Earlier Steenblik Coils

wkwillis

A steenblik coil is a spiral mirror that can focus the sun. A good mirror like gold (gold foil is cheap for optics because it can be beaten to a micron thick between calfskin and it reflects very, very, well) would heat an area a few feet across to the melting point of glass or metal very quickly for six to ten hours every day.
You can use it for:
Replacing wood for lime, mortor, or brick production. Cheaper houses.
Replacing wood for glass production. Glass is hard to make. Cheap glass windows is important for replacing vast amounts of wood.
Replacing wood for ceramics production. Cheap pots of all kinds.
Replacing wood for iron smithing. Not for smelting iron, but for heating it up and forging it.
Replacing wood for sulfur production. You can sweat the sulfur out of volcano rocks by heating them. That's how we got sulfur historically.
What else is it good for?
What would the Greeks or the Persians or the Carthaginians have done with cheap glass?
 

wkwillis

Cheap glass for lighting and heating. Put enough double paned glass in a house and you don't need wood for heating anymore. Put enough double paned glass on a pool of water and you have hot water for bathing and washing. You can reduce your use of water by 90% and stop deforestation in it's tracks. Imagine that we still had elephants in Algeria? Imagine if the forests of Europe were huge and extensive because there was no need to have charcoal burners in them making charcoal for fires. Imagine that the Mediterranean was surrounded by forests for ship lumber because no one bothered to cut it down for firewood or charcoal.
Cheap calcium carbide for lighting. CaC2 make C2H2 on contact with water. Unlike ordinary lamp oil the light furnished is bright white. No more squinting at the pages, now you can easily see. Makes a good searchlight, too.
Cheap graphite for molds and pencils and lubricants. You don't think much of pencils till you have a need for something better than a goose feather pen. Now you can write easily whenever you want. Cheap molds are also usefull. So are graphite based lubricants that don't drip or grow mold or attract flies like tallow lubricants.
Cheap silicon carbide and carborundum for abrasives. Don't know if that's all that usefull, though. But it is available.
Cheap crucible steel. You can add carbon to iron in a controlled manner. Now you can build supremely good swords and plows and whatever. Blacksmithery is less of an art and more of a trade.
Cheap sulfuric acid. SO3 comes off CaSO4 with heat. If you have silica crucibles and equipment you can get very good acids that will give you HF and HCl on request. H2O added to SO3 gives you H2SO4 and that gives you the ability to make guncotton out of nitrates, or fulminate out of HNO3 and mercury or silver. Weapons will show up sooner or later. Nitroglycerin, anyone?
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
With cheap crucible steel you can make structures and recipe steel and machine tools and the modern world.

You can also use the steenblik to make a steam engine.
 

Forum Lurker

If you've got enough in the way of optics to make this thing, then you've got enough to use it to make optical lenses from glass. This means A) vision correction, B) telescopes. While A is not so important for world history, B gets you revolutionary thinking about astronomy.
 

wkwillis

Forum Lurker said:
If you've got enough in the way of optics to make this thing, then you've got enough to use it to make optical lenses from glass. This means A) vision correction, B) telescopes. While A is not so important for world history, B gets you revolutionary thinking about astronomy.
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Which is navigation.
The optics do not translate directly into telescopes. It's essentially a reflective fresnel lens. Not suitable for telescopes.
 

wkwillis

DominusNovus said:
Hey, where can I find out about this coil? Sounds interesting.
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Google is your friend. You could make it out of wood if you lined the wood with goldbeater's gold foil. One micron of gold sheet will reflect light. You beat gold between goldbeater's skin, which is very soft leather to get gold foil, or put mercury gold amalgam on something and heat it up to evaporate the mercury. Which tended to kill the goldsmiths, though.
 

DominusNovus

wkwillis said:
Google is your friend. You could make it out of wood if you lined the wood with goldbeater's gold foil. One micron of gold sheet will reflect light. You beat gold between goldbeater's skin, which is very soft leather to get gold foil, or put mercury gold amalgam on something and heat it up to evaporate the mercury. Which tended to kill the goldsmiths, though.
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I googled it, didn't get much. Barely got this thread to show up.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Now, ok...Hmmmm....

