4 ms·

The Mechanical Transmission of Power (2013)

67 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

virtualritz 7y ago
I always wonder how German words end up with these weird changes when they get replicated in English. It seems someone got it wrong and other authors just replicated (incl. this one). It's Stangenkunst (no 'en' postfix)[1]. This literally translates to "the art of rods". The postfix makes it sound like the plural of the word in a Scandinavian language or maybe Dutch. But it's neither. The German plural (not used) would be Stangenkünste (Stangenkuenste, with the umlaut written out). This would translate the "arts of rods" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatrod_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatrod_system
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Keep in mind that "art" had a meaning closer to "technology" than "creative expression" ("fine arts"), as it does today. Much the same way as "science" referred to all knowledge, regardless of whether it was "scientific" (Baconian method of experimentation and observation) or not. Not all translation is literal, and "rod mechanism" rather than "rod arts" is an arguably better translation. Though I can't help but think of Neal Stephenson's "rod logic" from Diamond Age. Or perhaps the Curta mechanical calculator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta
  - detaro 7y ago
    There's a few remaining traces of that use of "art"/"Kunst" in modern language: "state of the art"/"nach allen Regeln der Kunst", "artisan" for a skilled craftsperson, ... Specific to mining, "Kunst" both was used for a specific mechanism and the overall technology and its mastery.
    - phreeza 7y ago
      I wonder if in the past maybe the plural of kunst as in the specific mechanism was Kunsten, and the plural of the genre/knowledge was Künste, and only the latter has survived. That could explain why Stangenkunsten seems to be used in the English literature.
naikrovek 7y ago
In my youth, I believed that people hundreds of years earlier were not as intelligent as modern folks. I was obviously very wrong. Their inventions simply used the scientific awareness of the time (I usually call that a "scientific vocabulary" and I don't know if that's the right way to put it.) My point is that they were just as smart and industrious as any other people of any other time, and like everyone of every time, they were limited by the resources available at the time.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  People have changed little evolutionarially over a few centuries (though the notion that all adaptation has ceased is all but certainly false). Factors such as nutrition, disease, and stress may well affect overall intelligence, if such a thing can be reasonably measured, and there are notions such as the Flynn Effect suggesting increases to IQ over the course of the 20th century (though more recent work suggests this may have slowed or halted). Modern capabilities owe much to earlier work, recorded knowledge, a much larger workforce devoted to innovation, the capabilities afforded by tremendously increased energy utilisation (including more and purer materials, precision, control, etc.), as well as the (often slow) abandonment of earlier notions, particularly those endorsed by or supporting specific religious or nationalist/tribalistic notions. My view is that the net total intelligence has changed relatively little, but that opportunities, knowledge, and sheer physical capacity have increased tremendously.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  Yes, I remember too when I was younger I had the impession that earlier generations were somehow naive, but boy was I wrong.
- pjscott 7y ago
  A small minority of unusually smart inventors is all you really need to explain impressive past technological achievements. This doesn't really prove anything one way or the other. I'd be surprised if people hundreds of years ago were as smart on average as people today, just because of the much higher rates of malnutrition back then.
madengr 7y ago
The woodcuts of the mining machinery remind me of a book I obsessed over as a child. Pick it up if you have kids. Written by L. Sprauge De Camp too, whose was a prolific writer like Asimov. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/man-and-power-the-story-of-power-from-the-pyramids-to-the-atomic-age-a-deluxe-golden-book/8398952/item/12876051/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/man-and-power-the-story-of-pow... Lawrence, KS had a mechanical transmission shaft running from the river front, down town for industrial power transmission. Of course replaced by generators at the same location. Excellent tour of the power plant if you are in the area.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  NB: "Sprague", with a 'u' before the finial 'e' rather than following 'a'. You might find a copy in a nearby library: https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-and-power-the-story-of-power-from-the-pyramids-to-the-atomic-age/oclc/1239492 https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-and-power-the-story-of-po... IA have a copy for lending: https://archive.org/details/energypowerhowma00deca https://archive.org/details/energypowerhowma00deca
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dredmorbius 7y ago
A collection of thoughts.... De Re Metallica, mentioned in the article, was written by Georg Acricola in the 16th century. It was not translated from the original (and highly idiosyncratic) Latin until the early 20th century, by a young mining engineer and his wife, Herbert Clark and Lou Henry Hoover. Yes, later the President of the US. You can read their translation at (or download it from) the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/georgiusagricola00agri/page/n4/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/georgiusagricola00agri/page/n4/m... The book remained in use through the 20th century, discussing both mining and metallurgy. Stellnungkunst is one form of power distribution, of motive energy across space. There's another mode, which distributes force across an area, through distributed water (or other fluid) pressure. This was widely used in the 19th century, and variants remain in use -- your dentist's drills and other implements, and an auto repair garage's air-powered tools are examples, as well as the mechanisms of some lifts. Low Tech Magazine has an article on this method as well: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulator-power-water-networks.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulato... As I've noted below, the notion of rod-based mechanisms is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's "rod logic" from Diamond Age, as well as complex mechanical calculators such as the Curta, developed in the 1930s and still in use through the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulator-power-water-networks.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulato...
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  From the wiki article >It was not long before Herzstark's financial backers, thinking they had got from him all they needed, contrived to force him out by reducing to zero the value of all of the company's existing stock, including his one-third interest.[1] These were the same people who had earlier elected not to have Herzstark transfer ownership of his patents to the company, so that, should anyone sue, they would be suing Herzstark, not the company, thereby protecting themselves at Herzstark's expense. This ploy now backfired: without the patent rights, they could manufacture nothing. Herzstark was able to negotiate a new agreement, and money continued to flow to him. Plus ça change with startups...
anonsivalley652 7y ago
Neat. Amish use compressed air for power within a building. Nowadays, I wonder why we don't have a hydrogen grid instead of an electrical one to eliminate transmission losses.
- brians 7y ago
  Exploding streets, thunderstorms, whoops there went the dog. And friction still gives you transmission losses.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Natural gas distribution is pretty prevalent in areas where homes are heated. (and similar, not all systems are methane)
- pedrocr 7y ago
  How do you imagine we could make hydrogen distribution better than electrical grids with their ~5% losses? Hydrogen is notorious for leaking easily and converting electricity->hydrogen->electricity is incredibly inefficient. We'd have a lot more transmission loss with hydrogen than even with a very poor electrical grid, while also making the whole system more expensive and dangerous.
- detaro 7y ago
  Hydrogen is really really annoying (=dangerous) to handle, you would not want it in a public grid. Concepts that synthesize hydrocarbons to be injected are more realistic (and would allow re-use of existing consumers or even mixing with natural gas), but of course rely on efficient and cheap-enough ways of doing the synthesis being developed, beating directly used electricity might be hard. For over-capacity uses efficiency is maybe not so important.
  - anonsivalley652 7y ago
    Somehow we manage to deal with gasoline and natural gas just fine and power grid with hundreds of thousands of volts. Hydrogen infrastructure is a solvable problem of fittings, protection systems, piping, odorants and storage. The Japanese government is betting on it heavily. You complete ignore and sweep under the rug the loses of existing infrastructure by proposing creating more GHGs. Where are you going to magically get all of that energy to make that not-FF FF? More FFs? What's the point?
z3t4 7y ago
Makes you understand how revolutionary electromagnetism/electricity is. Much easier to transfer power via a cable, almost magical.
dang 7y ago
A thread from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811626 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5159884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5159884

