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

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

#111

Post by stinkytaco »

mturmon wrote: post #68
Houshalter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors. I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!) that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon first. Building an efficient steam engine in rom…

The thing you can't recall in your second paragraph sounds like the sort of "chain of inventions" that James Burke used to explain on the old BBC series Connections . ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) ) See in particular episode 6 in the original 1978 series (just going by the summary on Wikipedia).

I'll chime in here to add The Day the Universe Changed, on PBS. Less "invention" specific and broader, about how certain concepts shifted us. It has also aged better, in my opinion. Connections, especially its last episode, seems rooted in a certain place and time.

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

#112

Post by mrfusion »

yourapostasy wrote: post #76
evincarofautumn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard of bootstrapping a machine shop from a lathe as well—apparently there’s a series about it, written by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

Gingery did even better than showing how to bootstrap from a lathe. He showed how to bootstrap the lathe itself starting from building a charcoal foundry and chunks of raw metal. Be careful, though: this is a rabbit hole that draws maker-types like rare earth electromagnets. Once you read through Gingery's books, you can easily find yourself wandering down the library stacks and Net pulling up information about how t…

We will have to figure out the "source code" if we make a self sufficient civilization on mars one day?

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

#113

Post by david-given »

rm445 wrote: post #109
david-given wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Terry Pratchett's _The Long Mars_ discusses this, to an extent. (In that setting, you can build a very simple machine --- powered by a potato, which actually makes sense in context --- which can take you to a parallel Earth. You can take what you can carry with you; but not iron, which stays behind. Turns out that setting up a society from scratch using only hand tools and brain power is kinda hard.)

Hmm. I've read the first book in the series (must get around to reading the rest), which is mainly exploration and doesn't focus too much on society-building, but as an engineer I'm not sure I buy that bootstrapping in a new Earth without bringing any iron/steel would be that difficult. It would be an effort, but I think we could retool to bootstrap industry mainly using aluminium and copper alloys (engineering bronz…

The first two are excellent. But then you can tell that Pratchett's influence has waned, and Baxter's bitterness and misanthropy is creeping in; in The Long Mars everyone's painfully disfunctional and whiny.

I'm still not sure I want to read the last two. I swore of solo Baxter books after getting burnt by Titan.

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

#114

Post by rm445 »

david-given wrote: post #113
rm445 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I've read the first book in the series (must get around to reading the rest), which is mainly exploration and doesn't focus too much on society-building, but as an engineer I'm not sure I buy that bootstrapping in a new Earth without bringing any iron/steel would be that difficult. It would be an effort, but I think we could retool to bootstrap industry mainly using aluminium and copper alloys (engineering bronz…

The first two are excellent. But then you can tell that Pratchett's influence has waned, and Baxter's bitterness and misanthropy is creeping in; in The Long Mars everyone's painfully disfunctional and whiny. I'm still not sure I want to read the last two. I swore of solo Baxter books after getting burnt by Titan .

Sigh, that's another one on my reading list. I thought Baxter's Voyage was a wonderful novel - quite dry, but masterfully put-together, using NASA's true history to inform how an alternate history might have gone. Titan seems irresistible, but it sounds like it might be quite bitter.

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

#115

Post by eveningcoffee »

adrianN wrote: post #84
njharman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bicycle actually needs very few metal parts, if any.

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

#116

Post by qbrass »

taejo wrote: post #80
Houshalter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors. I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!) that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon first. Building an efficient steam engine in rom…

I've heard it said that the bicycle basically needed the car, despite seeming to be much simpler: accurate mass production of ball bearings, chain drives, and pneumatic tires were all driven by car manufacturing but needed for really practical bicycles.

Ball Bearings and Chain drives were mass produced for industrial machines, and saw use in bicycles before automobiles. Pneumatic tires as already mentioned were invented for bikes and made their way to automobiles.

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

#117

Post by theoh »

jacquesm wrote: post #53
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…

The Chinese may have had primitive steam engines before Heron of Alexandria: http://tellmewhyfacts.com/First-Steam-Engine-James-Watt That doesn't diminish Heron of Alexandria's accomplishments in any way, I highly doubt it was anything else than either an original invention or an independent re-invention. Super interesting historical figure, right up there with Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci.

Also, we really should not forget the post-classical but pre-renaissance technologists of the Arab world. e.g. http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/automata-review-exhibi...

The "hellenocentric" narrative can inadvertently contribute to bias against other very nearby civilizations that communicated with them and contributed to the technologies.

There's an interesting text on parabolas called "On burning mirrors" by Diocles which comes to us only through an Arabic translation:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1065183.files/Too...

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

#118

Post by WalterBright »

Houshalter wrote: post #58
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?

Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors. I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!) that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon first. Building an efficient steam engine in rom…

The industrial revolution requires coordination on a vast scale, and a lack of bureaucracy that can arbitrarily block it. Hence its emergence in free market countries.

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

#119

Post by dennisgorelik »

api wrote: post #61
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?

After initially being skeptical and disliking him for libertarian leaning political reasons, I've come around to wondering if John Maynard Keynes might have been even more right than we have imagined. Slave labor is kind of an extreme case of the paradox of thrift. Slaves have no disposable capital and they flood the labor market down to zero. Slavery is like a permanent deflationary spiral. There is just no reason t…

Slaves are not really that cheap. You have to feed slaves, train slaves, guard slaves (from running away and from being stolen by somebody else).

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

#120

Post by WalterBright »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #85
notahacker wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's plenty of historical evidence that industrialization and slave labor do not mix (for example, the US North industrialized and the South did not).

It's not so easy to draw firm conclusions from Roman society, because the historical record of that is a little thin. The Nazis employed slave labor, but they had a lot of trouble with sabotage and intentionally shoddy work. Game of Thrones is entirely fiction, and is zero evidence as an "example" of slavery.

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