Depends on what you're welding. Sure you need 200+ amps for laying down on inch thick plate, but what about smaller stuff? Granted, iron jewelry is boring, and i was inexplicably thinking jewelers might be initial adopters. I'm trying to think of small scale applications. Making welded mail instead of riveted comes to mind, but if we're thinking 15 or 1600s then chain armour is kind of outdated. I've seen plans for a small arc furnace. That might be of interest to jewelers. Again, wouldn't be the first thing. I just don't see how they could jump to that, even if it is simple.
Ealier electricity
- Thread starter Tyr
- Start date
We've had discussions on piezoelectric ingnition for muskets, using quartz crystals. Hypothetically this would be much more reliable than flintlocks, and have much faster locktime, improving accuracy.
Early electricity might be limited to localized use. For example a waterwheel or windturbine to power something (electroplating shop?) right next to it.
Building transmission wires also require insulation and was problematic even in the 20th century. One of the things the Soviets most urgently needed via lend-lease was waterproof telephone cables. Soviet wires just didn't have acceptable quality control. Wire is either waterproof or it's not. One little leak anywhere on that line, and it's all over.
Stephen
Banned
Perhaps electroplating with aluminum or chrome could give you better mirors for early reflector telescopes. I wonder if you can make good parabolic mirrors by pouring molten bronze or cast iron in to a spining dish to get the parabola until it cools and then electroplating it with something like chrome.
Here is the thread which goes into spark gap muskets more:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=124653
The main advantages of a spark plug over match locks or flintlocks etc is that it should be alot more reliable. There is no flashpan to fill or percussion cap to replace reducing load times and making it more weather proof. Without an open fuse hole the breech presure would be higher leading to greater muzzle velocity and making hollow based bulets expand to fit the barrel quicker. It also make multibarel weapons and early revolvers more practical, you could have a peper pot like pistol with a rotating juction sending the electric pulse to a diferent sparrk gap wit each triger pull, and early revolvers like the puckle gun would be easier to build and more reliable if every chamber does not have to have its own flashpan.
Here is the thread which goes into spark gap muskets more:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=124653
The main advantages of a spark plug over match locks or flintlocks etc is that it should be alot more reliable. There is no flashpan to fill or percussion cap to replace reducing load times and making it more weather proof. Without an open fuse hole the breech presure would be higher leading to greater muzzle velocity and making hollow based bulets expand to fit the barrel quicker. It also make multibarel weapons and early revolvers more practical, you could have a peper pot like pistol with a rotating juction sending the electric pulse to a diferent sparrk gap wit each triger pull, and early revolvers like the puckle gun would be easier to build and more reliable if every chamber does not have to have its own flashpan.
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Since that would give you a spherical mirror, which would be dead-simple to polish using conventional methods, I strongly suspect not. Besides, metal mirrors aren't actually that great--a pure iron or bronze "telescope" mirror will simply suck. I doubt you could even get an image. To say nothing of the fact that early reflecting telescopes weren't very good--the metallurgy available couldn't produce decent mirror coatings, and with achromatic lenses the major issues of refracting telescopes are solved (at least, until *much* later).
Since *every* telescope mirror in the world today (more or less--I'm sure you can find one or two different) is metal coating on glass backing, and polishing is an arduous and (sometimes) very lengthy process (the record there probably being the Hale-200 inch, since it took literally years for the mirror to simply cool enough to actually start polishing) there's probably *some* good reason that the process you are suggesting wasn't adopted.
Very interesting. But I don't think that this would lead to any significant development of electricity.
Stephen
Banned
Actually a liquid in a spinning container produces a perfect parabola not a spherical shape. I feared liquid mirrors was an obscure thing I had read about but it turns out it comes up readily on a websearch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror
This one sugest using wax to make a mold with the lost wax process.
http://www.solarcooking.org/research/SpinningParaboicConcentrators.htm
Yes I realise a plain iron, bronze or speculum miror would suck hence why I was sugesting electroplating them with a shinier metal. Without metal coatings glass mirrors tend to suck also.
