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Historical Tech Tree

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Re: Historical Tech Tree

#71

Post by School-Cotton »

drcode wrote: post #70
School-Cotton wrote: post #69

Somewhat tangential, but can anyone explain or give any insight into how candles were invented? This has always puzzled me. The idea that if you put a piece of string in some wax, and light it on fire, the string will get hot enough to melt wax, and the molten wax will be sucked into it by capillary action, and burn, before the string itself burns, seems very counterintuitive and hard to come up with before a modern…

Pure speculation, but I would guess people first mixed wax and lamp oil in different ways to still get the burning effect of oil, with less of the cost of the oil, then added a wick to help light the oil/wax. Then eventually that product morphed over time to the point where they realized the oil wasn't actually a necessary component

Good idea, it sounds plausible! But it still leaves open the question of how oil lamps were invented. How did someone figure out that a wick would be helpful?

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#73

Post by [deleted] »

School-Cotton wrote: post #69

Somewhat tangential, but can anyone explain or give any insight into how candles were invented? This has always puzzled me. The idea that if you put a piece of string in some wax, and light it on fire, the string will get hot enough to melt wax, and the molten wax will be sucked into it by capillary action, and burn, before the string itself burns, seems very counterintuitive and hard to come up with before a modern…

[deleted]

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#74

Post by teruakohatu »

School-Cotton wrote: post #71
drcode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure speculation, but I would guess people first mixed wax and lamp oil in different ways to still get the burning effect of oil, with less of the cost of the oil, then added a wick to help light the oil/wax. Then eventually that product morphed over time to the point where they realized the oil wasn't actually a necessary component

Good idea, it sounds plausible! But it still leaves open the question of how oil lamps were invented. How did someone figure out that a wick would be helpful?

Rope was around long before the wick. It seems conceivable that rope shavings or pieces or old rope were an easy way to start a fire.

This was then used with oil to make an even better fire starter or means of transferring fire. Eventually someone realises that a rope soaking in oil is easily lit and sustains a flame.

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#75

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

wongarsu wrote: post #29

Obviously something of this magnitude will have blindspots. This tech tree seems to be vastly underselling the impact of advances in metallurgy and precision machining. As well as most of what you might call "basic science". This leads to e.g. the Gas Turbine just appearing out of nowhere, not depending on any previous technology

Metallurgy is by far the most important human technology. That's why "copper", "bronze" and "iron" are used to classify ages.

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#76

Post by dmurray »

School-Cotton wrote: post #71
drcode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure speculation, but I would guess people first mixed wax and lamp oil in different ways to still get the burning effect of oil, with less of the cost of the oil, then added a wick to help light the oil/wax. Then eventually that product morphed over time to the point where they realized the oil wasn't actually a necessary component

Good idea, it sounds plausible! But it still leaves open the question of how oil lamps were invented. How did someone figure out that a wick would be helpful?

Before wicks, how do you burn oil? It's not easy to just ignite a bucket of lamp oil (putting aside what you might make the bucket out of). Probably you soak other fuel like wood or rags in the oil and burn the result. It's not a huge step from there to accidentally find out that you can make do with one piece of wood or cloth or string for a lot of oil, assuming you have something to put the oil in.

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#77

Post by Cordiali »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #63
AlotOfReading wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former archaeologist, so my personal definition of technology is extremely expansive. You don't actually need to nixtamalize maize. It's totally edible without and most americans today don't eat nixtamalized corn outside masa. It's just a process to make it more nutritious and importantly, nearly nutritionally complete. For ancient societies, nixtamalizing had a role similar to things like vaccination do for us…

Andrew Carnegie wrote that one of the things that gave him an advantage over other steel manufacturers was that he hired a chemist to test ore for iron content. By implication, this was something that had never been done before.

I just looked it up, and he was born the year after Mendeleev, who'd go on to design/arrange the periodic table of elements.

I'm guessing they had traditional assaying techniques, just with less accuracy than a contemporary chemist.

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#78

Post by dmurray »

School-Cotton wrote: post #66

Genuine question: how does it make sense that both bread and alcohol fermentation were invented before the domestication of any grain? Were people making bread (and beer!) with gathered seeds?

Wine is much easier than beer, because ripe fruit will ferment on it's own. Even wild animals get drunk sometimes; it's sometimes said that wine was discovered but beer was invented.

So alcohol without any grain is easy, but I don't know the answer for beer. On the other hand, why would you domesticate grain unless you already knew you could turn it into beer or bread?

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#79

Post by arethuza »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #75
wongarsu wrote: post #29

Obviously something of this magnitude will have blindspots. This tech tree seems to be vastly underselling the impact of advances in metallurgy and precision machining. As well as most of what you might call "basic science". This leads to e.g. the Gas Turbine just appearing out of nowhere, not depending on any previous technology

Metallurgy is by far the most important human technology. That's why "copper", "bronze" and "iron" are used to classify ages.

Even more than agriculture?

Re: Historical Tech Tree

#80

Post by mattlondon »

A way to zoom in and out would be very handy. On mobile it is pretty difficult to use as you need to scroll past vast empty spaces.

Pretty cool though and I learnt a thing or two. Thanks

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