Copper in Ancient India c10.s2: Chemistry of Brass
Copper in Ancient India c10.s2
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Chemistry of Brass
c10.s2.1
We would now proceed to consider the chemical composition of brass and the method of its preparation in ancient India. The European history of the chemistry of brass is sufficiently well known. Aristotle (4th century B.C.) described the preparation of a kind of copper which was obtained by heating copper with a kind of earth found on the shores of the black Sea. Pliny (1st century B.C.) describes the preparation of *aurichalcum* by heating copper with cadmia or calamine (zinc carbonate). Brass continued to have been manufactured in Europe up to the end of the eighteenth century by heating copper with calamine and charcoal or coal, though “in England there is good evidence of the manufacture of brass with zinc at the end of the 16th century for Queen Elizabeth by patent granted to William Humfrey and Christopher Schutz the exclusive right of working calamine and making brass.” As regards its chemical composition, it was Kunkel in Europe, who at the end of the 17th century recognised it to be an alloy.
c10.s2.2
So far as India is concerned, it would appear that the knowledge of the chemical composition of brass as an alloy and of its preparation from metallic zinc as distinguished from calamine was more advanced in India than in contemporary Europe, because metalic zinc was prepared in India several centuries earlier than in Europe.