Now, why couldn't a regular Fresnel lens be used to make a solar furnace? I think they are, in fact.

Would earlier civilizations have the technical wherewithal to make even a Fresnel lens, let alone this? See, you're giving the idea that it's a fairly simple device, but once you see it, then the question becomes like; "What if the Romans had developed the laser?:p Well OK, not that extreme, but you get my idea.

OTOH, it's a remains a good AH idea. The Ancients certainly knew how to make reflectors. It's not beyond the realm of possibility for them to notice how such reflectors could focus the sun and make a solar furnace. And a solar furnace is a solar furnace, whether run by a Steenblik coil or a big bronze mirror.
 

wkwillis

Manufacturing technology. You need something that will focus the sun to a spot on the ground, that does not demand bearings that will handle a lot of weight, that will not demand glass ground to any kind of tolerance or made to any kind of transparency.
Gold foil they knew how to make, wood they knew how to carve.
 

Darkest

Banned
I think I would like to incorporate this technology in my ATL (set in the 5th century and on). What steps do you think a civilization would have to take to be able to manufacture Steenblik Coils or even a Fresnel lens?

Thanks in advance.
 

wkwillis

Darkest90 said:
I think I would like to incorporate this technology in my ATL (set in the 5th century and on). What steps do you think a civilization would have to take to be able to manufacture Steenblik Coils or even a Fresnel lens?

Thanks in advance.
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None. Most cultures have wood carving, and most post Mediterranean cultures can beat gold between parchment for foil. People have been making gilded wooden statues for a long, long, time.
It's the idea of a fspiral transmitting reflector that does not occur to people.
Carbides would be discovered accidentally. Glasses would be done on purpose. Ditto the higher melting point metals. Tungsten would have impressed people. Mercury capture by melting under glass would have helped. Zinc capture before it goes up the stacks? Lead? Iodine?
 

Alratan

I think the upthread posts about the effects of less deforestation are important. Think of the social effects of this, where does population expansion go, for example, when land clearance is far less advanced. If say, the Romans get this from the Greeks, then Mediterranian trade will be far more important, and the economic importance of forming a land empire less so.
 

wkwillis

Alratan said:
I think the upthread posts about the effects of less deforestation are important. Think of the social effects of this, where does population expansion go, for example, when land clearance is far less advanced. If say, the Romans get this from the Greeks, then Mediterranian trade will be far more important, and the economic importance of forming a land empire less so.
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Right. More food from the Med litoral and islands, and more wood for shipping. No use of gold for money because it it too valuable for solar power for industry.
Coke ovens as a solar under glass product? First for coal oil for lighting, then for coke for iron production. Then someone notices that ammonia water is a good fertiliser as in OTL.
 

Alratan

wkwillis said:
Right. More food from the Med litoral and islands, and more wood for shipping. No use of gold for money because it it too valuable for solar power for industry.
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Thinking of the direct impact of the existance of these "factories", what impact would the greater economic importance of a class of skilled artisans have socially.
 

wkwillis

Alratan said:
Thinking of the direct impact of the existance of these "factories", what impact would the greater economic importance of a class of skilled artisans have socially.
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The skill level of the solar power operation is low. Glass working is skilled, but there were already glass workers. Only the heat source is different. Ditto coke and carbides.
 

MarkA

wkwillis,

I think you have demonstrated that this technology is within the capacities of the ancients. The important question is two-fold; why did they not make the intellectual leap and create it and what would the implications be if they did?

The answer is probably tied up in many other examples of 'advanced' technology that have been rediscovered in modern times. The Kythera computer and Middle Eastern batteries spring immediately to mind.

These sophisticated devices did not achieve widespread use nor did they usher in an ancient industrial revolution. Nor apparently did they have very much impact on their societies. The existence of slavery is a simplistic and unsatisfactory answer to explain why this did not happen. Anyone have any other ideas? Obviously the secrecy of discovery is one answer but I suspect it is only one aspect.
 
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