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The early practical steam engines of the 1600's were barely practical. It took experimenting and experience to make them practical for general manufacturing, no
by tabtab 8y ago
The early practical steam engines of the 1600's were barely practical. It took experimenting and experience to make them practical for general manufacturing, not just niches. The same with semiconductors: it took decades of trial and error to make them more practical than vacuum tubes even though their "interesting properties" were known about in the 1800's. (Manufacturing them in consistent form proved daunting.)
If you knew in advanced they had the most promise, sure you could pump R&D into them. But without such foresight, one cannot tell how much promise they actually have. Compare to cold-fusion, flying cars, and hot-fusion reactors: always "just around the corner" but never arrive in a practical sense. Promising-looking ideas don't always actually deliver in the short/medium-term, and vice versa.
Unless they have value in intermediate form, they may not be a wise investment from the perspective of politicians/kings, who prefer results before they retire. Otherwise, they spend resources that don't get them re-elected or that don't give them an edge against enemies.
Eli Whitney's "interchangeable parts" claim was mostly hype when it first appeared. But the semi-interchangeable nature of his products was good enough to make them more useful than the prior approaches. Half-reshaping for fit is better than full re-shaping. It kept his process running long enough to reach full interchangeability through gradual trial and error.
- magduf 8y agoWhile you're correct about everything you wrote here, you totally missed the point of my post. If Rome had somehow avoided total collapse, we probably would have developed our current level of civilization and technology 1000 years earlier, because there was almost no technology being developed from ~400 - 1500, certainly not on the scale that the Romans did things. People went from having real toilets with running water from aqueducts to crapping in a hole in the ground until after the Renaissance, and from making complex buildings out of concrete to just stacking up stones (at best). My claim is that today's society is going to collapse as well, and the survivors' ancestors will be really lucky to get back to this level of development in 1-2000 years.
- Nomentatus 8y agoScholars over the last few decades dispute this, saying that immense advances occurred during these "dark times", in mining related technology in particular during the middle ages. Also clockworks, and much more. The Romans were great implementers but not renowned for innovation. As with so much else, the truth probably lies inbetween.
- tabtab 8y agoLens grinding and gear-work indeed were important advances during the so-called "dark ages". There were also agricultural and metallurgy improvements. Whether such would happen faster or slower under original Roman rule is hard to say. The end of slavery and birth of proto-democracies in Europe is arguably what propelled the industrial revolution. People didn't have to tolerate their lowly lot in life as much. When human labor got more expensive, machines proved their mettle. That increased the rate of mechanical progress until it was self-sustaining.
- Nomentatus 8y agoThe advances were many. However, one can't date the beginning of the end of slavery even in England proper to any earlier than 1772. The advances that underpinned the Industrial Revolution were in place by that time, including the Newcomen steam engine - 1712. It's true that only ten percent at most of England's population were slaves in the Dark to Middle Ages but the rest were Villians/Villeins (serfs), tied to land. It was actually the simultaneous agricultural revolution that made labor cheap because it made vegetables cheap. This revolution had little to do with machinery, with the exception of Tull's horse-drawn seed drill. (Admittedly, a big exception.)
- magduf 8y agoI'm not aware of any kind of lens or gear technology being developed during the dark ages. Are you sure you aren't thinking of the Renaissance? The dark ages are called that because no one was educated and no one wrote anything down. There's very little recorded history during that time, which is where the name comes from.
- jchrisa 8y agoJames C Scott argues that if you got to choose, you might prefer a dark age, because people in so-called dark ages were better off, as they weren't being "managed" by leaders more intent on legibility for social control than the wellbeing of people.
- magduf 8y agoThe quality of life and length of life for people under Roman rule was significantly better than during the dark ages of serfdom. The Romans had working plumbing and specialization of labor; all that went away during the dark ages. They also had learning, and working legal system, written history, etc. The dark ages didn't; that's why it's called the "dark ages": no one bothered to write anything down because they were all uneducated and didn't keep records. It's really weird how modern people are now trying to whitewash the dark ages; I simply fail to see how it's an improvement to abandon education and specialized labor and technology and go work in fields as a serf.
- magduf 8y agoAlso, the leaders during the feudal times were certainly not interested in the wellbeing of people. Where on earth did you get that idea? Feudal lords only cared about their own power and wealth.