Cast iron in China
Chinese furnaces reach the melting point of iron 1,500 years before Europe does.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 100 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Chinese metallurgists develop blast furnaces capable of fully melting iron by around 500 BCE, allowing it to be poured into moulds like bronze. Europe does not achieve this until the fourteenth century CE. The advantage came partly from existing high-temperature ceramic and bronze-casting expertise and partly from phosphorus-rich ores that lower the melting point. Cast iron gives China cheap ploughshares, cooking pots and, eventually, mass-produced weapons.