Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#81

Post by dTal » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #37

KineticLensman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "what would I try to invent?" question one is fascinating. If I found myself transported back to Roman times, I'd aim to make a lens. The Romans had glass so the raw material is there. With a lens you can fairly quickly go a telescope, which has immediate military application, so would perhaps be widely adopted. Astronomy might then follow, heading off the whole "Earth is the centre of Universe" thing that held b…

I love this game. I think I would send the idea of plant breeding. They had this idea to some extent, but I don't think there was big public, long term effort to breed new crops or get much higher yields. If you get modern crops faster, you have larger populations, which leads to industrialization sooner. This isn't just limited to food crops, it's possible ancients could have bred plants and animals for many useful…

Regarding Archimedes' chronophone, I am not sure that the premise is well-formed. I find I cannot predict what the chronophone will do because the notion of "closest analogue" is inherently ambiguous. In the worst case we cannot send any information back at all by definition.

All that being said, assuming the chronophone will let me, I'd bring their attention to the idea of the printing press. It's easily made, the benefit is obvious, and the effect is dramatic. Kind of amazing it wasn't invented earlier.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#82

Post by lkrubner » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

summerdown2 wrote: post #77

lkrubner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is with the assumption behind "which fairly quickly leads to the discovery of microscopic organisms". In your scenario, who learns about microscopic organisms, and when? As a point of comparison, who discovered the existence of North America? Was it Christopher Columbus in 1492? Or was it the Vikings in 900 AD? Or was it some mix of people who first melded together in Beringia, somewhere around 20,000 BC?…

That's impressive, but the invention of sawmills didn't need to wait until the industrial revolution. I've just come back from The Netherlands, which had massive uses in wind powered technology in the 1500's, including windmill powered sawmills that led to the Dutch golden age because they could build boats faster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelis_Corneliszoon_van_Uitg...

You are referencing an event more than 300 years later than the event I am speaking of. But yes, to your point, much of what was necessary to the Industrial Revolution was pioneered by the Dutch during the 1600s: contracts, fair and impartial courts, the end of legal immunity for the nobility (regarding civil contracts), modern finance, modern insurance, advanced transport, modern storage facilities, etc. This is also covered by the historian Fernand Braudel, who is worth reading.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#83

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #81

Houshalter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this game. I think I would send the idea of plant breeding. They had this idea to some extent, but I don't think there was big public, long term effort to breed new crops or get much higher yields. If you get modern crops faster, you have larger populations, which leads to industrialization sooner. This isn't just limited to food crops, it's possible ancients could have bred plants and animals for many useful…

Regarding Archimedes' chronophone, I am not sure that the premise is well-formed. I find I cannot predict what the chronophone will do because the notion of "closest analogue" is inherently ambiguous. In the worst case we cannot send any information back at all by definition. All that being said, assuming the chronophone will let me, I'd bring their attention to the idea of the printing press. It's easily made, the b…

The link explains it further. The point of the chronophone is that you can't just send ideas you already have back. If you want to send the scientific method back in time, you have to actually do science. If you want to send the printing press, you actually have to think about better ways your present civilization could transmit information.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#84

Post by adrianN » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

njharman wrote: post #60

KineticLensman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "what would I try to invent?" question one is fascinating. If I found myself transported back to Roman times, I'd aim to make a lens. The Romans had glass so the raw material is there. With a lens you can fairly quickly go a telescope, which has immediate military application, so would perhaps be widely adopted. Astronomy might then follow, heading off the whole "Earth is the centre of Universe" thing that held b…

Bicycles. Food preservation. Sanitation / boiling water. Roman legions mounted in bikes could be everywhere. Their roads already were a force multiplier. Combined with being able to feed them and have them not die of disease simple wounds. We'd all be speaking Latin. We all know, Rome is center of the universe. :)

Bicycles would be pretty hard with the metallurgy of ancient rome, I think. Introducing soap is very easy in comparison.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#85

Post by HarryHirsch » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #70

kartan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately almost all his inventions were for entertainment value only. I read somewhere that one of the problems in antiquity to develop useful machines was the abundance of slave/captive labor. Why do you want to create a complicated inefficient first version of a machine when you have cheap humans being to do the task?

The other issue with having most of your labour performed by slaves is that the slaves themselves generally don't have the motivation, or education, or chance of actually being taken seriously to propose even incremental process improvements.

That's what you think. The nobility would usually sit in Rome or any other nice place and leave administration of their landholdings to a competent slave. Read Cato the Elder's Agri Cultura for details. Demotivation would be an issue for those slaves low on the food chain but not for every slave. For more contemporary examples, look no further than Daenerys' Dothraki handmaidens.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#86

Post by cokernel » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #71

jbpetersen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I wonder if the greatest inventor of our time might be applying his work to video game engines. John Carmack?

