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

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

#211

Post by eesmith »

legitster wrote: post #199
pratik661 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bee…

I'm having a really hard time understanding your observation, or how to apply it.

What was unique about legal entitlements 1600s England that wasn't in, say, 1600s Netherlands?

Like, why doesn't the Dutch East India Company count?

Or quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Mine#Free_miners :

> The organizational structure of Falun Mine created under the 1347 charter was advanced for its time. Free miners owned shares of the operation, proportional to their ownership of copper smelters. The structure was precursor to modern joint stock companies, and Stora Enso, the modern successor to the old mining company, is often referred to as the oldest joint stock company still operational in the world.[2]

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

#212

Post by dredmorbius »

tialaramex wrote: post #77
dredmorbius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More generally: technology (engineering) delivers results . Understanding why it does so is not required, and often comes quite late. If you want explanation , that's a role of science, though it's often preceded by a very long period of systematic observation. One striking example is geology, which has existed since at least the 17th century, but which didn't formally adopt its central organising and explanatory pri…

However, this blundering about approach only works if almost anything could have worked and so you just keep trying until you hit upon it. You can discover that eating one of the dozen types of plants growing on the hillside nearby treats toothache without any overarching theory about how that could work, just try eating stuff and see what happens - but you aren't going to invent the LED lamp this way. Example: When…

I think that your fundamental premise is wrong: there've been a large number of ancient / preindustrial inventions which were not obvious, which were terrifically surprising, or which required a tremendous amount of skill or craft to accomplish. It'd be interesting to come up with a catalogue of these....

Your transoceanic cable example is an interesting one, as the first electrical / telegraph cables greatly expanded the understanding of electric fields and interactions with the environment, especially in salt-water.

I'm also wondering if there's some sort of frontier between the "just blundering around" approach --- mass parallel experimentation --- and "requires a substantive theoretical understanding". To take your LED example, LEDs are the inverse of the photoelectric effect (and apparent PV panels will emit photons when a charge is applied to them). Electroluminescence dates to 1907, whilst the first LEDs were developed in the 1960s. There were earlier similar phenomena such as chemoluminescence (including numerous examples of bioluminescence) which might have suggested the possibility.

I'm agreeing in part, disagreeing in part, and wondering if there might be a more robust or systematic way of distinguishing limits of both methods.

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

#213

Post by dredmorbius »

zabzonk wrote: post #112
Ekaros wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but no... Rocket does have the trust ratio needed. But then there is questions of burn time and control. So you could get up there, with some risk. But not stay there for very long time. Short googling for solid fuel rockets seem that longest burn times are less than 3 minutes... And that is best case scenario with 20th/21st century technology...

But once you are up there you are up there, and professinal glider pilots can stay up there for ever, using thermals etc.

My suspicion is that a lot of the basics of glider flight were a lot easlier to discover / develop with powered aircraft. Given the relatively low power-output, and reliability, of early engines, many early aircraft might be considered (intermittently) powered gliders.

It could still have been possible to work things out based on JATO launch, though the hang-glider approach of low sand-dune testing / training would probably have been safer and a better overall option.

Powered aviation also helped drive and prove materials design enhancements and general aviation theory, controls, avionics, etc., all of which transfer well to gliders, but would very likely have been far more difficult to develop in a a glider-only regime.

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

#214

Post by dredmorbius »

jodrellblank wrote: post #184
criley2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Excellent example. And a beautiful failure to boot.

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

#215

Post by dredmorbius »

bravura wrote: post #48
dredmorbius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More generally: technology (engineering) delivers results . Understanding why it does so is not required, and often comes quite late. If you want explanation , that's a role of science, though it's often preceded by a very long period of systematic observation. One striking example is geology, which has existed since at least the 17th century, but which didn't formally adopt its central organising and explanatory pri…

Also, a lot of empirical progress in ML didn't happen until people stopped worrying about explainability and theoretical guarantees. Remember when NNs were unfashionable?

Self-imposed unnecessary limitations are a frequent inhibitor of technical progress.

Though I've had my concerns for what the growth in solution-without-explanation (or understanding) that ML is generating.

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

#216

Post by qubex »

jaclaz wrote: post #200
qubex wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m honestly stunned because I had no idea this issue had been raised, much less addressed.

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

#217

Post by eesmith »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #187
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…

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.

I think your 15th century date is for a book describing double-entry bookkeeping, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Della_mercatura_e_del_mercante...

Regarding its invention, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping#Histo... says:

> The earliest extant accounting records that follow the modern double-entry system in Europe come from Amatino Manucci, a Florentine merchant at the end of the 13th century.

and lists precursors under "Other claimants".

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

#219

Post by dang »

napier wrote: post #142
napier wrote: post #33

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

Religious flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't post like this to HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#220

Post by vimy »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #38
zabzonk wrote: post #2

What I have always wondered about is why heavier-than-air flight was not invented earlier? Or put it this way: when was the folded paper (or your material here) airplane invented, and by whom? Then, why not make it bigger?

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…

Don't forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont
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