journals at each end, because an alternating reciprocatory motion is required, not a continuous rotary one. I should like to suggest that central log was a bell-crank rocking roller exactly similar to those which we see in designs like Ramelli's (1588), Diversi e Artificiose Machine, pl. 137 (reproduced by Fremont, Forbes, and others, and in Science & Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, pt. 2, fig. 608). These in their turn bear an uncanny resemblance to those which are invariably present in Chinese pictures of blast-furnace