67 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

I always wonder how German words end up with these weird changes when they get replicated in English. It seems someone got it wrong and other authors just replicated (incl. this one). It's Stangenkunst (no 'en' postfix)[1]. This literally translates to "the art of rods". The postfix makes it sound like the plural of the word in a Scandinavian language or maybe Dutch. But it's neither. The German plural (not used) would be Stangenkünste (Stangenkuenste, with the umlaut written out). This would translate the "arts of rods" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatrod_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatrod_system

dredmorbius 7y ago
Keep in mind that "art" had a meaning closer to "technology" than "creative expression" ("fine arts"), as it does today. Much the same way as "science" referred to all knowledge, regardless of whether it was "scientific" (Baconian method of experimentation and observation) or not. Not all translation is literal, and "rod mechanism" rather than "rod arts" is an arguably better translation. Though I can't help but think of Neal Stephenson's "rod logic" from Diamond Age. Or perhaps the Curta mechanical calculator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta
- detaro 7y ago
  There's a few remaining traces of that use of "art"/"Kunst" in modern language: "state of the art"/"nach allen Regeln der Kunst", "artisan" for a skilled craftsperson, ... Specific to mining, "Kunst" both was used for a specific mechanism and the overall technology and its mastery.
  - phreeza 7y ago
    I wonder if in the past maybe the plural of kunst as in the specific mechanism was Kunsten, and the plural of the genre/knowledge was Künste, and only the latter has survived. That could explain why Stangenkunsten seems to be used in the English literature.

naikrovek 7y ago

In my youth, I believed that people hundreds of years earlier were not as intelligent as modern folks. I was obviously very wrong. Their inventions simply used the scientific awareness of the time (I usually call that a "scientific vocabulary" and I don't know if that's the right way to put it.) My point is that they were just as smart and industrious as any other people of any other time, and like everyone of every time, they were limited by the resources available at the time.

dredmorbius 7y ago
People have changed little evolutionarially over a few centuries (though the notion that all adaptation has ceased is all but certainly false). Factors such as nutrition, disease, and stress may well affect overall intelligence, if such a thing can be reasonably measured, and there are notions such as the Flynn Effect suggesting increases to IQ over the course of the 20th century (though more recent work suggests this may have slowed or halted). Modern capabilities owe much to earlier work, recorded knowledge, a much larger workforce devoted to innovation, the capabilities afforded by tremendously increased energy utilisation (including more and purer materials, precision, control, etc.), as well as the (often slow) abandonment of earlier notions, particularly those endorsed by or supporting specific religious or nationalist/tribalistic notions. My view is that the net total intelligence has changed relatively little, but that opportunities, knowledge, and sheer physical capacity have increased tremendously.
onemoresoop 7y ago
Yes, I remember too when I was younger I had the impession that earlier generations were somehow naive, but boy was I wrong.
pjscott 7y ago
A small minority of unusually smart inventors is all you really need to explain impressive past technological achievements. This doesn't really prove anything one way or the other. I'd be surprised if people hundreds of years ago were as smart on average as people today, just because of the much higher rates of malnutrition back then.