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that some mathematical formula for Unified Field Theory (or similar physics concept) was originaly derived as a part of a game engine and patented.

There's a parody article from 2003 talking about this:

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2003/12/valve_unified_theory.html

Is that what you had in mind?

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#87

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 5:51 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #3

probably_wrong wrote: post #2

I often like to fantasize how would I fare if I found myself suddenly transported into medieval times or earlier (spoiler: poorly). Articles like this make me appreciate even more how little difference there is between us and humans thousands of years ago. I wouldn't have figured out how to make a working wheel, and I've seen one. I have no idea where I picked up the idea that "ancient civilizations were dumb", but t…

Two really good literature treatments of your fantasy are Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island. They both have as major plot elements a character who has a lot of knowledge of fabrication techniques, and recreate their technology in a primitive situation (one involves time travel, the other is stranded on a primitive island). On another note, I've heard that the…

Based on the old wooden wagons I've seen, lathes played no part in their construction. The spokes on the wheels had been spokeshaved (gee, maybe that's the etymology of that tool's name?) rather than turned on a lathe. The wheels as a whole were pieced together by hand so they'd be round automatically (i.e. spokes and rim segments were all the same length, held together by an iron hoop that just took shape around them when cooled).

Sure this is just one example, but it is what comes to mind given TFA's subject matter. Without access to iron-working, I suppose a less durable rim material like e.g. hemp could be used, which would introduce some more complications involved in tightening. If solid rather than spoked wheels were acceptable, an out-of-round wheel on an axle can be marked with a piece of chalk-rock held in place while spinning the wheel, and then abrasive stones can be used to true the wheel to the chalk mark.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#88

Post by david-given » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

bobcostas55 wrote: post #13

derekp7 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two really good literature treatments of your fantasy are Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island. They both have as major plot elements a character who has a lot of knowledge of fabrication techniques, and recreate their technology in a primitive situation (one involves time travel, the other is stranded on a primitive island). On another note, I've heard that the…

Another good take on the idea is Lest Darkness Fall, which features time travel to 6th century Rome.

I can second this book: written in 1939, but it hasn't dated at all.

Apart from being hilarious and great fun, it's also a suprisingly serious study of just how much technology, and I'm not talking about the modern stuff, is based on a huge pyramid of other skills and technologies which you simply can't leapfrog.

Mild spoilers follow:

Our hero, after being flung back in time to Rome in the year 535, is trying to prevent the fall of the late Roman Empire when it gets conquered by the Byzantines (actually the story's a lot more complex than that, so that's simplified). He tries to reinvent all sort of different pieces of military technology, and fails utterly --- turns out reliable gunpowder is really hard to make. His clocks won't keep time, his lenses aren't round, and he doesn't even both with electricity.

The innovations he eventually ends up successfully introducing? Distilled spirits (a great money-maker!), Arabic notation, double-entry notekeeping, and semaphores.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#89

Post by davidgay » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #21

nine_k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telephone or at least telegraph are also easy, and may be even more valuable in a military setting.

Maybe easy, but you'd need to create lots of long insulated wire--while not impossible, very expensive. Telescopes and semaphores would get you very far at a fraction of the cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy#Optical_telegraph

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#90

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Oct 29, 2016, 6:17 PM UTC

kartan wrote: post #56

Houshalter wrote: post #32

One of the most fascinating books I ever picked up from the library was Ancient Inventions ( https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Inventions-Peter-James/dp/034... ), which goes over the details of stuff like this. The historical figure that strikes me as "most likely to be a time traveller" is Archimedes, who designed incredibly advanced machines that destroyed the Roman fleet and protected his home city. Sadly he was acci…

> Unfortunately almost all his inventions were for entertainment value only. I read somewhere that one of the problems in antiquity to develop useful machines was the abundance of slave/captive labor. Why do you want to create a complicated inefficient first version of a machine when you have cheap humans being to do the task?

I'd add a dose of social myopia. Even without slaves, you'd have to make everybody imagine a world taming forces. I believe up until Newton, the value of technology and its pace was very different. So people wouldn't align and go that deep into physics and engineering. It's a bit of a stretch for steam power, but another instance is electricity, a phenomenon which was known at the time but would require way too much desire and stack to master.

ps: This is something that distort my perception of the world. Somehow similar to the comma.ai birth, the owner believed the others were caught into a limited view of the world. It's possible that a lot of stuff that we dismiss because we believed in others are "limiting" our existence. But the brownian motion seems unavoidable for now.