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IMO that [Bessemer process] is really the sticking point that prevented the Ancient Romans from harnessing steam engines, and we had to wait until the early 18t

IMO that [Bessemer process] is really the sticking point that prevented the Ancient Romans from harnessing steam engines, and we had to wait until the early 18th century (1712ish) for the piston steam engine. The ancient romans did know of a rudimentary steam engine though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

smacktoward 7y ago
The explanation I've always heard for why the Romans didn't industrialize had less to do with technology and more to do with economics. The Romans made extensive use of slave labor, so while they might have had the capacity to build engines and machines, there was simply no demand for anyone to do so -- why bother tinkering with machines when you can always just throw more slaves at your problems? Whereas in Britain slavery had mostly been confined to its colonies only, and the institution was abolished entirely between 1807 and 1833 -- the same period when industrialization really took off. A similar effect could be seen in the different ways the American North and South evolved after independence -- the North, which didn't have slaves, industrialized, while the slaveholding South remained stubbornly agricultural right up to the Civil War. The more expensive human muscle power becomes, the more attractive it becomes to replace muscles with machines. And a slave society is a society where muscle power will always be cheap.
- rayhendricks 7y ago
  That does sound like a plausible explanation, however the United states industrialized and also had slavery until 1865 alright the south was less so.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    Apologies, I edited my comment to address the US comparison before I saw your comment. Sorry to have ninja'ed you!
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    While I’m sceptical of the slavery explanation for Rome, the pre civil war US south wasn’t meaningfully industrialised.
- LessDmesg 7y ago
  That's a valid point, of course. However, abolition of slavery is only a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Remember e.g. the Black Plague in Europe which led to a sharp increase in the value of human resources and caused some positive effects like the rise of free cities, powerful guilds of professionals, and the Renaissance of arts and sciences. However, things stopped short of an industrial revolution: it took some 3 or 4 centuries more to come around.
  - buzzkillington 7y ago
    Yes, because by the third generation population had recovered.
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  Who is making the claim that the Romans didn't industrialize? They may not have gone through the industrial revolution, but I find the claim that they didn't have industrial output to be nonsensical/doubly when trying to connect the lack of a "full scale industrial revolution" to slavery, which is some weird myth that refuses to die. Romans heavily implemented new processes for things such as mining, milling, and shipping. The slavery angle doesn't pass any form of smell test. If the claim is true, why would any society that ever had slavery ever do anything? Romans had waterwheels that drove machinery and used generated power to automate many aspects of their society.
  - marbu 7y ago
    Agreed, it's especially worth looking at particular examples of Roman industry, such as Las Medulas gold mines. That said, while we could assume that slavery angle wasn't ruling out industrialization entirely, it wasn't pushing towards it either.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I've read that too, and always were skeptical. The Romans obviously made extensive use of technology, and their peers didn't advance much more quickly than they did, with the massive capitalization of slave and other labors. Nor did the vassal states within the "boundaries" that we find in history books.
- patentatt 7y ago
