Challenge: Petroleum and combustion engine by 1300

I've read somewhere recently that this was to due to a lack of materials? or maybe it was tech? Something about the design of a steam driven cart that they didn't quite have the know how to do.

Then Hero's works were largely lost to the Romans, then almost eradicated from the written record.


Does anyone know of a reference of how WE know of his works?? been trying to trace that :(

His works (incidentally, created and distributed within the context of the Roman Empire, not 'Greece'), were so popular and well-known that other texts were fraudulently attributed to him. Later writers also cribbed from them, as late as the tenth century, and his writings survived in enough copies that Renaissaance scholars could actually find them. That really doesn't speak for disinterest or ignorance.

They had Hydraulic engineering, they had steam toys, they had fly wheels. It's a puzzle.

Well, they didn't have any of that cheaply. I am convinced more and more that the secret of Europe's technological progress is 'cheap and shoddy'.
 
I am convinced more and more that the secret of Europe's technological progress is 'cheap and shoddy'.

You may have something there. Lots of cheap shoddy things out there inspiring others to make a version that is slightly better.
It's kind of the evolutionary principle of good enough to succeed despite the drawbacks :cool:
 
I've read somewhere recently that this was to due to a lack of materials? or maybe it was tech? Something about the design of a steam driven cart that they didn't quite have the know how to do.

Then Hero's works were largely lost to the Romans, then almost eradicated from the written record.


Does anyone know of a reference of how WE know of his works?? been trying to trace that :(

Were they ever physically lost, or did the Romans have them but just do nothing with them?

Wiki claims that Medieval Europe acquired Hero's works via Arab manuscripts, in which case the most likely time for the Arabs to have got them would be when they conquered Egypt in the 640s. Sounds to me as if in Egypt at least they were probably never lost. Do we know for certain whether the rest of the Empire ever knew about them, or cared very much even if it did know?



Also, IMO, lack of drive/ambition on the parts of people. They weren't ready for an Industrial Revolution yet, and the arguement between steam power and horse power was lost to horse power.
That said, I also recall reading 'Socrates' describing a childs wind up toy that ran in circles around a smooth floor. The description reads a lot like a flywheel, so maybe my personal opinion is way off as fly wheels should have been a primary component of a beginning Industrialization.

They had Hydraulic engineering, they had steam toys, they had fly wheels. It's a puzzle.


It's a bit like the Turkish printing press. In The Penguin Atlas of Modern History, Colin McEvedy notes that Constantinople had a printing press by the 1700s or earlier, but it was closed down from 1730 to 1780 and again in 1800 - at which time it was still the only one. The Ottoman Empire, IOW, had the technology of printing, but in their society there was no demand for the product. Sounds to me as if the Ancient World had the same attitude.

Another point. What was the banking system like in Rome or other ancient societies? Technological innovation is prone to be expensive, and I gather that a lot of Britain's early lead in the Industrial Revolution was due to her superior financial system - that the founders of the Bank of England were as important as Isaac Newton or any of that lot. What was the score, banking wise, in Hero's time?
 
It's a bit like the Turkish printing press. In The Penguin Atlas of Modern History, Colin McEvedy notes that Constantinople had a printing press by the 1700s or earlier, but it was closed down from 1730 to 1780 and again in 1800 - at which time it was still the only one. The Ottoman Empire, IOW, had the technology of printing, but in their society there was no demand for the product. Sounds to me as if the Ancient World had the same attitude.

The Ottomans had a special relation with the printing press, dating from much earlier. From the mid-1500s, Venice's booming print industry flooded the Ottoman Empire with all sorts of printed goods, including, quite famously offensively, horrible translations of the Quran. Because of this, there was a strong anti-print sentiment, coupled with the fact that any demand for print books the Empire had was quickly satisfied by Venetian product (Venice was generally enterprising enough to act quickly and produce desired products in a reasonable time frame.)

In the absence of Venetian printing, I suspect that the Empire's own print industry would have been much more extensive - the Ottomans had a large literate class who enjoyed reading and stuff.
 
Well, they didn't have any of that cheaply. I am convinced more and more that the secret of Europe's technological progress is 'cheap and shoddy'.

Arguably that was the secret behind the initial postwar economic rise of Japan, the Asian Tigers, China and now India in the 60s, 70s/80s, 90s and 00s respectively (although India offers services rather than goods interestingly). They all built up economic power on cheap and (initially) shoddy products and used the profits to incrementally improve.
 
The Ottomans had a special relation with the printing press, dating from much earlier. From the mid-1500s, Venice's booming print industry flooded the Ottoman Empire with all sorts of printed goods, including, quite famously offensively, horrible translations of the Quran. Because of this, there was a strong anti-print sentiment, coupled with the fact that any demand for print books the Empire had was quickly satisfied by Venetian product (Venice was generally enterprising enough to act quickly and produce desired products in a reasonable time frame.)

