I don’t recall if there was a specific name given. The furnace was different than most known varieties of the time because it did not exhaust out of the top allowing a hotter zone at the top. Much of what they were doing to reproduce the quality of steel found in some Viking swords was speculation based on scant evidence.
Ancient Damascus steel was very high quality, due to certain trace minerals in the ore. Those trace minerals also caused blades made from it to show a very distinctive pattern. After the original supply of ore ran out, people deliberately took steps to reproduce that pattern, which had become associated with the quality. It’s these lower-quality pattern replicas that are now called “Damascus steel”.
And for the record, induction heating can be done with any metal, not just ferrous ones. All that matters is the conductivity.
Crucible furnace perhaps?
I’m not sure this is completely accurate.
Damascus steel blades show a distinct pattern because they are made by repeatedly folding and hammering the metal over on itself. This process makes the steel extremely tough and allows it to be hardened at the edge and annealed at the back, making the blade both sharp and flexible. The grain pattern is brought out by etching, but I suspect that it is made partially visible by the annealing process.
Image of a Damascus steel blade.
Now, there may well have been beneficial impurities in the ore which made the steel superior (chrome, cobalt, Magnesium, etc.), but those are not what gives it the unique patterns.
I have the show recorded, when I get a chance I’ll watch again to see if I can pick up any details. ‘Crucible furnace’ would be a generic name that could be used for any furnace used to make crucible steel. If you’re just looking for something to call one than ‘crucible furnace’ is as good a name as any other.
The NOVA episode was trying to understand the crucible steel method used to make Ulfberht_swords. Microscopic examination revealed that the steel had far fewer inclusions of slag and undissolved carbon than Damascus swords from the Middle East, however they also believe the knowledge of the crucible steel making process came through Central Asian trade routes.
You can check out the debate on the nature of ‘Damascus’ steel on the wiki-talk page.
Every authoritative source I’ve seen on the subject says that Chronos is correct, the original Damascus (Wootz) steel was not pattern welded.
This source says that there were two contemporaneous Damascus steels, one of which was layered:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html
The magnetic susceptibility is also important, since the skin depth depends on the product of the conductivity and susceptibility. Modern induction ranges are primarily designed to work with pans made of ferromagnetic alloys.
We used to do a lot of induction hardening of specific parts of a whatever, for instance the wear pads of a clutch actuation fork would be hardened for wear resistance. If the entire fork were hardened it would be more brittle and likely to crack or even shatter with aggressive clutch dumps. (Heavy truck usage). The induction coil would be a simple hollow copper coil resembling the bright part of a compact fluorescent bulb. You slide the fork tip into the coil, hit the current, the part becomes red hot in a matter of seconds. The current is shut off, and the part is quenched in water. A skilled operator can do about 200 of these per hour.
One of the operators was a bit of a show-off, and he would wow the kiddies (and some of the adults) by sticking his finger into the coil and hitting the switch. Of course, nothing would happen. The he would put a fork in, do the same thing, and the crowd would just stand there, mesmerized.
By the way, the coil is hollow and cooling water circulates inside to keep the coil itself cooled. The process was once described to me as a really shitty transformer. Most electrical folks want a transformer that gives off as little heat as possible. Here we want lots of heat.
Missed edit window. The guy I mentioned did this during the open houses we had from time to time.