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Monday 3 December 2012

Blacksmith

Legend has it that when listening to the sounds made by a blacksmith striking his anvil, Pythagoras was led to a perception of the relationship between arithmetic ratios and harmonic intervals in music.

Viking blacksmiths would often add bones from ancestors or animals like bears to their iron ore to add carbon content, and to imbue the weapon with mystical properties.

The medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri once smashed up the workshop of a blacksmith whom he heard singing his poems as he worked, but muddling up the words.

Due to advances in native forge technology in many places in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa, native blacksmiths produced steel at a better grade of quality compared to steel produced in Europe at the time.


The world’s first pedal bicycle was made by a Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan (d 1878) of Keir Mill, Dumfriesshire in 1839. His novel design for the first time enabled cyclists to ride with both their feet continuously off the ground. The popular bicycle of the time, the Hobby Horse, only provided momentum through the swinging of the riders feet back and forth.

Coal forges in a blacksmith's workshop reach temperatures of roughly 1,600 C.

The term 'blacksmith' comes from the black layer of oxides that forms on molten iron, the metal they specialized in. 

A modern blacksmith By Matěj Baťha

The opposite of a blacksmith is a whitesmith, a smith who works with lighter-colored metals, particularly tin. There are also "brownsmiths" who work with brass or copper.

Sources Whaleoil.co.nz, Europress Encyclopedia

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