In the absence of Venetian printing, I suspect that the Empire's own print industry would have been much more extensive - the Ottomans had a large literate class who enjoyed reading and stuff.


Yet it didn't work that way in Europe. Presumably Venice would have been equally happy to supply the rest of Europe as well as Turkey, yet other Europeans still made and used their own presses.
 
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You may have something there. Lots of cheap shoddy things out there inspiring others to make a version that is slightly better.
It's kind of the evolutionary principle of good enough to succeed despite the drawbacks :cool:

Actually I think it's a different approach. I said in jest once that Japanese and European swordsmithing both reached their apogee in the fifteenth century. The Japanese created a sword that handled like a natural extension of your body and could cut through a modern machine gun barrel and took a master smith a year to make. The Europeans created a clumsy, rusty poker that that cost two shillings sixpence and made enough for everyone in the army.

In almost every case, the products of machines were inferior to those of earlier craftsmanship. But it seems that the Europeasns at some point stopped minding and went downmarket. It may have to do with Germanic clothing tradition - Europeans after the 800s dressed in absurdly complicated clothing, so they needed ridiculous amounts of textiles. At some point, artisanal capacity runs out.
 
I think slavery can't be so important, because classical Greece and Rome were innovators - until Octavian Caesar turned the Roman Empire into a monarchy, and they had plenty of slaves; though no doubt they were slower than post-slavery North America because a lower %age potential innovators. Rome, note, was a specialist in war innovation - that's how its borders moved so quickly; by two centuries after Occie, Rome was good at nothing, innovationwise.

Flocculencio wrote:
As I said the last time you posted this, you don't really seem to have thought this through. You don't seem to know that much about Singapore if you're lumping it in with Vietnam and China.
I might know more about Singapore than you think I do. Name three major technical advances that Singapore's given since independence. Isn't the limit minor advancements in Great Firewall tech? I heard your Great Old Leader himself grumbling about the lack of enterprise in Singapore on TV - something he only has himself to blame for. Meanwhile, your supposedly not-worth-noticing Japan has given us the Wii, generations of leading-edge robots, and better-quality manufacturing systems.

Wilhemine Germany did have leading-edge scientists like Einstein, but, like prerevolutionary France, was bad at taking advantage of them. It was the democracies ranged up against them that made the new tank work and got the long-stalled Western Front military lines moving again, the wrong way for Germany.
 
I might know more about Singapore than you think I do. Name three major technical advances that Singapore's given since independence. Isn't the limit minor advancements in Great Firewall tech? I heard your Great Old Leader himself grumbling about the lack of enterprise in Singapore on TV - something he only has himself to blame for. Meanwhile, your supposedly not-worth-noticing Japan has given us the Wii, generations of leading-edge robots, and better-quality manufacturing systems.

Where did I say Japan was not worth noticing? I used Japan as a case in point- a state that has government working in bed with corporate interests that has produced a whole slew of advances. South Korea and Taiwan have moved from cheap manufacturers to technological powerhouses despite having been de facto military dictatorships until the 90s.

As for Singapore the same is true- a government which is very supportive of RnD and is willing to throw a whole lot of money into various fields of research fosters a climate suitable for technological advancement. We're following the same path as South Korea and Taiwan; in the 90s we moved from cheap manufacturing to higher forms of development. I can give you one example of a Singaporean breakthrough- the production of nanocrystals for use in the biomedical field. If you're going to use consumer products like the Wii as an example, I can cite a second Singaporean example, Creative Industries which produced the industry-standard SoundBlaster sound cards in the early 90s. For a third, we're making breakthroughs in stem cell research.

Besides making a point which showed a clear misunderstanding of my initial post you still haven't answered my question- why is a politically illiberal government which is technologically extremely liberal any more disadvantaged in the field of technological development compared to a liberal democracy? It's not as if there's a Politburo handing down decrees on prioritising research into dubious yet ideologically supported fields.

As for the Great Old Leader, he isn't happy with anything- his son has been disregarding him as much as possible and has been proceeding with political liberalisation while maintaining a strong government support for RnD. And as for your snide jab at "great firewall" software I'd like to point out that we restrict less content than Australia. Australia appears on Reporters Sans Frontieres list on Internet enemies while Singapore does not. But hey, Australia's a liberal democracy.
 
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I'm glad I was wrong. Congrats on really being having good tech, as your leadership says. You were right - I DIDN'T know so much about Singapore; Creative's been a real innovator. My comments on great firewalls are from personal experience, though; I met a Singaporean web content filtering specialist at a conference.

