Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c26.s2.8

v1.c26.s2.8

India’s monopoly on high zinc (more than 28 per cent) brass has never been questioned. The manufacture of zinc metal by reduction and distillation was a well-guarded Indian secret. The Western countries knew about the cementation route for making low-zinc brass, but after Theopompus referring to ‘droplets of false silver’, the art of making zinc and high-zinc brass was almost unknown in the West till the early part of the eighteenth century when the knowledge again travelled from India, and William Champion of Bristol, England utilised it to manufacture the said materials.