What you said and what you meant seem to be different. Seeing as the rest of your post repeatedly references a similar mistake on my part, i will simply note that wire has been manufactured since 1568 in Tintern, Wales.
Ealier electricity
- Thread starter Tyr
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1568? Whoop-de-doo...
Wire has been made for thousands of years, pretty much soon after multiple cultures developed metal working in various place worldwide and primarily in jewelry before anything else.
What wasn't done anywhere until the Industrial Revolution provided the means and motives was the production of wire in quantities whose quality was useful in an electrical sense and, seeing as this thread is about the early adoption of electricity and especially telegraphy, not having enough wire whose quality is useful in an electrical sense makes any early use of electricity a non-starter.
More batteries more earlier? Certainly. More "point" uses like religious "miracles" and electroplating? Sure, why not?
A "Roman" or even Renaissance electric telegraph? Make the wires and we'll talk.
I said manufactured and i meant manufactured, not forged or hand drawn. Manufactued to the tune of 2,800 lbs a week. Iron wire, but i can't meaningfully speculate as to purity, but it seems to have had a reputation for good quality.1568? Whoop-de-doo...
That's only about 1.5 tons a week...not really manufacturing scale. (Though, unfortunately, I don't really know enough about the rate of early manufacturing to really nail that down). It would take around 20 weeks (or a third of a year) to make enough wire to splice a 1000 mile long wire...and that's not counting the support equipment. I do have a feeling non-matching is really going to screw things up, too, it's basic E&M (resistance depends on diameter and material, so variances in the wire will produce variances in the resistance, which will in turn play merry hell with the quality and range of your signals).
Valdemar II
Banned
You can increase production, the industrial industrialisation wasn't started on one day. You start in the small, and slowly build up the infrastructure for greater production. We will likely not see a telegraph in the start, but a significant difference from OTL steam drive industrialisation are that you can produce rather useful and prestigeous household item somewhat early on like light bulbs, while unlikely to be seen outside courts in the start, it could drive further build up of necessary infrastructure and research.
Wow. 2005.
And wrong. I'm all too aware of the technology required. That's why its striking me that this isn't necessarily as mad and wrong an idea as it appears on the surface and perhaps it can be something which can be worked with.
Again I repeat; who says it has to be surrounded by textile mills and railway lines and all that?
The industrial revolution saw the world change, industry took over the UK. It wasn't just a case of one minute all we have is people sewing in huts and the next minute we have factories all over the place. Pre-industrial people were not idiots and there were industries before the revolution.
If there was a need for mass amounts of copper wire then the industry would appear.
Its a chicken and egg question and we can quite clearly see that the egg came first.
Also it seems you're seriously over-estimating the quality needed and under-estimating the quality which could be produced.
For a high quality electrical generator sufficient to put into a modern power station- yes, you need amazing purity. For a little experimental proof of concept nobleman's toy however? I don't think such purity is needed.
As to quality being produced; we're not talking of a blacksmith beating out bits of wire by hand here, we're talking of genuine primitive industrial processes of the sort which did exist for various purposes long before the industrial revolution. Put in uniform products into a uniform process and you tend to get a uniform product. Do it right and it can be rather pure too.
Not hand drawn? Sure, whatever.
Oooh... over a ton a week? Any guesses about how many thousands of tons you'll need?
Quality for what? Electrical transmissions or wool carding combs?
And in what lengths? A few dozen feet or miles?
You're going to get no where in this thread pointing out the logistics involved or bringing up the idea of resistance matching. The post-industrial types here neither understand or want to know the issues involved.
It's a bit like your various post-Apollo or alt-Apollo space exploration threads. You post plausible alternatives firmly grounded in the technologies of the day while others raised on Star Wars and who never had shop in school blithely assume Saturn Vs in the 1950s, small computers in the 1960s, and pure science fiction in other times.
Hey, here's a thought, and if you think I'm talking to you, I probably am...
Could we not be assholes to each other for a change? Just to see what its like?
Recognizing that there are major technical obstacles in terms of the manufacture of copper wire which would be a key constituent of any 'electrical revolution', is it possible to hypothesize a plausible POD where existing technologies of an era turn to the manufacture of such wire in large enough (though still small) volumes which would allow small scale development, which small scale development drives feedback loops?
