Talk:Muffle

Article title

The article title appears to be incorrect. In both common and historical usage, the so-called Muffle (article title as of 2009) is consistently referred to as a Muffle furnace. Wikipedia does have a redirect page for Muffle furnace today, which points to this Muffle article. I propose doing a move of the article to Muffle furnace. Any objections? N2e (talk) 13:07, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support for the historical usage is shown in a number of easy to find sources. As described, the "muffle" is merely one part of the furnace, the part that attains the high temperature and is nearly or completely isolated from the products of combustion. The term "muffle furnace" is used consistently to describe the entire furnace, which is what this Wikipedia article attempts to do. Here are several sources I quickly located: Bulletin - United States Geological Survey, Issues 47-54, 1889, pp. 834; Handbook of Metallurgy: Zinc, cadmium, mercury, bismuth, tin, antimony ... By Carl Schnabel, 1898; a variety of historic muffle furnaces are even more completely described in his 1905, 2nd edition. An 1876 description of a large double muffle furnace is here. N2e (talk) 13:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In 1937, very clear (and readable!) description of the "muffle" and the complete unit as a "muffle furnace": Electric Muffle Furnace, C.A. Crowley, Popular Mechanics, 67:6, June 1937, pp. 941-945. This practical article is an outstanding source for an easy-to-understand description of a muffle furnace and the necessary parts to make it and control its temperature when operating. N2e (talk) 14:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The original creator of this Wikipedia article, in September 2004, started the article describing a Muffle furnace yet inexplicably named the article Muffle.

A muffle furnace is a (usually) front-loading box-type oven or kiln for high-temperature applications (up to 1200°C) such as fusing glass, creating enamel coatings, etc. (complete article text when first created 2009-09-13)

The article has, since that time, described a muffle furnace and not a muffle -- and so has apparently been misnamed from the beginning. N2e (talk) 02:57, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed Move

Per the previous discussion above, I'm going to go ahead and rename the article to Muffle furnace if there is no objection in the next week or so. N2e (talk) 04:32, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merge has been completed. N2e (talk) 03:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]