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All inventions have prerequisites that people don't think about. The steam engine is the first invention people think about if they were time travel, scribble s
by pippy 7y ago
All inventions have prerequisites that people don't think about. The steam engine is the first invention people think about if they were time travel, scribble something on a bit of paper and become rich. You'll need several boring things that need to happen for you to make a working steam engine.
You'll need the materials. A lot of strong, cheap steel. Preheated blast furnaces weren't invented until the early 1800's. Thomas Savery had the idea for the steam engine almost a hundred years before the Watt, but Savery's engines kept blowing up because the lack of strong steel.
You'll also need to overcome trade barriers too. You'll also need cheap coal (ironically requiring steam engines to become cost effective) and high quality iron ore (ideally from Sweden). Through out most of history, empires hated trading as it could create vulnerabilities.
There's also the market prerequisites, no one wants your expensive steam engine if a donkey pulling a wheel is cheaper and more reliable.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agohttp://www.thetoasterproject.org/ http://www.thetoasterproject.org/
- obastani 7y agoI think the market prerequisites are a key point overlooked by the article. There has to be some application where a low-performing version of the invention is already useful for it to be worth it to develop better-performing ones. For example, in the case of Watt's steam engine, versions were already used for the application of pumping water out of mines [1]. This application made it economically worthwhile for Watt to work on his improved steam engine. Of course, once the improved version was available, it found many new applications beyond the original one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine
- hammock 7y agoThe usefulness of a skunkworks-type operation is that you can fund R&D that has no market need, thus unnaturally accelerating the progress of technological innovation.
- kiba 7y agoSkunkworks usually have a customer, which may be the government or the company in question to fulfill their strategic needs. SR-71 Blackbird and F-117 Stealth bomber come to mind.
- hammock 7y agoOf course they have a customer in the sense that someone is funding them and owns the product, however I would propose that there is not necessarily an immediate "need" or requirements given, and there is a high tolerance for undirected or self-directed research.
- eru 7y agoThe atmospheric steam engines were competitive with Watt's type for a long time. The fees charged for Watt's patent were part of the reason, but not the only one.
- BenoitEssiambre 7y agoAlso if you want to make them efficient you will have to invent thermodynamics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_L%C3%A9onard_Sadi_Carnot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_L%C3%A9onard_Sadi_Carn...
- virtuous_signal 7y agoThinking about this and going down the wikipedia rabbit hole of inventions scares me. I've heard the Dark Ages happened in part because society collectively forgot how to re-create the advanced technology from ancients, so once things inevitably broke, people just became that less efficient. Another area which strikes me as complex as metalworking is textiles. What if we forgot how to use the machines for harvesting cotton, spinning it into threads and then weaving it into clothes? I wouldn't be able to help at all in such a catastrophe, despite holding advanced degrees. I'm afraid I wouldn't even know how to fashion a spindle, or operate one. Hopefully the internet has enough information that this doesn't happen again?
- unethical_ban 7y agoI agree. My hope is that I am as ignorant about our society's capacity to bootstrap important technologies, as I am in my own capacity to do so.
- segfaultbuserr 7y agoIt reminds me about a book (Kevin Kelly?) that discussed technology transfer - it turns out that the process isn't straightforward at all, even if you already own the technology. Any existing technology is a chain of interdependence, transferring it requires one to rebootstrap everything from scratch. It has great practical implications (not only limited to space colony), one example is developing an industrial society in a developing country - even with full technological resources from developed nations, is it possible to skip the catastrophic heavy pollution from the crude industry that historically plagued the developed world, and instead, start directly at a more modern industry system that produces less pollution? The answer is unclear, some can be avoided, but others, possibly not.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoJoin your local makerspace/fablab. And a copy of https://www.amazon.com/Primitive-Technology-Book-Earth-Skills/dp/0879059117 https://www.amazon.com/Primitive-Technology-Book-Earth-Skill... Not a referral link
- 7y ago
- n4r9 7y agoThe idea for using steam to create motion of some kind existed since the ancient Greeks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile But you're right, to make it practically useful required better materials.
- fernly 7y agoThe aeolipile was literally the first item discussed in the OP.
- hooande 7y agoI kind of agree with this, but only kind of. If you went back to say the 1600s and could build a working steam engine, whoever was in charge would quickly over come the market factors. They had steel hundreds of years ago and there would be enough of an economic incentive to learn how to make more of it in a hurry Market forces work in both directions. If I have a chance to 10X my society's output, I'll do a lot to make it happen
- roywiggins 7y agoThe book "The Perfectionists" goes into some detail on how the invention of machine tools were both spurred by other progress and an absolute requirement for it. Much, much, much of the industrial revolution was really a revolution in manufacturing. Without being able to churn out machine parts that fit together without filing them to fit by hand, the industrial revolution just wouldn't have worked the way it did. Through out most of history, empires hated trading as it could create vulnerabilities. That doesn't track with anything I've read about the great empires. They all got rich off trading, and having a big empire enables long distance trade within your empire. Rome traded with Han China and could not get enough silk. One marker in the archaeological record of the fall of the Western Roman empire is the almost complete contraction of trading networks.
- uk_programmer 7y agoThere were steam engines in antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile Some argue that inventions like these at the time weren't improved upon because (slave) labour was cheap. But you are right it could be because other technology at the time didn't exist.
- jmmcd 7y agoYou might enjoy reading the article.
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- bloak 7y agoThe Incas didn't even want the wheel. They had children's toys with wheels, but they didn't use wheels for anything serious. Or so I've heard. Presumably a llama carrying 50 kg on its back is cheaper and more reliable.
- atq2119 7y agoGeography pays a big role here presumably. The wheel isn't very useful if you live in the mountains and don't already have roads...
- kragen 7y agoThe Inka built and maintained an extensive road system. The wheel was not, as far as we know, in use in toys in Tawantinsuyu, as the grandparent comment suggested; it was in use in toys in Mexico, thousands of kilometers away, where there were no llamas. (Some North American peoples used dogs as pack animals, but I don't know if the peoples with wheels did that.) I think it's just very difficult to make a rolling wheel. It's not like the Flintstones and the Far Side where you bang some rocks together and get a stone disc that you can then slot into your wheelbarrow (or, say, ride like a unicycle). Metals help a lot, and even bronze came fairly late to America, which didn't develop iron smelting until after Columbus. In Asia, the first (solid wood) wheels date to the Copper Age, close to the time of the domestication of the horse (and the donkey), which presumably provided much of the incentive. Those wheels are fairly fragile, and chariots had to wait for the wood-spoked wheel, which is much more complex. But spoked wheels are expensive to build; even most of Africa didn't make much use of wheels until the colonial age, despite having iron, which the Americans lacked.
- tinkthank 7y agoAFAIK the incas did know about the wheel, and could have presumably made them out of wood, but chose not to due to religious reasons. They venerated the sun and its shape, thus using something circular for such mundane purposes would have been tantamount to blasphemy. source: some tour guide in belize.