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HISTORY
Russian metallurgists

continuation

In the 18th century, Russia not only had
remarkable specialists who perfectly knew the secrets of
metal production and processing, not only was famous
for the largest and most powerful mining industry, our
country was also ahead in the perfection of metallurgical
technology. Russia was famous for the world’s largest
blast furnaces. Western bourgeois history of technology
has to admit this too.
One of its most prominent representatives, the
German scientist Beck, writes about the "Siberian" (that
is, the Ural) blast furnaces of those times. "Siberian blast
furnaces are the greatest and best charcoal blast furnaces
that have been built so far, and all of them, including
English furnaces, were far superior in productivity.
They were powered by powerful water driven cylindrical
blowers. Siberian blast furnaces were 35 to 45 feet (10.5
to 12.96 m) high, 12 to 13 feet (3.6 to 3.9 m) across
in steam, had six cylindrical bellows, and produced per
week from 2000 to 3000 centners of pig iron, which
capacity was not then attainable even for the greatest
English coke ovens."
To this eloquent characteristic, it should be
added that the Ural blast furnaces were also the most
economical. The blast furnaces of the Nizhniy Tagil and
Nevyansk plants, for example, spent 1/2 pood of coal on smelting one pound of pig iron, that
is, 2 - 3 times less than the best European blast furnaces.
Ardent love for their homeland, the desire to make it stronger inspired Russian technicians.
Creative daring, continuous search for the best technical solutions inherent in representatives of
Russian technical thought, were the reason for the great success of the Ural blast furnaces. The
most important of the innovations introduced by the Urals people to improve their domains were
aimed at improving the blast-furnace system. Recall that the emergence of powerful, water-
powered bellows was the dividing line between childhood and adolescence in the metallurgical
furnace.
These bellows made it possible to turn small furnaces into much more productive blast
furnaces, they changed the course of the metallurgical process, gave it the look in which it, in
general, still exists today. For many centuries, the blast-
furnace blast system served as the main link, grasping
which metallurgists have more than once pulled all blast-
furnace technology to new heights. In the 18th century
in Russia, two important improvements were made to the
blast furnace blower.
One of them belongs to
Grigory Makhotin, who created the
so-called two-tuyere blast furnace
system in 1743. To appreciate the
merit of this Russian inventor, let
us trace the history of the blast
furnace blower. Sectional view of the melting furnace and the mold in which the Tsar Bell was
The first bellows, as we cast.
know, were very similar in design
to ordinary blacksmith’s: the same two triangular wooden shields connected by a hinge, the
same leather "bellows" between these shields. The only difference was in size. Blast bellows
were much larger than blacksmiths. No wonder they were powered by the power of water. The
blast blower also differed from the blacksmith’s in the number of bellows. There were, as a rule,
several of them near the blast furnace. While some bellows shrank and drove air into the oven,
others swelled, gained strength, so that in a minute they would replace the exhausted ones.
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