On the other hand, my city, a free one, has over 10x Singapore's patenting rate. According to this source, my city was awarded 2000 patents per millions of Austinites in 2008, while, according to this source, Singapore only had 150 applications per M. Note - I multiplied Austin's figure by 10 to deal with the difference in units. Of course, the patenting rate misses open innovation models, so it should be taken with salt.

My prejudice towards freedom and tech comes from seeing seeing it vastly outpace Communism in the Cold War I grew up in and reading about the same thing happening in Athens vs Sparta. Russia's only been noticeably innovative in its two short spells under democracy.

But, Singapore's I guess a different case - free, economy-wise, even if not so much in other ways. I suppose maybe the right analogy's with Renaissance oligarchic city-states like Florence - they had Leonardo and Macchiavelli. And, I guess China seems to be going a similar route. But we free democracies have far more and more effective geniuses per capita because we attract more and let ours do alot more of what they want and are best at.

I do also concede that some democracies are sadly unfree - also the UK. New Labour's just-turfed-out authorian tries at Panopticonification and tries to turn back that annoying Internet thing so their media elite buddies can continue to prosper are just hurting their own country in several ways.
 
Actually I think it's a different approach. I said in jest once that Japanese and European swordsmithing both reached their apogee in the fifteenth century. The Japanese created a sword that handled like a natural extension of your body and could cut through a modern machine gun barrel and took a master smith a year to make. The Europeans created a clumsy, rusty poker that that cost two shillings sixpence and made enough for everyone in the army.

A perfect example of a vaguely resonant notion spoiled by a clumsy comparison.

The Japanese, somewhere in the early 14th c. came up with a sword design that had one single cutting edge, could only be used effectively two-handed, had a weak stabbing point, and had real troubles with armour. On average it weighed more than most comparable European weapons, had a shorter reach, and was generally made of inferior iron; it is stiff and will not flex; it has a thick, thick blade behind a cutting edge, making it poor at cutting armour. It is nothing so much as a shortened glaive, or a lengthened cleaver.

The big difference is that the Japanese took to perfecting that sword for the next half a millenium, and did an excellent job of it.

In the same time period, the European artisans came up with a wide variety of bladed weapons, each adapted to their own specific task; things that could be used in one hand, two hands, or in either way; things that could use strong points to punch through armour, things that used the natural length of a curved blade to create long shallow wounds, things that used a tip-heavy balance to cut down unarmoured soldiers. Things that were straight, curved, flat, cross-grained, or with three grains; sharp on one side, sharp on two sides, sharp partially on both; flamberged swords, scimitars, yataghans, palashes, konchars; swords made for horsemen, infantrymen, courtiers, mercenaries, sailors; swords designed for the left hand specifically. Swords that could cut and thrust easily, swords with cross-guards, double-grips, swords that could be used defensively and swords that were used offensively. Swords designed for people with minimal sword training (landknechts!) and swords designed for expert sword-soldiers (rodeleros!). Swords that were deliberately heavier to deliver strong concussive blows or withstand a lot of pressure, and swords that wre light and flexible. Swords that were paired with shields, with other weapons, with pistols. They even designed sword-pistols. And they even worked. And all this time the European raw iron materials and steel techniques were far better than the Japanese.

In five hundred years, the European artisans produced thousands of effective and excellent swords, each of which surpassed the Japanese in some way, though rarely in all; but that's because that wasn't the point.

This entire time, the Japanese were working on one form of sword, and its two shorter cousins. Over and over and over.

Why? What made Japan's 1300-1800 weapon artisans less imaginative than European weapon artisans?

However, what happens next is also amazing.

This wealth of European artisan skill - the repeater pistols, the plate armour, the duelling two-hander, the all-metal targes, the 17th century rifled guns designed for marine snipers, the fantastic crossbows that probably conquered far more of the new world than the arquebousse...all of this disappears...

...to be replaced with a shoddy 1680s cuirass, and 1700s musket that is far worse than any Spanish-made gun preceding it in accuracy, range and killing power; pistols that the cavlarymen using them are told to only use in warning shots - because unlike 17th c. pistols they can't hit anything short of point blank. Swords that sprain the wrist of the user because of poor balance. The bayonet becomes a respected weapon.

And remarkably, it spreads. The Turks and (especially the) the Russians give up their excellent bows for decent pistols, and then for poor pistols, and then eventually they're back to using sabres to do all the actual fighting. Mass-produced sabres that are often even worse than contemporary German mass-produced sabres.

What happened here is probably an artifact of emerging economies of scale; why do anything well when you can do anything in the hundreds of thousands instead?

