Calamine brass slowly phased out as zinc smelting techniques were developed in Europe, which produced metallic zinc more suitable for brass production than calamine. However, the conversion away from calamine brass manufacture was slow; a British patent was awarded to William Champion in 1738, but the alloying of metallic zinc and copper to produce brass was not patented until 1781 (by James Emerson), and calamine brass mills persisted in South Wales until as late as 1858. The slow diffusion of this technology was probably the result of economic factors. Calamine brass Calamine brass is brass produced by a particular alloying technique using
Metallic fiber (steel wool), bundle drawn from larger diameter wire (smallest fiber is produced by this method), cast from molten metal, or grown around a seed (often carbon). Bundle drawn metal fiber can be produced to sizes smaller than one micrometre in diameter. Currently metallic fibers are manufactured primarily in Europe with only three manufacturers still producing metallic yarn in the United States. Metlon Corporation is one of the remaining manufacturers in the U.S. that stocks a wide variety of laminated and non-laminated metallic yarns & Brightex Corporation, Japan and South Korea, such as Hwa Young, is also manufacturing Metallic fibers. China