Metallic zinc appeared much later in history than the other common metals. Copper, lead, tin, and iron can be obtained as the molten metals by heating their oxide ores with charcoal (carbon), a process called reduction, in shaft furnaces, which were developed quite early in history. Zinc oxide, however, cannot be reduced by carbon until temperatures are reached well above the relatively low boiling point of the metal (907 °C). Thus, the furnaces developed to smelt the other metals could not produce zinc. Small quantities of metallic zinc can sometimes be found in the flues of lead blast furnaces.
There is some evidence that the Greeks knew of the existence of zinc and called it pseudargyras, or “false silver,” but they had no method of producing it in quantity. The Romans as early as 200 bce produced considerable quantities of brass, an alloy of zinc and copper, by heating in crucibles a mixture of zinc oxide and charcoal covered with lumps of metallic copper. The zinc oxide was reduced in the lower part of the crucible. Zinc vapour was formed and dissolved in the copper to form brass. At the end of the process the temperature was raised to melt the brass for casting into ingots. Brass production was the Romans’ only use of zinc.
The realization that to make zinc it was necessary to produce the metal as a vapour and then condense it seems first to have been reached in India in the 13th or 14th century. The metallurgists of China had achieved large-scale production of zinc by the 16th century. In the West this principle was first applied in England in 1743 under the leadership of William Champion. At the end of the 18th century in Belgium and Poland improvements were made in the furnace, and the process remained unchanged until an electrolytic process was developed in 1917. At the end of the 1920s a radical advance was made in the United States by developing a continuous retort process, and during the 1930s an electrothermic process was designed for producing zinc continuously. A development of the 1960s was the zinc-lead blast furnace, in which rapid quenching of the gases is a key principle. Zinc production processes are treated in detail in zinc processing.