Really, as entertaining as it is to watch everyone being condescending pricks to each other and bitch each other out, it gets tiresome.
How about maybe making an effort to rise to a challenge instead of taking great big dumps on each other and then layering it with sarcasm?
Could we not be assholes to each other for a change? Just to see what its like?
Recognizing that there are major technical obstacles in terms of the manufacture of copper wire which would be a key constituent of any 'electrical revolution', is it possible to hypothesize a plausible POD where existing technologies of an era turn to the manufacture of such wire in large enough (though still small) volumes which would allow small scale development, which small scale development drives feedback loops?
Really, as entertaining as it is to watch everyone being condescending pricks to each other and bitch each other out, it gets tiresome.
How about maybe making an effort to rise to a challenge instead of taking great big dumps on each other and then layering it with sarcasm?
Exactly. You need to industrialize before you have the thousands of miles and thousands of tons of wire the OP and others blithely assume would be available.
Industrialized wire production was basically driven by the rapid expansion of the same industry the OP has pooh-poohed twice now: Textiles. It was only after wire industries were set up to supply the textile industry that people had lots of relatively high quality wire in large lengths with which to experiment with.
The far too usual "cart before the horse" fallacy is at work here. People too often assume because a technology and it's uses seem like such a no-brainer to us in 2010 that they were also seen as no-brainer by people in the past.
While people in the past were not stupid, they weren't prescient either.
Without the decades of electrical experimentation and tinkering large amounts of wire produced for other uses provided as a side effect, no one was going to be able to say "Gee, l could build lots of cool stuff if I just had tons of good wire, so I guess I better build tons of good wire so I can build all that cool stuff and other people will be eager to help me build tons of good wire because all that cool stuff will let them make tons of money."
Even dropping the far trickier to produce incandescent light bulbs and replacing them with fairly simple carbon arc spot lights, would you care to guess how much wire a generator needs?
Huge amounts of electrically seamless wiring is not only necessary for transmission. Generators, motors, transformers, and other electrical equipment need huge amounts of wire too. There are miles of wire in a motor/generator's rotor and stator.
If you can't generate the power necessary, the royal court isn't going to be lit by anything electrical and, if you don't have huge lengths of electrically seamless wire, you aren't going to be able to produce the power you need.
A few thousand slaves rubbing amber rods with silk scarfs isn't going to do the trick. "Whip them harder, Otto, we need that Number 2 spot light working for the Queen's Waltz or it's the gibbet for us both!"
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I suppose if people actually listened when the fundamental problems with their suggestions are pointed out there would be no reason to start adding sarcasm.
You pointed out the need for long amounts of good wire in the second post in this thread. The OP all but ignored it preferring to examine the fantasy rather than how it could be achieved.
I then pointed out why long amounts of good wire was needed. The OP once again waved off the need for wire while others talked about making large amounts of aluminum chemically, how making chain mail coats means telegraphs are possible, radios for Alexander the Great, and electric chairs.
Yes, it is possible. However, the OP is not only uninterested in that, he doesn't even want to acknowledge it's at the root of his question.
What really gets tiresome isn't the continual sarcasm seen in some threads, but the overwhelming amounts of willful ignorance in the same. I easily found an earlier thread that raised the same question this one does and which contains the same critiques. What was the response? The thread is of no use because it is from 2005, as if the passage of five years means all the concerns raised about wire production, resistance, and the rest have some how been solved.
Sealion is the best example of this willful ignorance. Some new true believer skips in, posts a load of gibberish which ignores the reality of the question, and then gets all huffy when he's slapped down. They always make the same complaint too: I thought this was alternate history! Why can't we talk about it?" meaning their unrealistic fantasies shouldn't by judged by the level plausibility they don't contain and we should all fall over ourselves praising them as if this is some grammar school self esteem building exercise.
If you want an earlier adoption of electricity, and it would be fascinating, then you need to suggest, as you have done rather than the OP, why wire production would be advanced earlier.
I think the most plausible reason for the earlier industrial production of wire would be an earlier version of the industry the OP has already sneered at: textiles. People wanting to make more wire because electricity is useful is ASB, the people involved are not prescient as I've pointed out. People wanting to make more wire because the textile/cloth industry is a good way to make money is very plausible.
