Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s5.t3.1

c23.s5.t3.1

Their smelting furnaces, though crude in appearance, are nevertheless very exact in their interior proportions, and it has often surprised me to see men who are unquestionably ignorant of their principle, construct them with precision, in so simple a manner; their unit of measure is the breadth of a middle sized man's finger; 24 of which constitute their large and 20 their small cubit; thus there is a constant ratio of 6 to 5 prevailing throughout these furnaces, nor is it of the least consequence, that their dimensions are larger or smaller, so long as all the parts are in the same proportion; the length of these measures is on an average 19.20 English inches for the large cubit, and 16 English inches for the small one.