  I’ve heard it explained that every ‘great’ civilization has a ‘great’ energy source, and that slavery was Rome’s energy source. Much of especially the late Roman empires expansion and conquest can be seen through a lens of needing to capture more slaves. Not a historian, but I’ve heard that argument at least.
- usrusr 7y ago
  The main source for the large-scale applications of mechanical energy that were later powered by steam engines was animals, in ancient Rome just as in pre-industrial England. I've heard that argument before, no technological progress because of slavery, but it's widely oversold. Romans had water-powered grain mills, saw mills, and trip hammers, despite slavery. They did have some famous mine-dewatering systems that were human-powered (slaves), keywords: reverse overshot water wheel. Mind-dewatering has been the original use case for the steam engine, so it's quite likely that those installations are the inspiration for the "no technology because of slavery" argument.
- muro 7y ago
  As Christianity became popular, Rome started to free slaves. Later Rome was no longer a society based on slavery, rather early feudalism. Rome was also short on population after multiple plagues and needed to focus more on food production, rather than having enough manpower to industrialize. After all, they couldn't even put up armies in the size they needed. So at the time they could afford it, they were expanding or fighting civil wars, later they were scrambling to hold it together.
Gibbon1 7y ago
Far as I understand there are two issues. One is before coking was developed you couldn't use coal to produce iron. You needed to use charcoal from trees. Which Italy had a limited supply of. Iron production also competes with using wood as fuel and building supplies. There is also a transportation problem. The inputs for steel manufacture are large. To be economic you needed fuel and ore in close proximity. Sweden was a power house based on high quality iron ore deposits and vast pine forests. Which they cut down pretty much completely. I think India with fast growing tropical forests was also a large exporter of iron. Britain initially had large forests and iron ore. But also huge reserves of coal almost on top of their ore deposits. That allowed them to keep going once the forests were gone.
- aksss 7y ago
  It's an underappreciated irony that coal save the trees and the whales (coal gas supplanted whale oil at a time when whales were being hunted to extinction, deforestation in America was dramatically retarded after coal reduced the need for wood for charcoal). Oil and gas are reducing our reliance on coal. Barring some new discovery about energy sources, nuclear is probably the only thing that can appreciably reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
  - didericis 7y ago
    I think there are way too many technical problems related to transporting energy through the atmosphere, launch expense, and materials science to make any satellite based energy systems viable, but I’ve heard of some really cool concepts, like one that relies on dragging a tether and somehow harvesting huge amounts of energy to beam back to earth. Does anyone know if those are as far off/unrealistic as they sound?
    - AngryData 7y ago
      Large space-based solar installations are feasible, the only big problem is transmission of the power, usually proposed via laser or directed energy beam to the ground. That is technically feasible, but nobody has ever attempted to wirelessly transmit such high levels of sustained energy over long distances. Depending on the transmitter and receiver efficiencies and what wavelengths are used a lot of power could be lost and there are potential disasters like missing your target receiver with your energy beam, or interactions of the air with such a high powered beam, or EM 'pollution' from an imperfect transmitter. As for something like tethering orbiting objects or the like, it is all still theoretical. A space elevator requires similar material technologies and nobody has found a way to feasibly build such a large, strong, and light tether or chain. But that isn't something I would expect to see any time soon.

