5 ms·

Instruction at Oxford is about 5 anvils/year. Think there has been some price inflation since then? Maybe better to compare it to barrels of beer.

edzillion 7y ago
I am not sure what you mean, but an anvil is about as high-tech a device as you get in medieval times. They would be one of the most expensive items in a village.
- madengr 7y ago
  Yes, they are cheap now, that’s why beer would be the better comparison.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    Still not cheap for a quality anvil, good ones can cost more than a used car.
azalemeth 7y ago
Don't forget that many of the colleges had scholarships for the "poor, stupidly bright" kids going back several centuries: the Oxbridge colleges had traditional links with different areas of the country going back surprisingly far in history. For example, writing of Merton (Oxford, founded 1264) "By 1370 the college had been converted to a predominantly monastic society, but by 1384 arrangements were made for the maintenance of five poor secular undergraduates who were to assist in the chapel and who were to act as servitors to the monk-fellows. After achieving competence in grammar, these poor scholars were to study arts and one or two of them might even proceed to civil law." [1] Whilst it is undeniably true that the predominant occupant of an Oxbridge college was a comparatively well-to-do member of society, I suspect that the disparity of fees mentioned reflects the disparity of charges made at the time. [1]: The History of the University of Oxford: Volume II: Late Medieval Oxford by J. I. Catto and T. A. R. Evans, Print ISBN-13: 9780199510122
Aeolun 7y ago
Or 60ish sheep per year.
- dmurray 7y ago
  That's kept up remarkably well: a sheep can go for £150 [0] and tuition at Oxford is £9,250/year[1]. [0] https://www.farmingads.co.uk/black-leicester-longwool-tup-/Livestock/778789 https://www.farmingads.co.uk/black-leicester-longwool-tup-/L... [1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-funding/course-fees?wssl=1 https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-fundi...
  - OJFord 7y ago
    But the price of tuition at Oxford is politically, not market, linked, and so if you graphed this over time it'd be all over the place even just the last twenty years.
    - dmurray 7y ago
      A fair point, it's not really an invariant. Though the price of a sheep is just as politically linked given that most farm income in the UK comes from EU subsidies, not from selling goods [0]. [0] https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/ https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/
ginko 7y ago
Anvils just got a whole lot cheaper.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Anvils represented a large mass of wrought iron, weighing several hundredweight, possibly 300 - 400 pounds (135 - 180 kg). Iron required not just mining, but smelting and working. Coal wasn't widely used until after 1700, so instead charcoal was used for fuel and coking, I need to check sources, but charcoal and coke have roughly the same energy yield per unit mass, and the ratio of coke to ore was about 1:1 in the 1950s. Charcoal itself is yielded from four to five times its mass in original wood. So a 250# anvil, one of middling weight, would have required well over a ton of wood fuel alone. I had fun some time back calculating the firepower of a British Ship of the Line in terms of cords of wood, based on both the cannonballs and the gunpowder (charcoal is an ingredient) involved. I believe it out-massed the ship itself by a considerable margin. Metals are extraordinarily expensive for a pre-industrial society without abundant energy resources. Which is to say, all of them.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  8-10 tons of charcoal per ton of pig iron: https://www.masterresource.org/smil-vaclav/a-forgotten-case-of-fossil-fuel-dependence-the-iron-age-requires-carbon-based-energy-like-it-or-not/ https://www.masterresource.org/smil-vaclav/a-forgotten-case-...

edzillion 7y ago

I am not sure what you mean, but an anvil is about as high-tech a device as you get in medieval times. They would be one of the most expensive items in a village.

madengr 7y ago
Yes, they are cheap now, that’s why beer would be the better comparison.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  Still not cheap for a quality anvil, good ones can cost more than a used car.

azalemeth 7y ago

Don't forget that many of the colleges had scholarships for the "poor, stupidly bright" kids going back several centuries: the Oxbridge colleges had traditional links with different areas of the country going back surprisingly far in history. For example, writing of Merton (Oxford, founded 1264) "By 1370 the college had been converted to a predominantly monastic society, but by 1384 arrangements were made for the maintenance of five poor secular undergraduates who were to assist in the chapel and who were to act as servitors to the monk-fellows. After achieving competence in grammar, these poor scholars were to study arts and one or two of them might even proceed to civil law." [1] Whilst it is undeniably true that the predominant occupant of an Oxbridge college was a comparatively well-to-do member of society, I suspect that the disparity of fees mentioned reflects the disparity of charges made at the time. [1]: The History of the University of Oxford: Volume II: Late Medieval Oxford by J. I. Catto and T. A. R. Evans, Print ISBN-13: 9780199510122

Aeolun 7y ago

Or 60ish sheep per year.

dmurray 7y ago
That's kept up remarkably well: a sheep can go for £150 [0] and tuition at Oxford is £9,250/year[1]. [0] https://www.farmingads.co.uk/black-leicester-longwool-tup-/Livestock/778789 https://www.farmingads.co.uk/black-leicester-longwool-tup-/L... [1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-funding/course-fees?wssl=1 https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/fees-and-fundi...
- OJFord 7y ago
  But the price of tuition at Oxford is politically, not market, linked, and so if you graphed this over time it'd be all over the place even just the last twenty years.
  - dmurray 7y ago
    A fair point, it's not really an invariant. Though the price of a sheep is just as politically linked given that most farm income in the UK comes from EU subsidies, not from selling goods [0]. [0] https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/ https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/

ginko 7y ago

Anvils just got a whole lot cheaper.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Anvils represented a large mass of wrought iron, weighing several hundredweight, possibly 300 - 400 pounds (135 - 180 kg). Iron required not just mining, but smelting and working. Coal wasn't widely used until after 1700, so instead charcoal was used for fuel and coking, I need to check sources, but charcoal and coke have roughly the same energy yield per unit mass, and the ratio of coke to ore was about 1:1 in the 1950s. Charcoal itself is yielded from four to five times its mass in original wood. So a 250# anvil, one of middling weight, would have required well over a ton of wood fuel alone. I had fun some time back calculating the firepower of a British Ship of the Line in terms of cords of wood, based on both the cannonballs and the gunpowder (charcoal is an ingredient) involved. I believe it out-massed the ship itself by a considerable margin. Metals are extraordinarily expensive for a pre-industrial society without abundant energy resources. Which is to say, all of them.

dredmorbius 7y ago
8-10 tons of charcoal per ton of pig iron: https://www.masterresource.org/smil-vaclav/a-forgotten-case-of-fossil-fuel-dependence-the-iron-age-requires-carbon-based-energy-like-it-or-not/ https://www.masterresource.org/smil-vaclav/a-forgotten-case-...