Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II • Hacker News Board

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#181

Post by lettergram » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #132

lettergram wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes and during the enlightenment who led the charge? This is such a naive comment… look at what religious cultures used to do prior to the Rome converting or the Aztecs in the Americas — they’d literally sacrifice humans. That was the norm prior to the dark ages. During the dark ages, they developed a wealth of technology. The challenge more had to do with the plague, famines, raids from the nords / Muslims, etc A…

> prior to the Rome converting or the Aztecs in the Americas — they’d literally sacrifice humans. Even if you would consider the Romans to engage in explicit ritual human sacrifice they just weren’t within five orders of magnitude of the Aztecs. We have less than ten attested instances of Roman human sacrifice ever. Human sacrifice was the irreducible core of the Aztec religion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi…

Later in history people liked to revise Roman’s history. They regularly “ritually strangulated” enemies at the alter of Saturn. There are documented cases where hundreds were strangled / executed by other means.

I grant you the Aztecs seemed far more extreme, but it was also core to the Roman belief system.

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#182

Post by pratik661 » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

pratik661 wrote: post #180

legitster wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you were living in this period - England was constantly at war, the trees had all run out, and quality metal was nowhere to be found. You would think you were in the late stages of humanity, not at the cusp of the greatest moment of human progress. Also, if we wanted to go back even further, the true roots are probably the Enlightenment. Before Wilkinson and Watt and Darby could think to develop technology…

Rights to privately acquire land, create corporations, and sell across markets were extant across different civilizations throughout history. The Chola merchant guilds had formalized corporate structures that dissipated the risk of long voyages 2000 years ago. Seeing that the Romans traded with the Cholas, the Romans probably had corporate structures too. Humans have been living in complex societies since the Bronze…

We tend to underestimate how complex even pre Bronze Age kingdoms were. To rule them, our ancestors came up with an intricate way to let different combinations of symbols represent abstract thoughts.

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#183

Post by BoxOfRain » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

I-M-S wrote: post #170

BoxOfRain wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see if there's a way this dependency graph could be captured and saved for future generations in the event of civilisation collapsing. I suspect something like that would rapidly reduce the time it takes for society to rebuild because it wouldn't have to spend energy figuring out what doesn't work all over again as much.

Both of you might be interested to check out "How to Invent Everything" [1] - it's even got flowcharts the kind you mention at the end! [2] [1] https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/ [2] https://mohamadacma.com/content/images/2022/04/825235c6-665f...

Cheers for this, looks interesting!

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#184

Post by jodrellblank » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #60

dredmorbius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powered flight came about virtually the moment a high power-to-weight engine (based on aluminium and petrol fuel) existed. Once rapid design-build-test cycles were practial, the initial Wright design rapidly shifted to a monocoque fuselage with forward wings and empennage, emerging within a decade. In just over 30 years after the Wright's first powered flight, the DC-3, an aircraft still in commercial operation was f…

>Powered flight came about virtually the moment a high power-to-weight engine (based on aluminium and petrol fuel) existed. The only thing I would change is that this makes it seem like powered flight was waiting on the engine, when it was waiting on the plane. One thing that struck me at the Museum of Flight in Seattle is how far advanced IC technology was while the Wright brothers were gliding in wooden contraption…

See the Caproni Transaero from 1921, with eight engines and nine wings it’s right from the time you are talking about - putting engines on a fixed wing solid plane body is possible but sufficient understanding of flight is still missing.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=uYn6fyGNg7c

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#185

Post by morelisp » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #106

morelisp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Truly remarkable that gliding firebombs and the like were never invented for warfare. What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Military_applications Steering is important though, you need to a) go up, b) go the right place, not back at you, c) come down, again not where you are.

I wonder how much people tried to develop ballistae projectiles, perhaps once they had bolts/darts they were good enough and longer range just wasn't necessary?

In most cases if your goal is just to get some explosives over a tall wall, a trebuchet or siege tower is probably sufficient. On the other hand, if you have a lot of gunpowder, a cannon is also pretty fine on its own without any need to go up-and-over.

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#186

Post by antonhowes » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #100

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #58

There's a big gap between 'inventing' a steam engine as a diagram in a book or table top novelty and physically creating one that can do more work than a horse or two, can work continuously, and is safe to use. The technical advances of Newcomen and Watt also coincided with the ability to create boilers and pressure chambers that didn't explode (too often).