madengr 7y ago

The woodcuts of the mining machinery remind me of a book I obsessed over as a child. Pick it up if you have kids. Written by L. Sprauge De Camp too, whose was a prolific writer like Asimov. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/man-and-power-the-story-of-power-from-the-pyramids-to-the-atomic-age-a-deluxe-golden-book/8398952/item/12876051/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/man-and-power-the-story-of-pow... Lawrence, KS had a mechanical transmission shaft running from the river front, down town for industrial power transmission. Of course replaced by generators at the same location. Excellent tour of the power plant if you are in the area.

dredmorbius 7y ago
NB: "Sprague", with a 'u' before the finial 'e' rather than following 'a'. You might find a copy in a nearby library: https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-and-power-the-story-of-power-from-the-pyramids-to-the-atomic-age/oclc/1239492 https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-and-power-the-story-of-po... IA have a copy for lending: https://archive.org/details/energypowerhowma00deca https://archive.org/details/energypowerhowma00deca
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dredmorbius 7y ago

A collection of thoughts.... De Re Metallica, mentioned in the article, was written by Georg Acricola in the 16th century. It was not translated from the original (and highly idiosyncratic) Latin until the early 20th century, by a young mining engineer and his wife, Herbert Clark and Lou Henry Hoover. Yes, later the President of the US. You can read their translation at (or download it from) the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/georgiusagricola00agri/page/n4/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/georgiusagricola00agri/page/n4/m... The book remained in use through the 20th century, discussing both mining and metallurgy. Stellnungkunst is one form of power distribution, of motive energy across space. There's another mode, which distributes force across an area, through distributed water (or other fluid) pressure. This was widely used in the 19th century, and variants remain in use -- your dentist's drills and other implements, and an auto repair garage's air-powered tools are examples, as well as the mechanisms of some lifts. Low Tech Magazine has an article on this method as well: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulator-power-water-networks.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulato... As I've noted below, the notion of rod-based mechanisms is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's "rod logic" from Diamond Age, as well as complex mechanical calculators such as the Curta, developed in the 1930s and still in use through the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulator-power-water-networks.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/03/hydraulic-accumulato...

selimthegrim 7y ago
From the wiki article >It was not long before Herzstark's financial backers, thinking they had got from him all they needed, contrived to force him out by reducing to zero the value of all of the company's existing stock, including his one-third interest.[1] These were the same people who had earlier elected not to have Herzstark transfer ownership of his patents to the company, so that, should anyone sue, they would be suing Herzstark, not the company, thereby protecting themselves at Herzstark's expense. This ploy now backfired: without the patent rights, they could manufacture nothing. Herzstark was able to negotiate a new agreement, and money continued to flow to him. Plus ça change with startups...

anonsivalley652 7y ago

Neat. Amish use compressed air for power within a building. Nowadays, I wonder why we don't have a hydrogen grid instead of an electrical one to eliminate transmission losses.

brians 7y ago
Exploding streets, thunderstorms, whoops there went the dog. And friction still gives you transmission losses.
maxerickson 7y ago
Natural gas distribution is pretty prevalent in areas where homes are heated. (and similar, not all systems are methane)
pedrocr 7y ago
How do you imagine we could make hydrogen distribution better than electrical grids with their ~5% losses? Hydrogen is notorious for leaking easily and converting electricity->hydrogen->electricity is incredibly inefficient. We'd have a lot more transmission loss with hydrogen than even with a very poor electrical grid, while also making the whole system more expensive and dangerous.
detaro 7y ago
Hydrogen is really really annoying (=dangerous) to handle, you would not want it in a public grid. Concepts that synthesize hydrocarbons to be injected are more realistic (and would allow re-use of existing consumers or even mixing with natural gas), but of course rely on efficient and cheap-enough ways of doing the synthesis being developed, beating directly used electricity might be hard. For over-capacity uses efficiency is maybe not so important.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Somehow we manage to deal with gasoline and natural gas just fine and power grid with hundreds of thousands of volts. Hydrogen infrastructure is a solvable problem of fittings, protection systems, piping, odorants and storage. The Japanese government is betting on it heavily. You complete ignore and sweep under the rug the loses of existing infrastructure by proposing creating more GHGs. Where are you going to magically get all of that energy to make that not-FF FF? More FFs? What's the point?

z3t4 7y ago

Makes you understand how revolutionary electromagnetism/electricity is. Much easier to transfer power via a cable, almost magical.

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8811626 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5159884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5159884