10 Finding Steel through the Clear Glass

Once upon a time, a glass maker was wandering through the country when he found an infant abandoned on the side of the road. The infant was a girl with red hair like that of a rose. The glass maker had no children of his own, and so he adopted the girl and named her Rhodona, after the color of her hair. As she grew up Rhodona would help her father with his work making glass. When she was ten,  Rhodona discovered that manganese could be used to remove the pale green tint of natural glass as it removes iron impurities in the glass that cause the green color. Her discovery allowed her father to be able to dye the glass all sorts of colors, one of which was a violet dye she was able to create using manganese. As she got older, Rhodona also began to learn how to smelt metals in addition to making glass.

Several years later the glass maker fell ill from an unknown illness. Rhodona tried to find a way to treat the illness, but unfortunately, they did not have enough money to pay for the treatment. Around the same time the king of the kingdom announced that he was holding a contest for making steel, and that the first person who could do so would be awarded a small fortune. Many people heard of the news and tried to find ways to create it using just iron, but none were successful. Eventually Rhodona learned about the king’s request and thought of a way to make steel. Instead of just using iron, she also included some manganese in order to make the steel stronger and easier to work with, as well as to allow the steel to be more resistant to corrosion. When she showed the king, he was greatly impressed, and he declared Rhodona the winner of the contest. Rhodona used the money the king awarded her to pay for her father’s medical treatment, and he made a swift recovery. In addition, Rhodonite, a rose-colored mineral that contained manganese, was named in honor of Rhodona.

Fun Facts:

Some of the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, use manganese-based pigments

Manganese was used to remove the pigment from glass in many different civilizations, from ancient Egypt to renaissance Venice.