That is true, but I don't think there is much evidence for people imagining steam engines for doing useful work prior to Thomas Savery (update: Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont appears to have preceded him by almost a century.) Admittedly, absence of evidence does not settle the issue, but AFAIK Leonardo never sketched one, even though he did propose a steam cannon. If he had conceived of a rotary steam engine, or the id…

Hello, author here. I mention this in Part I to link to a prior piece specifically on Ayanz, as this is hugely misunderstood. Ayanz’s machine only used the expansive force of steam, while Savery’s used both atmospheric pressure and the expansive force of steam. This is an absolutely crucial distinction. They were not at all the same, and Ayanz’s populariser and biographer specifically noted the difference.

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#187

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #174

legitster wrote: post #145

Environmental collapse and the price of steel! I think people forget just how expensive metal was. Carpenters would lock up their saws because the blades were so precious. People knew how to make cheaper steel from coal for a long time, but it was regarded as an inferior product and avoided. However, charcoal is labor intensive stuff to collect. By the 1700s, some cities in Europe had so depleted their available fore…

Imagine if you were living in this period - England was constantly at war, the trees had all run out, and quality metal was nowhere to be found. You would think you were in the late stages of humanity, not at the cusp of the greatest moment of human progress. Also, if we wanted to go back even further, the true roots are probably the Enlightenment. Before Wilkinson and Watt and Darby could think to develop technology…

History of corporations: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40697762

(Paywalled, but you may be able to find a copy.)

Private land is almost as old as record history. So is selling across markets.

Double entry book keeping was invented in the late 15th century.

All of these existed for centuries before the steam engine.

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#188

Post by antonhowes » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #47

terhechte wrote: post #40

The Greek philosoper Hero of Alexandria actually invented something close to a steam engine in the 1st century BE [1]. Whenever I think about "obvious" inventions which happened quite late in our civilization, I remember "The road not taken", a fantastic short story that plays with this idea. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor...

That's a different sort of steam engine. From the article: > But when we talk of the breakthrough “steam engine” in the eighteenth-century sense, we don’t mean a machine that exploits steam’s expansive, or pushing force. We actually mean a machine that does the exact opposite, exploiting the apparent sucking power that occurs when hot steam is rapidly condensed with a spray of cold water. It’s the relative weight of…

Thank you! It’s extremely gratifying to know that HN readers like yourself do actually go and read the posts. :D

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#189

Post by antonhowes » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

lambda_matt wrote: post #164

There is an absolutely fantastic book by Simon Winchester called The Perfectionists. He has a chapter on the steam engine-- the long and the short of it was it couldn't exist until they could precisely machine the bore and piston to adequate tolerances produce enough power without accidentally producing a bomb

Maybe for the Watt engine, but this does not apply to the Savery or Newcomen engines. (Though Part III, or perhaps IV, will have a few notes on some almost totally forgotten machine makers of the 1650s.

Re: Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II

#190

Post by CaptArmchair » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

napier wrote: post #136

CaptArmchair wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're implying here. First, are you equating "tech tree development" with pure engineering? Because that sounds like a reductionist view on history given that human advancement in thinking stretches far beyond technical / practical innovations. And that surely arbitrarly didn't stop between 500-1500AD just because the Roman Empire dissolved either. Second, taking a eurocentristic perspective is a f…

The thread title refers to the steam engine, and yes, I’m referring solely to mechanical engineering and by extension the scientific method. In no way intending to discuss or disparage the myriad achievements of other formerly extant cultures of the world that took different paths to different destinations.

Neither mechanical engineering or the scientific method could ever emerge in isolation, regardless of what happened elsewhere in the world.

The scientific method itself, such as it was developed during the 18th century, is a poster child example as thinkers at the time hit the so-called Problem of induction. The great enlightened tinker David Hume provided foundational insights through his work "An Enquiry concerning human understanding" and "A Treatise of Human Nature".

Scholars have argued that David Hume has been influenced by oriental ideas when he developed his thinking regarding observations, causality, induction and self. Ideas which were paramount when it comes to defining a formal theory regarding the "scientific method" such as we understand it today.