Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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Furnace
(1,044 words)

1. General

A furnace is an industrial oven, an enclosed combustion chamber whose heat is either used to heat the space external to it or to to process whatever is placed in the space contained within it.

In the Middle Ages, crafts and trades, industrial trades and crafts, and the metal industry used furnaces to collect process heat, especially in the smelting process, in separating, sifting, and burning, as well as in shaping and casting metals and in chemical technologies (Chemical sciences; see Laborato…

Cite this page
Bleidick, Dietmar, “Furnace”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_COM_024931>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20180208



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