Iron in Ancient India c7.s2.1

c7.s2.1

Mr. Monomohon Ganguli of the Public Works Department, whose recent work on " Orissa and her Remains " is an excellent publication on the subject, sent a very small piece of wrought iron from an iron beam at Bhubaneswar to the Civil Engineering College, Sibpur, where Prof. Sarat Kumar Dutt tested its tensile strength in the Testing laboratory of the College. Prof. Dutt got a small piece made of it of cross-section ·27" X ·415" and after testing it observed " this broke at 1·6 tons. The breaking strength accordingly comes to about 14·3 tons per square inch . . . . unfortunately the sample was not without flaws and the test piece broke at one of these flaws . . . . If it had been possible to obtain a decent sample of the iron, I believe, a strength of 20 tons per square inch could be easily attained," the accepted tensile stress of pure wrought iron having an average of 25 tons per square inch. "The assurance of Prof. Dutt that a decent sample of this iron could easily show a strength of 20 tons per square inch reflects great credit on the Orissan matallurgists of a bye-gone age, for the average tensile strength of wrought iron was 23 tons per square inch in England only 36 years ago."¹