The one that makes me think is either the galvanic or visual telegraph.
Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
51–60 of 155 posts
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#52An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, where they argue that while all the science and experimentation was there, it wasn't until precision parts were widely available that steam engines really solved all their problems and became viable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-per…
While science fiction, the Safehold series by David Weber gets into this. As the series opens, everything is made by its own guild/foundry to the point of cannon balls for one ship wouldn't work on another because of the lack of standardization. Guns (muskets) where such that if a part broke you needed a gunsmith to craft a new part for it... which might have slightly different dimensions so it was best if it didn't…
The earliest example I know of with interchangeable parts were the 1819 Hall rifles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpW054cVfHc
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#53An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, where they argue that while all the science and experimentation was there, it wasn't until precision parts were widely available that steam engines really solved all their problems and became viable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-per…
In the 80's my uncle, a trained mechanical engineer, tried to build a working scale small gauge steam locomotive at home for fun. He was a train geek. I reckon it was maybe 1/16 scale or the like. He machined all parts on his Emco Unimat II, a 70's hobbyist convertible lathe. The final piece was beautiful. Ultimately the kettle couldn't build up enough steam because of tolerances of parts. He machined the resp. parts…
I wonder if he was running into a cubed/squared scaling issue where scaling down the model made the operation impractical. Given same tolerances, a 16x larger dimension of the tank gives 16^3 more steam volume or at least 16^2 more heat flux which might make the gaps a lot more forgiving.
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#54An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, where they argue that while all the science and experimentation was there, it wasn't until precision parts were widely available that steam engines really solved all their problems and became viable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-per…
I suspect metallurgy and metallic and alloy purity is part of it too. One needs the vessel to handle certain types of pressures without catastrophically failing.
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is that also a matter of economics too. For example take the iPhone. All the bits for an iPhone were in place easily 10 years before that. Yet we did not have it. It took breaking the idea of paying 40 bucks a megabyte, or before that some amount of money per min to talk on land line and over the air. Once those two things were 'gone' we got what we consider a modern cell phone. Sometimes it means taking away t…
I never understood, why there was no Palm with phone in the mid 90s.
early 2000s well before the Iphone you had PocketPCs with phone and wifi connection and a lot of apps
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#56An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, where they argue that while all the science and experimentation was there, it wasn't until precision parts were widely available that steam engines really solved all their problems and became viable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-per…
While science fiction, the Safehold series by David Weber gets into this. As the series opens, everything is made by its own guild/foundry to the point of cannon balls for one ship wouldn't work on another because of the lack of standardization. Guns (muskets) where such that if a part broke you needed a gunsmith to craft a new part for it... which might have slightly different dimensions so it was best if it didn't…
> At a point later in the series, one of the characters on the other side of the war demonstrates this by taking three rifles and disassembles them, and then reassembles a working rifle with parts randomly selected from the different three disassembled rifles
Based on the real history of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts :-
By around 1778, Honoré Blanc began producing some of the first firearms with interchangeable flint locks, although they were carefully made by craftsmen. Blanc demonstrated in front of a committee of scientists that his muskets could be fitted with flint locks picked at random from a pile of parts.
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#57An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, where they argue that while all the science and experimentation was there, it wasn't until precision parts were widely available that steam engines really solved all their problems and became viable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-per…
The article specifically talks about the availability of precision engineering in the concluding section, and attempts to rule it out.
Not that the rebuttal is conclusive; I tend to think that you are closer to being correct than the author's conclusion (which is that the inventors themselves are rare). But I think you would need to specifically address the argument in the article rather than claiming that the article failed to consider this point.
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#58Watt needed to get a set of technologies developed to make a workable efficient steam engine. E.g. how to bore a straight cylinder in a material that withstands high pressure and temperature.
Another aspect is that solutions tend to occupy a niche within the existing environment. E.g. an iPhone is no use to a Babylonian because they have no 5G infrastructure. A Lamborghini is no use to a Roman because a) no gas stations, although they could probably run it on alcohol, and b) it'd get stuck behind all the ox carts already on the road.
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#59An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, where they argue that while all the science and experimentation was there, it wasn't until precision parts were widely available that steam engines really solved all their problems and became viable https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-per…
Modern people overestimate how long we have been able to engineer things precisely. I used to use a lot of vintage German cameras. Really right up through the 1950s the tolerances were wide enough that no two cameras were exactly alike. The parts were all replaceable, and there were often adjustments & shims inside to keep things in spec. For example, one camera might have part A that's a little long so it's matching…
> Modern people overestimate how long we have been able to engineer things precisely
I think you're underestimating it also. For example, micrometres capable of measuring imperceptible differences have existed for many centuries, same for manufacturing machines (lathes, mills) that can shape objects to imperceptible requirements.
Cameras probably just don't require such precision.
Re: Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
A nice explanation for the "rate of progress" is the percentage of the population that is not involved in the production of food. Since the dawn of humanity up until "very recently" in the grand scheme of things, something like 95 to 98 percent of the population were directly involved in food production. There were the odd shamans, priests, tribal leaders, or what have you, but everyone else made themselves busy hunt…
The question I have is how did mega projects in ancient times (such as the Pyramids) get enough people to work on them, and still have enough food to feed them? Or were the people on those projects (and other city-building projects at that time) only less than 5 percent of the total population? Also, is that 95% that are spending the majority of their time on food production? Or is that including people that spend a…
Pyramids were built during offseasons. But it wouldn't really have been an option to redeploy that unskilled, uneducated labour towards industrial research instead, at least not without a radical change to ancient societies. Not least because kings and religions tended to want non-agricultural engineering resources focused on monuments and defences, not finding more labour/cost-effective ways of increasing output of craft produce or pursuing science for the sake of science