AHC/PC/WI: Earlier Advances In Science and Technology After 1500

Driftless

Donor
Connections was a fabulous show.

For anyone who never saw the series, Burke would lead the audience through the often tangled history(sometimes centuries) of successive breakthrough, adaptation, improvements both great and small that lead to a modern item. Nothing happens in a vacuumn - something paved the way.

So what does this imply? Is it that the advancement is harder than it looks?

Yes and no... Sometimes progress is linear, sometimes it isn't; if that makes sense. Meaning the a line of development may plateau for a number of reasons, but someone(s) make a connection with another line of development that re-ignites progress on the first. Clear as mud?

One segment from the show outlines the sometimes crooked path of progress:
The genealogy of the steam engine is then examined: Thomas Newcomen's engine for pumping water out of mines (1712); Abraham Darby's cheap iron from coke, James Watt's addition of a second condensing cylinder (for cooling) to the engine (1763); John Wilkinson's improving of cannon boring (for the French military) and cylinder making (for Watt; 1773–75). Wilkinson's brother-in-law, Joseph Priestley, investigated gases, leading Alessandro Volta to invent "bad air" (marsh gas) detectors and ignitors. Meanwhile, Edwin Drake discovered oil (in Pennsylvania), allowing Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach (in Bad Cannstatt) to replace town gas with gasoline as fuel for auto engines (1883). They also invented (in 1892) the carburetor (inspired by the medical atomizers, which also developed from Priestley's work) and a new ignition system inspired by Volta's "bad air" detection spark gun.

With the show, sometimes the connections were a real reach, but the concept was sound. Not every invention was the sole work of one person, but often the result of a long line of developments on a number of fronts.
 
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