12 ms·

I read Wendell Berry quite a lot, and in one essay (I forget which) he posed a question, "where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple

I read Wendell Berry quite a lot, and in one essay (I forget which) he posed a question, "where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines", or something like that. I think this washing machine is an answer to that question. What if many of our machines used human power like they did 100 years ago, but were made far more efficient and effective than they were 100 years ago? One of the biggest health problems in America is lack of physical exercise. Biking for transportation, having a manual washing machine, etc would go a long way towards fixing that problem, while also reducing our use of electricity, gasoline, etc.

ch4s3 5y ago
That's all well and good, but the revolution of motorized washing machines and dishwashers was to free western women of having to spend large parts of their days washing things. Making it hand powered may shorten the time vs a wash tub, but is still going to miss the positive social outcomes. [EDIT] I don't mean to be dismissive of this pretty cool improvement on manual washing. It seems like it will be really helpful for a lot of people until their economic situation improves.
- frutiger 5y ago
  Indeed. And having women in the workforce is literally worth trillions of dollars, far exceeding the costs of “obese Americans”.
  - koolba 5y ago
    IIUC the angle here, it’s not that they don’t go to work. It’s that rather than going to the gym, they’ll work out as they do their laundry at home.
  - eagerpace 5y ago
    I'm not a fan of the gym, as I prefer to stay active other ways, but I often wonder if the effort and energy expended there could be put to better use? This is perhaps an example of that.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      How many men do you need before you have one horsepower? One horsepower is .7 kW. A horse working for an hour nonstop would be .7kW hrs. Now, how many men do you need working constantly before you have comparable strength to a 20kW generator sipping a little bit of gasoline?
      - kaybe 5y ago
        Here is an olympic cyclist barely managing to toast bread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ Electricity is nice.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        The idea that a singular man can output a horsepower (~700W) for enough time to toast bread is still very impressive to me! Clearly an Olympic-level athlete. That being said, I can't help but imagine that with some optimization, it could make the electricity generation a bit easier (maybe more RPM but less torque needed?). Clearly, the video shows him straining and pushing. Power == RPM * Torque, converting to less torque but more RPM with gears probably would be easier.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - rhn_mk1 5y ago
        > A horse working for an hour nonstop would be .7kW hrs. More like 8.4kWh. > data from the horse pulling contest at the 1925 Iowa State Fair showing that peak mechanical power output of a horse is 12-14.9 HP. https://doi.org/10.1038/364195a0 https://doi.org/10.1038/364195a0
        Animats 5y ago
        That's peak. Average is much lower. 1 HP is supposed to be a horse on a treadmill for a full day of work. A horse in acceleration is outputting far more than that for a few seconds.
- neartheplain 5y ago
  On the other hand, manual laundry was one of only a few common means of self-support for 18th century working-class women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9OyW4Jx_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9OyW4Jx_g
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Crappy jobs shouldn't have to exist just for the sake of desperate people being able to have one. A justice issue demands a justice solution, not the scraps that fall from the table. See also: the current argument raging around minimum wage in the US, and whether the the millions of grocery-bagging and burger-flipping gigs are supposed to be something you can actually survive on, or are they just meant to be short term jobs for middle class teenagers who have no dependents or living expenses to cover? Or maybe we don't love this reality but there's nothing anyone can do about it because The Market has declared that these jobs are worth less than a living wage so whatever (obligatory FDR meme: https://imgur.com/gallery/SvuwZrm https://imgur.com/gallery/SvuwZrm).
    - neartheplain 5y ago
      Yes, washing clothes was a crappy job, just like coal mining was/is in certain parts of Appalchia. That said, it was an important and necessary job in its day, and it generated valuable income for workers with no other useful skills. Removing crappy jobs and the income they generate is rarely good for the laid-off workers, especially in the absence of any social safety net. I wonder how many laundresses became washing machine mechanics, or laundromat owner-proprietors. I'm guessing the answer is "not many." I'd certainly agree that both coal miners and laundresses deserved better wages and working conditions.
      - mikepurvis 5y ago
        Absolutely, but of course "better wages and working conditions" has a time and place element to it as well. Coal mining conditions were obviously terrible in hindsight, but my impression is that they were considered "good jobs" at the time, with union protection and so on (depictions in media like October Sky notwithstanding). In any case, it appears that the purpose of this human-powered laundry machine is not to put anyone doing laundry for pay out of work, but rather to allow some combination of doing laundry at home cheaper, faster, or with less physical strain (a crank may be more ergonomic than being bent over a tub, and your hands don't have to be in wet soapy water the whole time).
