Rome gets steam power in 150 C.E.

RousseauX

Donor
The economic need was there, although it would have required a keen business eye to identify it. While slave power was plentiful, jobs of high power required a large number of workers. Workers that needed to be fed, clothed, and given shelter. Roman slaves were not the same as their American counterparts 1200 years later. Rather than being thought of as livestock, slaves were considered high-end appliances. Rather than receiving all of the respect of an ox or pig, Roman slaves were thought of the same way we think of our TVs, our smartphones, our stoves. They were kept in good condition so that they could work hard. And that made them expensive.
This sounds to be true of "high class" slaves such as tutors and the equivalent of house slaves in the American South.

Was this true of the average Roman field hand as well, are there any real proof that the profit margin for Roman slaves was lower than that of American slaves?
 

RousseauX

Donor
Oh, and for the TL;DR: The Romans almost got steam power; Heron had 90% of the technology, and the Roman Empire would have amplified the speed of the Revolution. My timeline starts at the RED word.
The steam engine is vastly overstated as a catalyst for the industrial revolution. The first phase of the industrial revolution basically didn't involve the steam engine at all.

Also, there is no commercial revolution beforehand to drive up the demand for industrial goods or textiles. The banking/credit system which would need to exist for a successful industrialization to take place would not be.

There would also be the lack of an agricultural revolution/colonialism which historically produced the surplus necessary to free up labour and feed cities/non-farmers needed for industrialization to take place.

The Roman Empire begins to feel the first impacts of industrialization, but not nearly as much as her neighbors. An increased population provides more men for the army, increased productivity provides them with more than enough arms, and the Roman knack for infrastructure combined with railways allows for troop transport faster than ever seen before by a factor of 10.
Why would there be increased population above OTL as the result of the first couple decades of industrialization?

If anything population would drop as you divert more farmers away from agricultural and into cities.

By his death in 90 CE he has changed the world forever. From his mechanical shows grew large plants for mass-producing textiles and grinding grain as the raw materials float down the Nile, all powered by his piston engine.
Historically the machine which triggered the revolution in textile manufacturing was not powered by the steam engine, it was based on the mechanical clock developed in the Middle Ages and powered by the Watermill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_frame

It's kind of a leap to assume that someone all of a sudden skips all of the intermediate steps and arrives at the end point.
 
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RousseauX

Donor
Maybe we can have a really nasty plague dry up all the labor. That would develop mills which steam power would apply nicely to.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions about industrialization. Labour scarcities do not trigger industrialization (it does help end feudalism though).

You need an excess of labour for industrialization because you need people to work in the factories at the same time as needing farmers to feed them. Each farmer only produces so much surplus, therefore you either need some sort of agricultural revolution to increase agricultural productivity, or you need more farmers. Because moving people from farms to industry is decreasing the amount of food produced and increasing the number of mouth you need to feed.
 
I'd be interested in more intelligent discussion of the possibility of widespread Roman horse-drawn wooden rails and semaphore. Sounds really feasible and helpful, but a missed opportunity OTL.
 
Rome is too big to industrialize unless it over several centuries I think. You could introduce horse-drawn trains and they may even take off but I just don't see the industry taking off to create a society capable of maintaining steam powered infrastructure.

Its not that they can't, hell with hindsight the Romans could have went to space if things went the perfect direction. But Rome was in no need to industrialize, they had plenty of labor and no need to speed up travel time (well maybe not any need at all.)

Notice industrialization occurred first in countries with far flung territories around the globe and thus the need to get their, supply, and communicate incrementally faster is obvious; also those countries to first industrialized tended to be smaller and needed a bigger percentage of men for their government and military than the larger nations.

Rome was neither of this, it was big with plenty of manpower and although railroads would have helped they weren't a necessity.

What I think is that a smaller nation needs to industrialize and pose a threat to Rome (Brittania?) If Britannia managed to somehow proto-industrialize (trade with morocco maybe, or a Portuguese style f-you were going around Africa could lead to increasingly more industrialized technology.)

If you could have an early industrialized Brittanic Empire trying to pry Rome apart or even just out competing them Rome may be forced to industrialize.
 
So the obvious question is how this manages to go at any useful speed while pulling something (or carrying a heavy load) at a comparable cost for the amount of work to doing it by horse.


I'm not saying it's impossible, it just sounds . . . rather hard to picture. Even with the plans of the handcart illustrating how its built, that doesn't offer a lot indicating useful locomotive power.
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As you say, it suffers from the same problem the foot treadle carriages had in the 17/18th centuries.
 
You need an excess of labour for industrialization because you need people to work in the factories at the same time as needing farmers to feed them. Each farmer only produces so much surplus, therefore you either need some sort of agricultural revolution to increase agricultural productivity, or you need more farmers.
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What about the latifundia, huge slave based estates? Apparently they produced a lot of agricultural products on an industrial scale.
 
The Romans knew how to harness the power of falling water and the Greeks were at least aware of the mechanical power of steam.
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Roman water powered flour mills have been found not just in the provinces but also in Rome. Makes sense, the government bread for a million people needed a lot of flour output.
 

RousseauX

Donor
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What about the latifundia, huge slave based estates? Apparently they produced a lot of agricultural products on an industrial scale.
Yes, this is an example of labour intensive agriculture. Latifundia requires a lot of manpower to run and would produce less if you divert people from it.
 
That's why I find the horse-drawn rail and the semaphore possibilities so intriguing. They are both pretty valuable and they aren't the sorts of problems that can be simplified much by throwing more labor at them.
 
That's why I find the horse-drawn rail and the semaphore possibilities so intriguing. They are both pretty valuable and they aren't the sorts of problems that can be simplified much by throwing more labor at them.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=303910

Your wish is my command m'lord. :cool:


Anyway, what I found on semaphores in the ancient world, was surprising. It seems they were used by the Greeks and Carthaginians, and were even described by Polybius on how the Carthaginians used them during the First Punic War to send messages from Sicily to Carthage and vice versa.
 
Could you have one with Papyrus? Also, didn't the Chinese invent paper in the second century BC? Maybe paper could disseminate into the Roman empire through an ambitious Marco Polo like trader.

That gives me a thought: When exactly did the Muslim countries introduce paper? They were closer to China after all.
 
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