Yes, he did. In his second post he said:
Whereas, you preferred to be condescending about the ignorance of all concerned, yourself excluded naturally because you evidently know everything.
No, people add sarcasm because they want to be pricks. Congratulations.
There's an example of the pot calling the kettle black. Your fulminating about the ignorance of post industrial versus pre-industrial, blah goddammed blah... is shallow, superficial and in worst of all factually incorrect. Basically, its another equivalent of 'you darn kids get off my lawn, kids were a lot smarter when I was young...'
Look, reality is that if you look at the 'science fiction' or proto-sf of the industrial age, the stuff that came to be called Edisonades, the Verne stuff etc., and even if you look at the actual 'futurists' of the time you'll find the same sorts and categories of ignorance that you're complaining of. You may be a master of the history of technology, but frankly, your grasp of the social relationship to and perceptions of that technology is diddly squat. But you keep coming up with this stuff when you clearly ought to know better, for no better reason that I can see, than being a jerk.
And along comes Exhibit "A"! Okay, let's deconstruct this for a moment. "Willful ignorance" from some new kid who doesn't know any better. See the contradiction? Hmm some 'new true believer' hasn't read the threads, he's got an idea, he thinks its cool. It's not willful ignorance, its just simple ignorance. I dunno, compare this to your deep seated and deliberately offensive sociological ignorance, which I'm inclined to think is genuinely willful, and I think I have more sympathy for the kid than you.
And he's so immature that he gets huffy when 'slapped down.' Wow! Why would 'slapping down' upset a person? I'm slapping you down in this post. How's that feeling? You aren't offended, are you?
Now look, the nature of this forum is that we're going to get new people in on a regular basis. And they're going to be brand new, without much in the way of thread research skills, and they're going to have the same awful notions with tedious regularity, and I can appreciate that gets really really tiresome.
But there are two good responses. One is to ignore these hamhanded threads. Easy enough to do, it's not like most of them are posted with stealth headings. The other is to politely point out it's been done before, perhaps to death, point them to some threads. Or if one has the patience, point out the problems that they have to overcome.
What is not a good response: Acting like a condescending prick and taking a big brown dump on some unsuspecting newby. Being insulting and disparaging.
And so you can recognize a plausibly constructive suggestion, but you just prefer not to go that route. Is that it?
Some part of me wants to ask: "What the hell is your problem?" But frankly, I don't care. I don't know you. I don't know anything about you. I therefore make no judgements about you as a person, and I decline to speculate about any personal qualities which lead you to write in the style that you do. But I have to say, I find your attitude and approach as or more tiresome, and quite a bit more offensive, than the posts that seem to upset you so much. Now, sorry to unload on you. You're not the only offender, you're not even the worst offender.
But for god sakes, chill.
"Sneered at" hunh
Okay, for an Electric Revolution Culture here are what I see as the necessary conditions or preconditions:
* It needs a metallurgical technology with sufficient sophistication as to be able to produce as to be able to produce at least modest qualities (say thousand pound lots) of consistently pure copper or transmitting material to reasonably uniform standards of conductivity, width and dimension. Some flex room may be applicable.
* It needs at least one or more 'low tech' applications which are viable at an 'entry level' with modest resources and knowledge. Hit or miss, trial and error works as well as experimentation in the early phases.
* It needs these initial applications to be successful enough and spread widely enough that it fuels a demand for more, which then can produce a feedback loop of escalating quantity and quality of resource, and diversification of applications.
To my thinking, a big bottleneck is the second point. Are there any applications for primitive electricity that a society would find useful?
Torture and execution might actually be an obvious one.
Or we might go the 'Chinese Medicine' route - crackpot theories drive a system of trial and error and bizarre recombination, which produces results whose effects are misconstrued and incorporated into some form of valued practice. This approach got us powdered rhino horn as an aphrodisiac. But then again, it also got us gunpowder.
Electroplating? It seems a lot less obvious, and a lot less persuasive, in terms of driving demand. Or light bulbs, I'm thinking a long shot. Arc welding? Possible, but I think you need a lot more current.
I dunno, maybe something more subtle, such as the way compasses became a critical navigational tool during ocean voyaging.