- lbriner 5y ago
  But wasn't the counter-intuitive result that women spent more time washing since it was so "easy" now, they could wash things much more frequently. I can't find the reference but I did read it recently.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    If the time spent stays the same but more stuff gets washed that's still a win for living standards. If you reduce the cost of something then that labor gets spent elsewhere, maybe on more of the same but then you have more to show for it. Labor hours are fairly fungible at scale like that. Your cuts are less likely to get infected when your clothes don't have the manure you put on the field last week on them.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    No [1], that's not the case. Even while we own more clothing and wash it more often, it still takes less time. You can also do other tasks while a washing machine is running. [1]https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfr/4919087.0011.104/--deconstructing-laundry-gendered-technologies?rgn=main;view=fulltext https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfr/4919087.0011.104/--deconstr...
    - suyjuris 5y ago
      I do not think that your source supports your claim, although I might have missed something. To the contrary, it states: > Although the physical labor of laundry was lessened somewhat by the machines, the actual time housewives allocated to their family laundry increased. (This is claimed to be the result of housewives being responsible for the entirety of laundry, instead of employing help, however.)
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    That's the Jevons Paradox, generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> "where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" The bicycle, I guess. Thank god for bicycles. We could use more inventions like that.
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  I can't find a citation for this, but a favorite quote of mine from Twain(?) is: "The bicycle is unique in that it's engine is also it's cargo."
  - deltarholamda 5y ago
    I always liked Steve Jobs's description of the Mac as "a bicycle for the mind." It's not like he was unaware of the Ferrari or whatever, he chose to use a human-powered vehicle for his analogy.
  - hiddencache 5y ago
    Until the invention of the pogo stick. Which the internet informs me was only a few years later...
- hiddencache 5y ago
  Apparently the combustion engine was invented before the bicycle as bikes need ball bearings to function smoothly, which also requires advanced machinery. https://www.ft.com/content/9084f6ad-6146-4b38-8e7c-faf850f90005 https://www.ft.com/content/9084f6ad-6146-4b38-8e7c-faf850f90...
  - datameta 5y ago
    Indeed! Interesting. According to wikipedia it may have been a feedback loop primarily in the direction of the car. > The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that eventually played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets and tension-spoked wheels.
mc32 5y ago
Freeing people from the tedium of ordinary housework (as can still be witnessed in parts of Mexico, Philippines, etc.) allows for innovation. Half the population alive would likely not been born or survived to adulthood if we had followed a steampunkish model of industrialization and progress. We'd probably have more pollution as well.
asciimov 5y ago
Even the dumbest among us are clever, particularly when it comes to reducing work loads. It's not gonna be long before somebody figures out an alternative way to power that washer. > One of the biggest health problems in America is lack of physical exercise. I disagree. The biggest health problem is the abundance of high calorie foods that are designed to taste so good that it confuses are dumb monkey brains into eat more than we should. Limiting or eliminating the amounts of sugars and simple carbohydrates in our foods would go a long way at improving our overall health.
- MikusR 5y ago
  I would like to know the evil mastermind that invented burning meat and adding salt.
- adventured 5y ago
  That's the correct answer. You can't exercise your way out of a high calorie, high sugar diet, unless you're willing to dedicate several hours per day to intense exercise. Normal exercise is an atrocious approach to countering high calorie intake, it simply can't work. You can work out for an hour, and one soda wipes it out entirely, or a couple slices of pizza. No, the problem is and will remain dietary in nature. Americans could stop all exercise across the board, change their diets, and lose massive amounts of weight trivially, just by cutting out a few common items that nearly all obese Americans over-consume. I've yet to meet an obese American whose diet I couldn't trivially radically alter by just removing a few particularly horrible things (eg sugary drinks, ice cream, pasta/pizza, high sugar snack goods). People think they have to change everything about what they eat and go to the gym five times per week to drop weight, and that's entirely false, all they have to do is eliminate or dramatically reduce the couple worst items in their diet and that's usually enough (it's rare that there are dozens of villains in their diet that matter, it's almost always just a few items that are doing 3/4+ of the damage).
  - porlune 5y ago
    >> You can work out for an hour, and one soda wipes it out entirely, or a couple slices of pizza. Not exactly, just because you've replaced those calories doesn't mean that your body didn't gain muscle mass which itself requires calories just for your body to maintain. This leads to a higher basal metabolic rate, which ends up burning calories even while you rest.
