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

antonhowes.substack.com

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

#191

Post by antonhowes »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #86
cletus wrote: post #72

I looked in Part 1 and 2 and didn't see this point raised, which is a shame because it's one of my favorite stories of intertwined technological process. An engine requires piston that move within a bore. To create the pressure that process has to be precise. This process was perfected in making cannons. Why I like this story is that it embodies the unintended consequences that underlies so much of progress, like Ale…

Actually a Savery engine (the type of engine the OP's post starts off with) doesn't have a piston at all. And the Newcomen atmospheric engine didn't require a very precise fit to function either. It wasn't until Watt started the drive for more efficient engines that accurately boring the cylinder became important.

Exactly! Part III or IV will end up talking about boring techniques of the 1650s (long before the famous John Wilkinson methods), but that is precisely the thing with Savery engines - and indeed with Newcomen engines, which worked with pistons long before Wilkinson too!

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

#192

Post by antonhowes »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #73

It’s not discussed in the article, but the magic of steam in the 16th century was expressly investigated by Robert Fludd. As a mystical philosopher, he was attacked by the more scientific types of his time. This probably set back the steam engine. But clearly, he was really on to something!! Don’t discount the weird, I guess, is the takeaway.

Well-noticed! I used one of Fludd’s illustrations, but I ran out of space writing about Drebbel, which took us up to c.1607. Fludd will feature VERY heavily in Part III. Fludd eventually became totally obsessed with the inverted flask experiment - and recent historiography suggests he wasn’t seen as a crank, but actually highly respected at the time.

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

#193

Post by antonhowes »

stareatgoats wrote: post #79

Not sure what conclusion the author will come to as an answer to the question in the title (part III is still to come). But if it doesn't include the liberation of inventors (i.e. the protection of intellectual property through patents) and the legal framework for "anyone" to profit from their inventions then I'll be disappointed. As his story indicates so far it was not for the want of ingenuity that the industrial…

I have written very extensively on the evolution of the early patent system - I actually have a not-yet-completed, so far 9-part series on the context of the Statute of Monopolies - but you’ll be in for something of a surprise in Part III. (Spoiler: the most generous ever English patents was seemingly granted to an early steam engine in the 1660s but to little effect)

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

#194

Post by antonhowes »

mariuolo wrote: post #176

The unavailability of rubber as sealant both in Europe and Asia is not mentioned in either part I or II.

Neither the Savery nor Newcomen engines used rubber, so that doesn’t work as a limiting factor. That’s why I didn’t mention it.

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

#195

Post by antonhowes »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #59

I've often thought we could have had integrated circuits shortly after the invention of photography. 150 years earlier! It would make an interesting steampunk world with steam and hydraulics and CPUs.

If you write that up, please send me the link (I’m the OP)

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

#196

Post by legitster »

bko wrote: post #178
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…

I wonder if there is anything today that would need to come down (or up) in price to kick off a revolution. I've heard some argue that was decentralized payments online (cryptocurrency) but that hasn't led to much outside of speculation IMO. The other thing I heard was battery technology. Just recently a podcast with Matthew Ball, he makes the argument that AR/VR/metaverse technology needs a breakthrough (in part) in…

I tend to believe most technology revolutions boil down to: "we made a crappier version of x technology, but it's stupidly cheaper" - cheap enough to throw applications at it.

Diesel trains are not as powerful as steam trains of yore were, but diesel locomotives are so much cheaper to build and maintain that you can run 3-4 of them at a time and still save money.

LCD screens did not produce as good of a picture quality as plasma or even HD CRT screens, but they were so cheap and light you can do things like replace signage.

Crypto is weird. Crypto is proving to not be any cheaper than what it supposed to be replacing (currency, securities). But if you think about what crypto is - it's really an escrow service that's so freaking cheap it's being used for dumb things like payments. But I think like how it took a couple decades for people to start figuring out what they could do with cheap steel, I think eventually crypto might genuinely start finding useful applications.

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

#197

Post by antonhowes »

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).

Indeed. I’ll get to that in Part III (or IV if it’s too long). And it’s why I’ve tried to point out evidence of actual use rather than just the diagrams themselves (though those are at least a start when it comes to subsequent improvement). Safety is certainly a big issue, and Savery’s engines often struggled with it (for the expansive phase of operations). As you say, it’s about the “too often”!

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

#198

Post by missedthecue »

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…

Another one is that ancient Mediterranean traders used what were essentially futures contracts to trade wheat and other grains.

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

#199

Post by legitster »

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…

I largely agree with this.

But I still think there was something unique about the legal entitlements in 17th century England that didn't really exist in previous eras. Previous versions of complex structures were still family oriented, or had to put up with local power brokers, or were a fiefdom unto themselves.

Like, you didn't see James Watt build a fort and hire goons to protect his assets. But that would have been a completely normal requirement of establishing an organization in the Roman world.

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

#200

Post by jaclaz »

qubex wrote: post #97
stevenjgarner wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amazes me about heavier than air flight is that it was invented all over the planet at virtually the same time by all kinds of unrelated people who had no connection or communication with or little knowledge of one another. Sure here in the US we ethnocentrically recite the Kitty Hawk event of the Wright Brothers as if it appeared in a vacuum out of nowhere. But in reality, heavier than air flight was invented s…

It’s pretty common that “breakthrough inventions” are arrived-at pretty much simultaneously by apparently disparate sources at approximately the same moment in time. Consider the telephone, which is attributed to Alexander Graham Bell in most of the world and to Antonio Meucci in my native Italy. Or radio, which is broadly attributed to Marconi or Tesla. In hindsight it seems like one person triumphed upon others, bu…

>which is attributed to Alexander Graham Bell in most of the world and to Antonio Meucci in my native Italy.

The US congress did vote a resolution that cleared the matter (in 2002, a bit late I would say):

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-148/iss...

But in this case Bell and Meucci weren't much disparate sources.

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