On establishment of silver industry in Altai in 1745-1762

In the 2nd half of the 18th century Altai put itself as oneof European leaders in silver production. But the duration from 1745 to 1762 is least scrutinized so far. For example, it is considered thatthe Emperors Cabinet in St. Petersburg was a financial department only and the local power was attributed to the engineers fromSaxony and they were under weak control at all. The author has cleared up that every stage of production was under total Cabinetscontrol. The methods of control are described in this article. A special process of production scheme from Kolyvan and Barnaul foundrieswas determined. The first stage was the initial ore smelting to concentrate silver in raw matter. This operation was realized inKolyvan. This allowed decreasing the weight of the raw material in comparison with ore to cut down the transportation costs of the rawmatter to Barnaul foundry for two subsequent turns. The second technological step was to smelt the raw substance with lead to separatesilver from the raw material in lead-alloy or bullion. The last turn was separating silver from lead. It is considered that the delivery oflead from Nerchinsk foundry begun in 1747 after taking Demidovs private copper foundries to the state. It is necessary for silver productionto smelt the raw material with lead to extract silver. Lead was only a working product of silver fusion in Nerschinsk foundry inTransbaikalia. But Altais ores did not contain enough lead. Plenty of lead in Nerchinsk ores and therefore its production was not indemand there. Nerchinsk lead was first transported to Barnaul foundry in 1746, i.e. one year before the Royal Decree of May 12, 1747.The author has stated that there was no pure lead, but it contained wastes with a touch of 30% of arsenic, antimony and so on. This resultedin making bubbles in the furnace. There was a big danger from bursting bubbles because of liquid metal sparks that could hithands or eyes of workers or cause conflagrations. But the rule was that Nerchinsk foundry is for smelting silver, not lead, which waskept as a useless material. Therefore there was no direct duty of Nerchinsk foundry to deliver lead to Barnaul foundry in Altai. The dutyof lead delivery was imposed on Nerchinsk foundry only in 1764, 18 years after the first delivery of lead to Barnaul. Four furnaces werebuilt at Nerchinsk foundry at that time to purify the lead for Barnaul.

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