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Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#71

Post by mamon »

jbpetersen wrote: post #51
Houshalter wrote: post #32

One of the most fascinating books I ever picked up from the library was Ancient Inventions ( https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Inventions-Peter-James/dp/034... ), which goes over the details of stuff like this. The historical figure that strikes me as "most likely to be a time traveller" is Archimedes, who designed incredibly advanced machines that destroyed the Roman fleet and protected his home city. Sadly he was acci…

> Sometimes I wonder if the greatest inventor of our time might be applying his work to video game engines. John Carmack?

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that some mathematical formula for Unified Field Theory (or similar physics concept) was originaly derived as a part of a game engine and patented.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#72

Post by Retric »

jacquesm wrote: post #53
Houshalter wrote: post #32

One of the most fascinating books I ever picked up from the library was Ancient Inventions ( https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Inventions-Peter-James/dp/034... ), which goes over the details of stuff like this. The historical figure that strikes me as "most likely to be a time traveller" is Archimedes, who designed incredibly advanced machines that destroyed the Roman fleet and protected his home city. Sadly he was acci…

The Chinese may have had primitive steam engines before Heron of Alexandria: http://tellmewhyfacts.com/First-Steam-Engine-James-Watt That doesn't diminish Heron of Alexandria's accomplishments in any way, I highly doubt it was anything else than either an original invention or an independent re-invention. Super interesting historical figure, right up there with Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci.

Tiangong Kaiwu only dates back to 1637, so do you mean it holds references to earlier steam engines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_Kaiwu

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#73

Post by digital_ins »

api wrote: post #61
kartan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately almost all his inventions were for entertainment value only. I read somewhere that one of the problems in antiquity to develop useful machines was the abundance of slave/captive labor. Why do you want to create a complicated inefficient first version of a machine when you have cheap humans being to do the task?

After initially being skeptical and disliking him for libertarian leaning political reasons, I've come around to wondering if John Maynard Keynes might have been even more right than we have imagined. Slave labor is kind of an extreme case of the paradox of thrift. Slaves have no disposable capital and they flood the labor market down to zero. Slavery is like a permanent deflationary spiral. There is just no reason t…

kinda describes what's going on in developing countries too. The lack of innovation in developing country might have almost nothing to do with the previously popular and highly peddled concept of "inferior races"

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#74

Post by ghrou3epuri »

bane wrote: post #7

The wheel is one part of a two part invention: 1) The wheel 2) smooth hard-ish surfaces that are large enough to be worth going anywhere Without either, the wheel on its own isn't worth much. It turns out roads are a much older, more useful invention without which the wheel doesn't make much sense.

hence why the wheel never really evolved in nature, because legs are far more adaptable to terrain and probably easier to grow. (modern) wheels do work on rough terrain (e.g. mountain bikes) but they're highly sensitive to scale. It's possible the idea was thought of many many times but only became practical with the advent of roads.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#75

Post by jacquesm »

Retric wrote: post #72
jacquesm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese may have had primitive steam engines before Heron of Alexandria: http://tellmewhyfacts.com/First-Steam-Engine-James-Watt That doesn't diminish Heron of Alexandria's accomplishments in any way, I highly doubt it was anything else than either an original invention or an independent re-invention. Super interesting historical figure, right up there with Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci.

Tiangong Kaiwu only dates back to 1637, so do you mean it holds references to earlier steam engines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_Kaiwu

Yes, that's what I understood, that it documented ancient machinery.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#76

Post by yourapostasy »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #9
derekp7 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two really good literature treatments of your fantasy are Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island. They both have as major plot elements a character who has a lot of knowledge of fabrication techniques, and recreate their technology in a primitive situation (one involves time travel, the other is stranded on a primitive island). On another note, I've heard that the…

I’ve heard of bootstrapping a machine shop from a lathe as well—apparently there’s a series about it, written by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

Gingery did even better than showing how to bootstrap from a lathe. He showed how to bootstrap the lathe itself starting from building a charcoal foundry and chunks of raw metal. Be careful, though: this is a rabbit hole that draws maker-types like rare earth electromagnets. Once you read through Gingery's books, you can easily find yourself wandering down the library stacks and Net pulling up information about how to make more-precise machine tools from less-precise tools.

It is information like this that makes you realize how incredibly fragile our civilization's tech stack is. Most of our physical tech stack is read-only executable code: there isn't a civilizational "source code" that shows from first principles how to build up to our current technology layer. For that matter, not even from first principles to turn of the 20th century technology level. We take a most of our tech stack for granted. This would matter if we had a civilization-wide energy crash, so if the catastrophic-scale climate change or oil crash predictions come true then this would be more than a passing interest for just the recreational primitive tech hobbyists.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#77

Post by summerdown2 »

lkrubner wrote: post #30
KineticLensman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "what would I try to invent?" question one is fascinating. If I found myself transported back to Roman times, I'd aim to make a lens. The Romans had glass so the raw material is there. With a lens you can fairly quickly go a telescope, which has immediate military application, so would perhaps be widely adopted. Astronomy might then follow, heading off the whole "Earth is the centre of Universe" thing that held b…

The problem is with the assumption behind "which fairly quickly leads to the discovery of microscopic organisms". In your scenario, who learns about microscopic organisms, and when? As a point of comparison, who discovered the existence of North America? Was it Christopher Columbus in 1492? Or was it the Vikings in 900 AD? Or was it some mix of people who first melded together in Beringia, somewhere around 20,000 BC?…

That's impressive, but the invention of sawmills didn't need to wait until the industrial revolution. I've just come back from The Netherlands, which had massive uses in wind powered technology in the 1500's, including windmill powered sawmills that led to the Dutch golden age because they could build boats faster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelis_Corneliszoon_van_Uitg...

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#78

Post by ronald_raygun »

probably_wrong wrote: post #2

I often like to fantasize how would I fare if I found myself suddenly transported into medieval times or earlier (spoiler: poorly). Articles like this make me appreciate even more how little difference there is between us and humans thousands of years ago. I wouldn't have figured out how to make a working wheel, and I've seen one. I have no idea where I picked up the idea that "ancient civilizations were dumb", but t…

I would try to do math and finance earlier. I think calculus is usually underrated when people consider "most important inventions", and the idea of investing for fractional ownership in an enterprise turned out to be non-obvious but really really useful.

Re: Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)

#80

Post by taejo »

Houshalter wrote: post #58
kartan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately almost all his inventions were for entertainment value only. I read somewhere that one of the problems in antiquity to develop useful machines was the abundance of slave/captive labor. Why do you want to create a complicated inefficient first version of a machine when you have cheap humans being to do the task?

Yes that's probably why the industrial revolution didn't happen. There's a good comment below that explains other societal reasons why the industrial revolution didn't happen, like the lack of contract law and investors. I also read a great theory once (but I can't find it again through google!) that the industrial revolution really required the invention of the cannon first. Building an efficient steam engine in rom…

I've heard it said that the bicycle basically needed the car, despite seeming to be much simpler: accurate mass production of ball bearings, chain drives, and pneumatic tires were all driven by car manufacturing but needed for really practical bicycles.
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