Advances in Metallurgy

Advances in Metallurgy

Overview

In Europe, more than any other part of the world, industrial manufacturing and technology has developed from metallurgy, the mining and smelting of metals. Advances in metallurgy have been at once the cause and effect of European technological superiority. In the Renaissance the extraction and smelting of ore was a strongly traditional industry, and Vanoccio Biringuccio's book De la pirotechnia libri X (Ten Books of a Work in Fire, 1540), like George Agricola's De Re Metallica Libri XII (Twelve Books on Metals, 1556), did not announce any dramatic inventions. However, their books described with exceptional clarity craft processes that trial and error had gradually improved over centuries. Their works demonstrate how printing helped to systematize knowledge and helped the spread of mechanization. In the eighteenth century the techniques required for profitable mining could be applied to developing the new steam technology that powered the Industrial Revolution in Britain and throughout the world.

Background

In the High Renaissance of the early sixteenth century, the Mediterranean region, and especially Italy, dominated European civilization. Italy led in many production techniques, including the most skillful metalwork, described by the Italian Biringuccio (1480-1539). He learned his trade working in foundries throughout the metallurgical regions of Italy and southern Germany, where profitable mining centers had developed using abundant ores and water-powered machinery.

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