The tempering behavoirs of 0.45% carbon steel treated by automatic progressive high frequency induction hardening equipment have been investigated. In order to examine the correlation of hardness with both tempering temperature and time, simple regression analysis has been made using the statistical quality control package. The maximum surface hardness value of induction hardened zone and its effective hardening depth have been determined to be Hv 810 and 0.76mm, respectively. The hardness obtained after tempering has been shown to vary lineary with tempering time at six different temperatures. The activation energies during tempering have been calculated to be 25.34kcal/mole, 32.73kcal/mole and 49.24kcal/mole for HRcs 60, 50 and 40, respectively, showing that tempering process occurs by a complex mechanism, The tempering hardness equation of $H=90.113{sim}4.531{ imes}10^{-3}$ [T(11.996+log t)] has proved to be in a reasonably good agreement with experimently determined data and it is also expected to be useful for the determination of tempering treatment conditions to obtain a required hardness value.