Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s5.t10: Cost of the Iron
Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s5.t10
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Cost of the Iron
c23.s5.t10.1
The cost of the iron was as follows. The excavation of a mine cost 30-12 Nagpur or 25 Calcutta Sicca Rupees; the construction of four smelting furnaces, two refineries, and one small round furnace, cost 34-12 Nagpur or 30 Sicca Rupees; and the purchase of skins and manufacture of seven pairs of circular bellows cost 30-5 Nagpur or about 25 Sicca Rupees—total of outlay 80 Sicca Rupees; but as my experiment lasted only five weeks, and the above outlay was calculated to last a whole season, a portion of it only is chargeable to the cost of the above iron; the hammers, anvils and other implements of iron, not being perishable articles—are chargeable only for reasonable repairs; thus the proper proportion of outlay is 15 Rupees, and the expense¹¹ of working the furnace was 441-0 Nagpur or 375 Sicca Rupees, the total of cost therefore for 225 maunds of malleable iron was 390 Sicca Rupees, or one rupee 12 annas per maund.
c23.s5.t10.2
The iron was weighed by the standard of Nagpur—the maund of which place is about 3 lbs avoirdupois less than the factory maund of Calcutta; hence its weight is about 71 lbs 10 ozs avoirdupois, and 31¼ Nagpur maunds are nearly equal to one English ton; the value of the Calcutta Sicca Rupee is usually reckoned at 2 shillings and hence the cost of a ton weight of malleable iron in English money was five pounds nine shillings, and five pence, or in round numbers—five pounds ten shillings.