[TheForge] Cheese is cold-short!

[Mike Spencer]

Mike Schermerhorn wrote:

> I heard an interesting lecture by a woman metallurgist/historian
> from M.I.T. who studied the early discovery, smelting and uses of
> metal, and she found that early metal making evolved almost
> simultaneously in both Mesopotamia and Central America - figure that
> out.  The other interesting thing was that the smiths in
> Mesopotamia immediately made weapons from the metals, whereas the
> Central American peoples made jewelry. 

That was probably Heather Lechtman:

   https://dmse.mit.edu/people/heather-nan-lechtman

She came to one of the demos I did back in the late 80s at MIT.  Early
on she was the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the same "young
genius" honor bestowed on wizard blacksmith Tom Joyce in 2003.

> I regret that at age 76, I am also no longer forging metal for fun,

Just turned 77 last week and yeah, I'm slowing down a lot, too.


FWIW,
-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^