An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology part 22. This one of a kind encyclopedia presents the entire field of technology from rudimentary agricultural tools to communication satellites in this first of its kind reference source. Following an introduction that discusses basic tools, devices, and mechanisms, the chapters are grouped into five parts that provide detailed information on materials, power and engineering, transportation, communication and calculation, and technology and society, revealing how different technologies have together evolved to produce enormous changes in the course of history | PART ONE MATERIALS applied to a body that had already received a tin-lead glaze then heated to leave a thin lustrous layer of copper and silver. The technique arose in the Middle East in the ninth century AD and spread through Islam reaching Moorish Spain by the fourteenth century. From here it was exported throughout Europe and highly prized by those who could afford more sophisticated tastes while of course simple peasant ware continued to be made. In Italy it was doubtless the spread of lustre ware that stimulated the tin-glazed ware known as majolica which flourished particularly over the period 14751530. Applying coloured tin-lead glazes to sculpture Luca della Robbia achieved delightful results. A manuscript by one Picolpasso gives details of the glazing and colouring materials and processes that were applied to the white clay base. Now however an entirely new product was about to make an impact on European taste and fashion Chinese porcelain. It was known to the Muslims but examples did not percolate into Europe until the sixteenth century. The trickle became a flood after the eastern trading companies were set up in the wake of the voyages of exploration in particular the Dutch East India Company founded in 1609. Chinese pottery is of great antiquity going back to the third millennium BC. Glazed pottery appears in the third century BC and lead glaze soon afterwards in the Han dynasty a little earlier than Roman practice in the West. But the great Chinese discovery was that of porcelain of which the main constituents are kaolin or china clay which is infusible and a fusible mixture of feldspar clay and quartz. This had to be fired at a higher temperature around 1400 C. Various colours were applied but above all blue from cobalt minerals. A mineral with just the right amount of impurities imported probably from Persia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries produced a particularly lovely blue. Thereafter a local mineral had to be used giving a rather .