IMHO, torture wouldn't be your 'entry level' application. I could see it driving maybe an aspect of technology, but not the whole. I just don't think they'd see enough need to improve on tried and true techniques to put a lot of money and effort into it, but i certainly could see them using and improving existing technology.
Interesting idea.
I think electroplating has the biggest and best motive of all. Profit. Giving Don his due, light bulbs won't happen quickly. Arc lights would be a good secondary technology. Really, i could see that as the driving force of development. Maybe something along the lines of some jeweler invents an arc welder starting with parts from his electroplating gear. Then it gets used as a light, gets noticed by a duke or something who gets several built for his castle, &c. Dunno, maybe junk idea but maybe not.
With some research, that might be a really good idea.
What about forgetting long-range transmission? Those spark-gap muskets sound like they'd be in quick demand.
I dunno. For one thing, its a very specialty and specialized kind of thing. I'm not sure it would have a widespread application or function, to drive a feedback loop. Unless you can find some broad use for electroplating.
True story, back when I was a kid, I experimented with electroplating with my brother at my Dad's garage. It works, sort of, but it's hardly simple or easy stuff. From my own experiences, I honestly don't see it catching on or being a driving or founding tech point.
Not so sure about arc lights either. Gives a good light, but I'm not persuaded about it.
I dunno. I've used arc welders, takes quite a bit of juice.
Let's set out some criteria: Has to be relatively simple. Has to operate on relatively small resources - ie, limited amount of wire, small current. An effect which can be adapted to fill a need - social, economic, etc., and fill it in such a way as to open the door for further applications and demands.
Spark telegraph, someone suggested? Who knows.
Spark gap muskets? That's bizarre and intriguing. Please elaborate a bit.
Would spark gap artillery and crude electrical systems for cannon provide a tangible advantage? Synchronized firing? I dunno.
I do?
I think I know more about such matters than you and....no. I don't.
Do I know you? Did I run over your cat or something?
You really are acting seriously dickish and making up totally off base assumptions and outright lies about me here.
I never 'pooh poohed' textiles.
You don't need tonnes of good wire for basic experiments.
As has been said and as you have repeatedly ignored much of the science behind electricity comes rights at the beginning of the industrial revolution and before it.
err what? I did? I'm pretty sure I ackowledged it.
FYI I was thinking that was a concern from the start too. To just rubbish an idea because its hard and not see if its in any way workable for something different however is dull.
OK....John? Is that you? I'm sorry about the milk OK.
You really do seem to have a stick up your arse and are being quite willfully ignorant here.
Nope.
The thread is from 2005 hence your assertion that this topic is not 'original' isn't entirely valid.
If we were no longer allowed to discuss things if they had already been done a few years back then the forum would be long since dead.
Sealion has been done to death. We have discussed loop holes and ways to possibly do it, subverting the obvious difficulties of it. Its purely the frequency with which it emerges which has led to it becoming a noob cliche.
You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding where I am coming from this thread.
Its not at all "Medieval castles with Tesla Coils kekekeke". I know that electricity didn't come into its own till the late 19th century. I know there are reasons it didn't develop earlier. This thread is made bearing that in mind. To use a historic analogy noob threads are traditionalist, you yelling about noobs being idiots are revisionist, this is post-revisionist. Seeing if there could possibly be any merit in a crazy idea.
*sneer* *sneer* a pox upon you textiles *sneer* *sneer*
Textiles was just an EXAMPLE. As one of the major early industries. Note I mentioned it together with railway lines. I was speaking of the industrial revolution as a whole. There is no reason a 'industry' can not develop without being part of a greater industrial revolution. Just look at mills. And 17th century steel making.
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Well, in one sense, various technologies have developed and become widespread without 'industrial revolutions'. But in another sense, any major technology is always, in and of itself, revolutionary, and produces all sorts of spin offs and collateral effects.
Think of the transformative effects of animal labour, or horses and cattle.
Or think of the effects of windmills.
I think that an 'electrical revolution' would either produce or emerge from some form of industrial revolution, but not necessarily the one way know, or the way ours happened.
In another thread, I essentially made an argument that gunpowder could have been developed several thousand years earlier, and that gunpowder in a poor metal tech environment might have resulted in an evolution of rocketry rather than firearms as the preferred weapon.
I think that there may be a lot of different pathways.