History
The secret of bulat manufacturing was lost by the beginning of the 19th century. Pavel Petrovich Anosov eventually managed to duplicate the qualities of that metal in 1838, when he completed ten years of study into the nature of Damascus steel swords. Bulat became popular in cannon manufacturing, until the Bessemer process was able to make the same quality steels for far less money.
Anosov had entered the Saint Petersburg Mine Cadet School in 1810, where a Damascus steel sword was stored in a display case. He became enchanted with the sword, and was filled with stories of them slashing through their European counterparts. In November 1817 he was sent to the factories of Zlatoust mining region in the southern Urals, where he was soon promoted to the inspector of the "weapon decoration department".
Here he again came into contact with Damascus steel of European origin (which was in fact pattern welded steel, and not at all similar), but quickly found that this steel was quite inferior to the original from the Middle East. Anosov had been working with various quenching techniques, and decided to attempt to duplicate Damascus steel with quenching. He eventually developed a methodology that greatly increased the hardness of his steels.
Read more about this topic: Bulat Steel
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)