Still - why did the Europeans start using weapons that were worse than what they had just a generation ago, and why did that have to happen before they developed the kind of society that could actually have internal combustion engines doing useful stuff?
 
My prejudice towards freedom and tech comes from seeing seeing it vastly outpace Communism in the Cold War I grew up in and reading about the same thing happening in Athens vs Sparta. Russia's only been noticeably innovative in its two short spells under democracy.

Que? You're saying Russia's lengthy list of contributions to world science happened mostly in the periods of, oh...er...ugh...1917, and 1990-present?

The Muscovite state, naturally, didn't innovate before getting bogged down in 100 years of lawlessness and brigandage? Imperial Russia didn't innovate? There was no Soviet science?

Expecting the USSR to compete with all of the (much richer and much bigger) Western World is a little unrealistic, anyway.

And more amazingly, 1991-present being a good period for Russian science is going to be a big surprise to every Russian scientist.

I vaguely agree with your point, but once again a case of a decent point ruined by an inappropriate example.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Still - why did the Europeans start using weapons that were worse than what they had just a generation ago, and why did that have to happen before they developed the kind of society that could actually have internal combustion engines doing useful stuff?

Army-wise because 50 000 militias raised among serfs with nothing to lose and armed with shoddy weapons, was better than 10 000 well armed fat mercenaries whom only stayed loyal as long as they was paid.
 
Army-wise because 50 000 militias raised among serfs with nothing to lose and armed with shoddy weapons, was better than 10 000 well armed fat mercenaries whom only stayed loyal as long as they was paid.

Well, that probably answers why conscript armies replaced professional ones, but it actually runs counter to the katana argument; the Chinese had conscript armies and mass-produced gear, but never really developed capitalism or industrialization; in fact they had a hard time getting adapted to both.
 
Has anyone here encountered the works of the late Carlo M Cipolla?

I've just been rereading my old copy of European Culture and Overseas Expansion, which has some interesting tidbits. He notes that Turkey, up to about 1600, was about level with the West in artillery. However, they didn't keep up with European innovations in that area, both in the technology itself and even more in the application. They continued using heavy "bomabards", useful for knocking down walls but difficult to transport and taking half an hour or more to reload, and never adopted the light field artillery to which European armies were moving.

It seems as if the ruling classes in most societies weren't keen on such things, considering this mechanical stuff a bit "infra dig". Cipolla recounts a tale of a Ming Chinese commander fighting Mongolian nomads, who left the artillery in the hands of his Fukienese cook. The cook did quite a good job, perhaps better than his master would have done, but the latter's attitude is revealing. It's as if he considered working with this stuff a servant's job, like fixing dinner, which he shouldn't really have to worry about.

Such people make even Medieval Europeans, never mind modern ones, look positively broadminded. I suspect that top people in the Ancient World, Graeco-Romans included, were very similar. Europe, after its emergence from the Dark Ages, was very much a one off.
 
RGB wrote:
Que? You're saying Russia's lengthy list of contributions to world science happened mostly in the periods of, oh...er...ugh...1917, and 1990-present?
.
The Muscovite state, naturally, didn't innovate before getting bogged down in 100 years of lawlessness and brigandage? Imperial Russia didn't innovate? There was no Soviet science?

Expecting the USSR to compete with all of the (much richer and much bigger) Western World is a little unrealistic, anyway.

And more amazingly, 1991-present being a good period for Russian science is going to be a big surprise to every Russian scientist.
I'm saying the lands ruled by Moscow usually had the slows compared to Western Europe on a per capita basis, especially starting with the Renaissance. Most Russians with the chance to compare felt the same way as I do, BTW. Now, the Novgorodian Republic, of course, was a different story....

Did being small stop the British or Netherlands? The city-state of Athens?

And, I'm saying 1991-1999, not to the present. Putin has reextinguished freedom. But, it's true. During that short time, Russia was quickly catching up in math and computer science.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Well, that probably answers why conscript armies replaced professional ones, but it actually runs counter to the katana argument; the Chinese had conscript armies and mass-produced gear, but never really developed capitalism or industrialization; in fact they had a hard time getting adapted to both.

The different was that Chinese was able to spend a lot less of their GDP to keep up their armies thanks to Chinas size. For European states to keep up their large armies they had to agressive improve national finances and bureaucracy, and they ones whom didn't succed was crushed by stronger states. At the same the contignental European states with one or two exception, followed a fundamental mercantile economical theory, which meant there was a focus on improving domestic production, while China followd such policies too because of it pure size, they could just forbid imports and as such lacked incentiment for investing in production.
 
The US Space program spends millions of dollars developing a pen that can write in zero gravity, hence today we have the ball point pen.

In Soviet Russia the Space Program gives their Cosmonauts pencils.
 
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