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It would have to be a blacksmith. Like a contemporary Alpine Hephaïstos, he would know how to craft water and fire, and master the art of iron production, from extraction to the fashioning of the finished product. Beginning in the 17th century, ore, extracted from the Hurtières massif and then other lodes, was worked in the smithies that were multiplying in the valley, from Randens to Fourneaux, passing through Argentine, Épierre, La Praz… This was the first step toward industrialisation, this chain of iron and steel metallurgy, which endured up until the dawn of the 20th century.
Then the industrial manufacture of aluminium using electrolysis technologies took over. Rich in “ white coal ” (hydroelectric power), the Maurienne cast away its ancestral practises, inventing a new identity for itself, that of the new blacksmith, the master of « electric fire ».
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