251–260 of 315 posts
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?
Probably because sustained heavier-than-air flight requires an engine. So same reason the car was not invented earlier - a coal-powered steam engine is too heavy.
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?
Paper airplanes were around for centuries. Nobody knew how they worked.
To me the most surprising thing about this series is that de Caus had a working CSP (concentrated solar power) setup by 01615 ( https://antonhowes.substack.com/i/57230676/solar-powered-ste... , original source https://archive.org/details/raisonsdesforce00Caus ). I had thought CSP only dated to Shuman's installation in Egypt in 01913, but I see that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Histo... also…
Out of curiosity, what’s with the dates prefixed by 0?
I'm always a bit split when I see it. Even when used genuinely it still comes off as making the comment feel like it exists to showcase long now instead of the response. On the bright side out of all the things to get over this ranks on the "easy" side of the list.
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…
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.
I seem to find that this is still the best way to communicate.
To me the most surprising thing about this series is that de Caus had a working CSP (concentrated solar power) setup by 01615 ( https://antonhowes.substack.com/i/57230676/solar-powered-ste... , original source https://archive.org/details/raisonsdesforce00Caus ). I had thought CSP only dated to Shuman's installation in Egypt in 01913, but I see that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Histo... also…
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They lacked the physics theory to make planes stable enough to carry a load, and nobody wants to experiment throwing themselves out over a cliff with prototype wings that will likely get them killed.
You didn't need to throw yourself off a cliff though. Just think of something like Jockey's Ridge.
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…
Could have used a rocket? They've been around for ages. It seems to me that for flight the construction materials (silk, bamboo, string, glue - what the early WW1-era aircraft were made from) and the propulsion (solid-fuel rocket) have been around for over a thousand years.
The original Chinese designs relied on gunpowder. This is self-oxydising and burns rapidly, but has a comparatively low power density, roughly 1/10th that of liquid petroleum fuels.
Liquid fuel such as alcohol and oil existed, but the notion let alone the availability of oxidizers didn't until the early 19th century. The first use of liquid oxygen in rockets didn't occur until 1926, by Robert Goddard.
Hypergolics or solid rocket motors would have been other options, but both are still pretty advanced. I've no idea how likely they'd have been.
One of the more viable solid fuels might have been rocket candy, made of sugar and usually potassium nitrate as an oxidizer. Both would have been available.
Demonstration here: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=12fR9neVnS8
Whether or not that would generate sufficiently strong and reliable thrust for a steampunk JATO launch, I'm not sure.
> Hero [Hero of Alexandria, 10-70 AD] even suggested a mechanical use for the effect. By setting a fire on a hollow, airtight altar, the heated air within would flow down a tube into a sphere full of water, which in turn would be pushed up another tube into a hanging bucket. The bucket, when sufficiently heavy with water, would then pull on a rope to open some temple doors. Crucially, when the fire was extinguished,…
But why would you want to use such a flimsy technology, if you have horses? There is no way an engine like this could outrun a lean and speedy chariot with two to four horses. Also, even a primitive mechanism like this may have encountered fatal problems with dirt, dust and sand. (Mind that steam locomotion was first tried for roads, which was a total failure because of the quality of roads, even in major city center…
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…
Until roughly 8,000 years ago, the only materials available were those found in (near) finished form in nature: stone, wood, bone, grass and fibres, ceramics (requiring firing), concrete (typically also), and metals with low melting points.
There'd have been some glues / resins (bone, tree-sap, and a few other compounds).
A huge part of what creates impressions of times and periods over the past 400 or so years is the gradual introduction of new materials: glass, finished bricks, wrought iron, steel, and in the case of textiles, the emergence of synthetics beginning in the late 19th century (celluloid, viscose, and eventually Nylon and polyester).
The development of cheap high-quality steel, and later aluminium, titanium, and other difficult-to-produce metals, has had a huge impact.
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…
> But after a few decades of being forced to produce crappy steel, they figured out ways to make it better.
A Bessemer converter is very simple. It's basically a big iron vessel lined with bricks and mounted on a pivot so it can be tilted and poured. It's the metallurgy that's hard. Inputs are mostly coal, iron ore, and limestone, along with compressed air and some additives, but making good steel from those is tricky. The person who got this right, after about 10,000 tries, was Robert Mushet, who is mostly forgotten.[2]
Could that have been done earlier? Maybe. Probably not before analytical chemistry. The detailed composition of the inputs has a huge influence on what you get out in steelmaking. Before Mushet, the output from steelmaking was kind of random and often bad.
(1830 was when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway started operation. This was when railroads got out of beta and started changing the world. Before then, it was mostly one-off mine-haulage systems and prototypes. The Liverpool and Manchester finally got it right. They had regular service with multiple steam locomotives of a common design, double track lines, stations, signals, timetables, and tickets. At last, a production-ready product. This is what allowed the Industrial Revolution to scale.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_and_Manchester_Railw...