Assuming it is about Steam engine being invented during Roman times, not to mention they had slaves for doing literally everything
Felczer on
The most important difference is the British built a political/economical system where if an aristocrat wanted to make more money they needed to innovate and invest, because workforce was limited and free to do whatever they want.
A roman aristocrat could always just buy more slaves.
BasedAustralhungary on
And you didn’t think about the most important point of all of those: the lack of a capitalist mindset to develop technology to serve production, that is, to build industry.
If you connect all these dots, there is one place that would have been capable of early industrialization, but the lack of a mindset of their own prevented them from reaching the right conclusions to promote industrial development.
The case I am referring to is that of the Song Dynasty in China, which ruled during a period when metallurgy developed to such a sophisticated level that Chinese steel in the 12th and 13th centuries was far superior to English steel in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
ikonfedera on
Is going back in time and destroying all the steel sources the solution to global warming?
bhbhbhhh on
People don’t know that waterwheels were the core of power generation until later on.
trebron55 on
Steel production was more of an accident than a knowledge. It’s theorized that a few workshops actually had a concept how to make it reliably, but the knowledge often died with the local master smith. They definitely didn’t have proper crucibles to make it consistently. What steel they had was more of an accident (a lucky mixture of ingredients and/or high quality ore with natural trace elements for alloying).
Many people mention the slaves but during Pax Romana, especially around its end and later were rather rare and pricey. Specialized slaves that could be used for workshop jobs were especially expensive and not at all easy to find. The rise and spread of Christianity actually reduced the number of slaves to almost null, which with the crisis of the third century and the subsequent resurgence should have been a push for industrialization but what we see is deurbanization and general decay of industries itself. Due to theological-philosophical changes in the elite’s thinking.–> they went for an idealized theologist-philosophist ideal, neglecting the worldly things.
An_Oxygen_Consumer on
The early steam engines were extremely inefficient, using oxen to move pumps was more economically sound. The only situation in which an early steam engine was useful was if you had tons of cheap combustible material available, that is at a coal mine. Coal was only being mined because woods had basically disappeared in early modern Western Europe (and china), so who could used coal. Europeans had also been tinkering with mechanical instrument for fun for centuries (early mechanical clocks were not better than sun clocks, but were built only as a show of wealth, plus the early modern passion for weird machines and, usually fake, automata). Gunpowder had also forced European metallurgist to learn how to make precise cylinders able to withstand high pressure.
By comparison the Roman lacked:
* need for coal, as olive oil and oil production waste was largely used as an alternative and cheap source of heat.
* No idea of how to build pressure resistant cylinders
* Not a lot of interest in machines.
Any-Cat21 on
Sorry, I don’t understand the meme, who are you supposed to be trying to refute?
ByronsLastStand on
“Steam engine” was invented by the Greeks, and a few further designs followed but didn’t go anywhere much. The ones invented in Britain were not only more advanced, but also tied to economically useful activities, in a country with plenty of wool that could be spun and plenty of coal that could power it.
9 Comments
Assuming it is about Steam engine being invented during Roman times, not to mention they had slaves for doing literally everything
The most important difference is the British built a political/economical system where if an aristocrat wanted to make more money they needed to innovate and invest, because workforce was limited and free to do whatever they want.
A roman aristocrat could always just buy more slaves.
And you didn’t think about the most important point of all of those: the lack of a capitalist mindset to develop technology to serve production, that is, to build industry.
If you connect all these dots, there is one place that would have been capable of early industrialization, but the lack of a mindset of their own prevented them from reaching the right conclusions to promote industrial development.
The case I am referring to is that of the Song Dynasty in China, which ruled during a period when metallurgy developed to such a sophisticated level that Chinese steel in the 12th and 13th centuries was far superior to English steel in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Is going back in time and destroying all the steel sources the solution to global warming?
People don’t know that waterwheels were the core of power generation until later on.
Steel production was more of an accident than a knowledge. It’s theorized that a few workshops actually had a concept how to make it reliably, but the knowledge often died with the local master smith. They definitely didn’t have proper crucibles to make it consistently. What steel they had was more of an accident (a lucky mixture of ingredients and/or high quality ore with natural trace elements for alloying).
Many people mention the slaves but during Pax Romana, especially around its end and later were rather rare and pricey. Specialized slaves that could be used for workshop jobs were especially expensive and not at all easy to find. The rise and spread of Christianity actually reduced the number of slaves to almost null, which with the crisis of the third century and the subsequent resurgence should have been a push for industrialization but what we see is deurbanization and general decay of industries itself. Due to theological-philosophical changes in the elite’s thinking.–> they went for an idealized theologist-philosophist ideal, neglecting the worldly things.
The early steam engines were extremely inefficient, using oxen to move pumps was more economically sound. The only situation in which an early steam engine was useful was if you had tons of cheap combustible material available, that is at a coal mine. Coal was only being mined because woods had basically disappeared in early modern Western Europe (and china), so who could used coal. Europeans had also been tinkering with mechanical instrument for fun for centuries (early mechanical clocks were not better than sun clocks, but were built only as a show of wealth, plus the early modern passion for weird machines and, usually fake, automata). Gunpowder had also forced European metallurgist to learn how to make precise cylinders able to withstand high pressure.
By comparison the Roman lacked:
* need for coal, as olive oil and oil production waste was largely used as an alternative and cheap source of heat.
* No idea of how to build pressure resistant cylinders
* Not a lot of interest in machines.
Sorry, I don’t understand the meme, who are you supposed to be trying to refute?
“Steam engine” was invented by the Greeks, and a few further designs followed but didn’t go anywhere much. The ones invented in Britain were not only more advanced, but also tied to economically useful activities, in a country with plenty of wool that could be spun and plenty of coal that could power it.