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Did these steam engines really have that much torque? I know the Romans used waterwheels with gears and shafts, I would be surprised if these proto-steam engine
by phreeza 5y ago
Did these steam engines really have that much torque? I know the Romans used waterwheels with gears and shafts, I would be surprised if these proto-steam engines were more powerful than those.
- XorNot 5y agoIt's more a comment on why the steam engine didn't revolutionize anything for them: they lacked the pre-requisite technologies to make it viable. You don't just go "steam engine done" - you need metallurgy to make shafts, boilers, pressure containers (specifically, you need steel - Romans had a word for something like steel, but their metallurgy is generally considered to be poor). You need clear glass to make gauges and other management equipment, and to do the chemistry to develop a reproducible metallurgy. The Romans skirted around a lot of these things, but they couldn't have known these were the things they needed: the best steel they ever produced probably wasn't very good, compared to working with bronze, and unless you knew it could get better, there was no reason to think it was revolutionary at the time - i.e. because you could make it a lot better and then get the steam engine and mechanical motion out of it.
- phreeza 5y agoI guess the two things are complementary, if you don't have slaves, it creates a greater incentive to search for technologies that amplify human labor. So in a sense both explanations might be true. If there hadn't been any slaves, the question of "how can we build more durable gears" would have been on more people's mind, which could have lead to better metallurgy earlier on, even without guns/gunpowder or whatever lead to the need for better metal in the enlightenment?