Hydraulic Air Compressors (Trompes):Rather than relying on manual leather bellows, smelters built vertical wooden and stone chutes into waterfalls. Falling water dragged air bubbles down a sealed shaft into an underground separation chamber. The pressurized air was then channeled directly into blast furnaces, achieving the high temperatures ($>1,300^\circ\text{C}$) necessary to smelt bloomery iron and carbon steel continuously without human fatigue. Ver mais