Seventeenth-century Islamic brassmakers were far ahead of European peers, engineers sayContact: Kurt Pfitzer kap4@lehigh.edu 610-758-3017 Lehigh University Archaeometallurgists announce findings after four-year study of astrolabes Manufacturers of brass astrolabes in 17th-century India were two centuries more advanced than their European peers, says a doctoral student at Lehigh University who just completed a four-year study of astrolabes. Brian Newbury, who earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering in May, said the high zinc content in astrolabes fabricated in Lahore (now in Pakistan) proves that brass made there in the early 1600s was produced by a co-melting technique that was not...