Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s5.t3.14

c23.s5.t3.14

The bellows are as singular in their construction as the Akaira, and are worked by the hand; they are made of a single goat skin, the dimensions of which ought to be 7 parts in breadth when doubled, and 8 parts in length; such proportions being required for circular bellows of 5 parts diameter, and which when worked by a man of ordinary strength will rise 6 parts in height—having 11¼ circular folds; the wooden nozzle through which the blast is conveyed into the furnace surfaces the Akaira in its complex nature, and so little is its principle understood—that the art of making it was once lost at Tendukaira, and was again restored by the smelters of Katola.