64 IRON AND STEEL. 



Thorold Rodgers says that " no direct information about the seasons 

 is so frequent as that found in the notices which the bailiff gives 

 about the great cost of iron." It was the custom for the farm 

 bailiff to buy the year's supply of iron at the great annual fair and to 

 dole it out as needed, a blacksmith being employed to mend or 

 make the necessary implements. The articles most frequently men- 

 tioned are plow shoes, or points to wooden plows, horse shoes and 

 nails. Sheffield was already noted as a seat of the hardware manu- 

 facture in Chaucer's time, for of one of his characters the poet says, 

 "a Shefeld thwitel bar he in his hose." Birmingham was famous 

 for its production of swords, tools and nails. 



Up to this time no great improvement had been made in the 

 manufacture of iron. The furnace was a small square bloomary fur- 

 nished with leather bellows, worked by manual power, and the pro- 

 duct was a bloom, or loop, or wolf of malleable iron. A few of these 

 furnaces yet remain in Spain and Hungary ; and Overman says that 

 they are from 10 to 16 feet high, 2 feet wide at the top and bottom 

 and 5 feet at the widest part. An opening in front, called the breast, 

 was kept open until the furnace was heated, when it was closed with 

 brick, the ore and fuel were put in at the top and the blast was sup- 

 plied by " two bellows and nozzles, both on the same side." The 

 product was called a salamander of mixed iron and steel weighing 

 from 400 to 700 pounds, which was taken out of the breast and re- 

 duced to bars by hammers. 



At the close of the 14th century the English blacksmith exe- 

 cuted excellent work. Picton says : " Ironwork at this period was 

 of the most elaborate description. The locks and keys, the hinges 

 and bolts, the smith's work in gates and screens, exceed in beauty 

 anything of the kind which has since been produced." The defen- 

 sive armor made in England was also exquisitely wrought. 



We are indebted to Germany for the development of the bloom- 

 ary into the high furnace by which the product was changed from 

 malleable to cast iron. The old bloomary had been gradually in- 

 creased in capacity ; but a limit was imposed upon that development 

 by the impossibility of creating a strong blast by means of the bel- 

 lows then in use. The same cause operated to render abortive early 

 attempts in England to substitute mineral fuel for charcoal. Wooden 

 tubs or cylinders in which a piston, operated by water power, 