smacktoward 7y ago

The explanation I've always heard for why the Romans didn't industrialize had less to do with technology and more to do with economics. The Romans made extensive use of slave labor, so while they might have had the capacity to build engines and machines, there was simply no demand for anyone to do so -- why bother tinkering with machines when you can always just throw more slaves at your problems? Whereas in Britain slavery had mostly been confined to its colonies only, and the institution was abolished entirely between 1807 and 1833 -- the same period when industrialization really took off. A similar effect could be seen in the different ways the American North and South evolved after independence -- the North, which didn't have slaves, industrialized, while the slaveholding South remained stubbornly agricultural right up to the Civil War. The more expensive human muscle power becomes, the more attractive it becomes to replace muscles with machines. And a slave society is a society where muscle power will always be cheap.

rayhendricks 7y ago
That does sound like a plausible explanation, however the United states industrialized and also had slavery until 1865 alright the south was less so.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Apologies, I edited my comment to address the US comparison before I saw your comment. Sorry to have ninja'ed you!
- rsynnott 7y ago
  While I’m sceptical of the slavery explanation for Rome, the pre civil war US south wasn’t meaningfully industrialised.
LessDmesg 7y ago
That's a valid point, of course. However, abolition of slavery is only a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Remember e.g. the Black Plague in Europe which led to a sharp increase in the value of human resources and caused some positive effects like the rise of free cities, powerful guilds of professionals, and the Renaissance of arts and sciences. However, things stopped short of an industrial revolution: it took some 3 or 4 centuries more to come around.
- buzzkillington 7y ago
  Yes, because by the third generation population had recovered.
NikolaeVarius 7y ago
Who is making the claim that the Romans didn't industrialize? They may not have gone through the industrial revolution, but I find the claim that they didn't have industrial output to be nonsensical/doubly when trying to connect the lack of a "full scale industrial revolution" to slavery, which is some weird myth that refuses to die. Romans heavily implemented new processes for things such as mining, milling, and shipping. The slavery angle doesn't pass any form of smell test. If the claim is true, why would any society that ever had slavery ever do anything? Romans had waterwheels that drove machinery and used generated power to automate many aspects of their society.
- marbu 7y ago
  Agreed, it's especially worth looking at particular examples of Roman industry, such as Las Medulas gold mines. That said, while we could assume that slavery angle wasn't ruling out industrialization entirely, it wasn't pushing towards it either.
Spooky23 7y ago
I've read that too, and always were skeptical. The Romans obviously made extensive use of technology, and their peers didn't advance much more quickly than they did, with the massive capitalization of slave and other labors. Nor did the vassal states within the "boundaries" that we find in history books.
patentatt 7y ago
I’ve heard it explained that every ‘great’ civilization has a ‘great’ energy source, and that slavery was Rome’s energy source. Much of especially the late Roman empires expansion and conquest can be seen through a lens of needing to capture more slaves. Not a historian, but I’ve heard that argument at least.
usrusr 7y ago
The main source for the large-scale applications of mechanical energy that were later powered by steam engines was animals, in ancient Rome just as in pre-industrial England. I've heard that argument before, no technological progress because of slavery, but it's widely oversold. Romans had water-powered grain mills, saw mills, and trip hammers, despite slavery. They did have some famous mine-dewatering systems that were human-powered (slaves), keywords: reverse overshot water wheel. Mind-dewatering has been the original use case for the steam engine, so it's quite likely that those installations are the inspiration for the "no technology because of slavery" argument.
muro 7y ago
As Christianity became popular, Rome started to free slaves. Later Rome was no longer a society based on slavery, rather early feudalism. Rome was also short on population after multiple plagues and needed to focus more on food production, rather than having enough manpower to industrialize. After all, they couldn't even put up armies in the size they needed. So at the time they could afford it, they were expanding or fighting civil wars, later they were scrambling to hold it together.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Far as I understand there are two issues. One is before coking was developed you couldn't use coal to produce iron. You needed to use charcoal from trees. Which Italy had a limited supply of. Iron production also competes with using wood as fuel and building supplies. There is also a transportation problem. The inputs for steel manufacture are large. To be economic you needed fuel and ore in close proximity. Sweden was a power house based on high quality iron ore deposits and vast pine forests. Which they cut down pretty much completely. I think India with fast growing tropical forests was also a large exporter of iron. Britain initially had large forests and iron ore. But also huge reserves of coal almost on top of their ore deposits. That allowed them to keep going once the forests were gone.

aksss 7y ago
It's an underappreciated irony that coal save the trees and the whales (coal gas supplanted whale oil at a time when whales were being hunted to extinction, deforestation in America was dramatically retarded after coal reduced the need for wood for charcoal). Oil and gas are reducing our reliance on coal. Barring some new discovery about energy sources, nuclear is probably the only thing that can appreciably reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
- didericis 7y ago
  I think there are way too many technical problems related to transporting energy through the atmosphere, launch expense, and materials science to make any satellite based energy systems viable, but I’ve heard of some really cool concepts, like one that relies on dragging a tether and somehow harvesting huge amounts of energy to beam back to earth. Does anyone know if those are as far off/unrealistic as they sound?
  - AngryData 7y ago
    Large space-based solar installations are feasible, the only big problem is transmission of the power, usually proposed via laser or directed energy beam to the ground. That is technically feasible, but nobody has ever attempted to wirelessly transmit such high levels of sustained energy over long distances. Depending on the transmitter and receiver efficiencies and what wavelengths are used a lot of power could be lost and there are potential disasters like missing your target receiver with your energy beam, or interactions of the air with such a high powered beam, or EM 'pollution' from an imperfect transmitter. As for something like tethering orbiting objects or the like, it is all still theoretical. A space elevator requires similar material technologies and nobody has found a way to feasibly build such a large, strong, and light tether or chain. But that isn't something I would expect to see any time soon.