Yes in a bit of alt history speculation I was wondering about introduction of more advanced coating technology to an earlier time.
Perhaps.
Valdemar II
Banned
A important aspect here are how early could people develop primitive generators? It would be a one of the most important aspect in useful use of electricity.
Maur
Banned
Since it kind of delved in telegraph, i have a few answers for your second thing - a short line between, say, Versailles and Paris, or between Amsterdam and coastal lightouse on western Dutch coast are game changers in respectively French politics and Dutch economy. Both are quite short of the thousand-mile lines discussed.
Welding,....hmm...now there's an interesting application which didn't immediately occur to me...could be good.
A somewhat more far out idea: perhaps it could be good for railway lines or somesuch.
The transport goes downhill free-wheeling and generating power, reaches a small incline bigger than it can naturally take itself over then gives itself a power boost.
That though would require quite sophisticated tech, not really an initial application candidate.
Yep.
That's how I'd see it happening too.
Some people are jumping to the assumption that 'telegraph' instantly means we're going to be linking up every city in the world and crossing oceans. It needn't necessarily be so however.
Take semaphores IOTL, in the UK and Sweden they were only used to link up important places in a local area.
A somewhat more far out idea: perhaps it could be good for railway lines or somesuch.
The transport goes downhill free-wheeling and generating power, reaches a small incline bigger than it can naturally take itself over then gives itself a power boost.
That though would require quite sophisticated tech, not really an initial application candidate.
Yep.
That's how I'd see it happening too.
Some people are jumping to the assumption that 'telegraph' instantly means we're going to be linking up every city in the world and crossing oceans. It needn't necessarily be so however.
Take semaphores IOTL, in the UK and Sweden they were only used to link up important places in a local area.
Valdemar II
Banned
One thing I agree with DValdron earlier use would either result from or push a industrial revolution. Simply put at the point where people have developed a primitive generator someone are going to put a primitive stream engine on it, somewhere where coal are cheap. We will also see early improvements in metallurgy (simply because a need for more pure metal), which also will help. Welding would also help.
*Facepalm* Duh, of course, liquid metal mirrors! I know about those! But the problem there is that you need nice, steady rotation to keep it in shape--something which I doubt you can get in a pre-industrial (conventional industrial) society.
Of course, then there's the fact that reflecting telescopes are rather worthless without lenses--they need to be HUGE to fit someone at the prime focus, so you're going to have to adopt a Newtonian etc. shape--but in that case, you need lenses to correct for aberrations in the image and focus it. The real limiter of telescopic ability wasn't mirror technology, it was lens (and hence optics) technology. Until the late 19th century, when the lenses used were hitting a ceiling in terms of size (you can only make a lens so big before it starts to droop under its own weight--magnified since you have to support it from the sides), refracting telescopes were the main instruments of virtually everyone. And it wasn't because they couldn't make mirrors.
Doing this just means they have expensive, nice, but utterly worthless mirrors.
But no matter how shiny they are, they're not going to actually do anything for astronomy (like I just said, lenses are really the problem there). You might have jewelers using electroplating to make better mirrors for the aristocratic ladies, though.
But the problem is simply more fundamental than what you are thinking of. Maybe they could electroplate aluminum on iron. Maybe. But what happens when that is exposed to the air and wet? Rusty iron and oxidized aluminum don't sound so useful to me...
Oh no, for sure. For example, did you know that telescope mirrors are regularly removed and repolished? Wear and tear will ruin the figure and distort the image (perhaps this happens less often with adaptive optics and flexible mirrors that can correct for distortions). To do so, they actually need to remove the silvering from the glass backing. How do you do that if it's electroplated? Or do you just make another really expensive mirror?
Copper... Now, there's a thought...
The biggest copper mine in the world was once Parys Mountain in Anglesey, with its port at Amlwch.
Copper can be smelted to produce a matte and then a blister form at 98% copper. If the copper is continuously-cast to rod, then drawn through a die, annealed, and drawn through more dies, you could presumably manufacture a consistently-fine and 98% pure wire.
Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_extraction.
Again, the question is 'why?'.
The answer may be the use of wire in textile industries, in the weaving process. Another answer may be cheap jewellery, plated with silver.
Electricity has been useful to purify copper - blister copper anodes in a copper sulphate electrolyte, the pure copper being electroplated on a cathode of some conductive material. Maybe that's your first use of electricity - to purify copper to produce a high-quality metal for steam or Stitling engines.
Maybe that will help you.
The biggest copper mine in the world was once Parys Mountain in Anglesey, with its port at Amlwch.
Copper can be smelted to produce a matte and then a blister form at 98% copper. If the copper is continuously-cast to rod, then drawn through a die, annealed, and drawn through more dies, you could presumably manufacture a consistently-fine and 98% pure wire.
Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_extraction.
Again, the question is 'why?'.
The answer may be the use of wire in textile industries, in the weaving process. Another answer may be cheap jewellery, plated with silver.
Electricity has been useful to purify copper - blister copper anodes in a copper sulphate electrolyte, the pure copper being electroplated on a cathode of some conductive material. Maybe that's your first use of electricity - to purify copper to produce a high-quality metal for steam or Stitling engines.
Maybe that will help you.
R you could get some guy invent a tesla coil in the middle ages and walsh unlimeted electricity.
I was thinking on those lines. Quick communication between, say, harbor fortifications and barracks or something of the sort could have big effects while requiring less materials than intercity lines and keeping all equipment where it can be readily accessed for maintenance.
Good points. While wind, water, and even tidal generators would be it early on, natural resources aren't available in useful amounts everywhere.
@ corditeman: Very Interesting!
R U drunk?
How quickly they forget 
last year my Newtons Radio addressed most of these points.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=73275
One intyeresting oddity Norway became a leader of industrialisation on the back of hydo power.
last year my Newtons Radio addressed most of these points.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=73275
One intyeresting oddity Norway became a leader of industrialisation on the back of hydo power.
Stephen
Banned
What about water mills the water can be kept at a steady stream which keeps the mill turning at a steady speed. Also we were discusing the aplications of earlier electricity which brings up the subject of electric motors.
They used glass refractors because the speculum mirors were crap. But with a good electroplated parabola gives an opitunity to make somthing much better. Even if the eyepiece is from the pre compound lens era, a large and good objective mirror would give a much better image than an early refractor. It is also posible to make reflectors with a secondery convex mirror which focuses the image through a hole in the primary mirror. Without any refractor lens needed. There is also the angled kind.
Alot of old car buffs seem to be able to keep there chrome plated iron bumpers shiny. Im sure an astronomer can take a similar amound of care. In fact that is one of the reasons people like to plate iron in other metals to stop them rusting. The weapons of the teracotta warriors were plated in chrome it is not known how, as a result they are still shiny and razor sharp over two thousand years later today.
OK say you can produce electricity and transport it (good wire).
What are you going to use it for ?
electroplating/other chemical interactions
motors (requires fairly good machining) same for generators
lightbulbs (even if you find your filament material you have to make a significant vacuum) + gas light tubes take advance gas seperation methods
electronic vacuum tubes were direct decndant of light builb (edison actually found the controlled electron flow effect but couldnt think of anything to use it for)
solenoid actuators were an early mechanism (telegraph)
So many things depend on other things and unfortunately (for this proposed historic preemption) many many require industrial revolution generated technologies and materials and tools to be little more than some nobles expensive toys
What are you going to use it for ?
electroplating/other chemical interactions
motors (requires fairly good machining) same for generators
lightbulbs (even if you find your filament material you have to make a significant vacuum) + gas light tubes take advance gas seperation methods
electronic vacuum tubes were direct decndant of light builb (edison actually found the controlled electron flow effect but couldnt think of anything to use it for)
solenoid actuators were an early mechanism (telegraph)
So many things depend on other things and unfortunately (for this proposed historic preemption) many many require industrial revolution generated technologies and materials and tools to be little more than some nobles expensive toys