Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.20

c6.s2.20

It was only some three decades later that this view was revised. An earlier revision in fact, even when confronted with contrary evidence as was made available by other observers of the Indian techniques and processes, was an intellectual impossibility. That iron could be converted into cast steel by fusing it in a close vessel in contact with carbon' was yet to be discovered, and it was only in 1825 that a British manufacturer 'took out a patent for converting iron into steel by exposing it to the action of carburetted hydrogen gas in a close vessel, at a very high temperature, by which means the process of conversion is completed in a few hours, while by the old method, it was the work of from 14 to 20 days.39