Turing_Machine 5y ago
> I read Wendell Berry quite a lot, and in one essay (I forget which) he posed a question, "where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" We'd still have slaves. That's where we'd be. The development of steam, IC, and electric machinery is what actually put an end to slavery, by making it uneconomic. Slavery (or near-equivalents, such as serfdom) was a constant of virtually all human societies above the hunter-gatherer band level, until the development of powered equipment.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  Emancipation happened over 100 years ago, so no that is not what would have happened when imagining an alternative future starting 100 years in the past.
  - Turing_Machine 5y ago
    > Emancipation happened over 100 years ago, So did the introduction of steam, IC, and electric machinery. Your quibble is with the OP. Emancipation happened right around the time of the introduction of large-scale steam power. This was not a coincidence.
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      That also doesn't apply to the conversation, which was about a branch of history that could have started 100 years ago, not 160 years ago.
      - Turing_Machine 5y ago
        The "conversation", such as it is, had its origin in the OP (or the person he's citing) incorrectly stating that the power revolution happened 100 years ago. It didn't. Now, some might try to argue that the process of eliminating slavery/serfdom just happened to coincide with the development of non-human-powered machinery (like maybe humans just somehow became more moral and less-prone to exploiting their fellow-humans). But you know what? That's basically just a load of crap. It doesn't explain the near-perfect correlation between the development of powered equipment and the disappearance of slavery/serfdom, world-wide, carried out over the course of centuries, appearing first (again, apparently just by coincidence) in the more technologically-advanced countries (such as Western Europe), and later in the less-technologically-advanced countries (such as Russia, Asia, and (at that time) the United States) Water, steam, internal combustion, and electricity is what ended slavery/serfdom. Get rid of those and slavery/serfdom will be back before you know it.
wodenokoto 5y ago
There's a story about the introduction of a scythe to a remote village in - I want to say - 90s or early 2000s, and the mayor thanking the charity for showing them this new invention, that really helped them during harvest. It's not like the place didn't have sticks or blades, but the combination isn't obvious. I saw it on a TIL on reddit, so take it with a grain of salt. Trying to google it now, but all results for queries containing the word "scythe" seems to be related to a board game.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  There's Scythe Works Without Borders: https://scytheworks.ca/scythe-works-without-borders/ https://scytheworks.ca/scythe-works-without-borders/ They seem to be active in Nepal. There are other similar groups elsewhere. This DDG search turns up several: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=introducing+scythe+village+-game&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=introducing+scythe+village+-game&i... Including a Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/i14bak/oddly_mesmerizing_introducing_scythes_to_indian/ https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/i14bak/oddly_mesmer...
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  It's not even that the combination isn't obvious; it's also that the orientation of the parts is touchy and makes the difference between "I could do this all day!" and "Can I please just hold the knife in my hands?"
- Thlom 5y ago
  For some reason I have a scythe in my shed. I've used it a couple of times when my lawn mower was dead after I came back from holiday and the grass and weeds were waist high. It's surprisingly efficient and easy to use as soon as you get the hang of it.
rnhmjoj 5y ago
You should take a look at the Low-tech Magazine[1]: there are several articles where the possibility of brinding back some outdated but still intersting technology is explored. For example DC transmission lines, wooden wind turbines, sailing ships for transporting goods, compressed air energy storage, etc. There's also an analysis on basing a society on human power[2]. [1]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com https://www.lowtechmagazine.com [2]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-society-on-human-power-alone.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-...
jimktrains2 5y ago
100 years ago was 1921. We had many very advanced electric, internal combustion, and external combustion (e.g. steam) machines. > In the 1920s, mass production led to falling prices for washing machines (Cowan, 1983, p. 94). As of 1926, 80% of affluent households studied by market researchers in 36 American cities had washing machines. Only 28% of homes in small town Zanesville, Ohio had electric washers. Most of those with washing machines were among the affluent homes (Cowan, 1983, p. 173). During the single year of 1936, over 1.4 million washing machines were sold in the U.S., and the average price had dropped by more than half. However, many could not afford washing machines during the Great Depression (Cohen, 1982, p. 95). https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/washing-machines-1920s-to-mid-20th-century-integrated-electric-washers.html https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/washing-machines-... Tractors on farms were already pretty common and became more so over that decade. > In August, 1917, a small tent city was erected in Fremont, Nebraska. Under the canvas, 48 tractor companies exhibited their wares. There were over 300 tractor models on display worth over $1.5 million. But that was only a fraction of the tractors being offered to farmers in the 1920s. The number of tractor manufacturer peaked in 1921 when there were 186 different firms trying to entice farmers to buy their tractors. The next decade saw amazing changes in the technology, and more and more farmers moving from farming with horses to farming with tractors. https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe20s/machines_08.htm https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe20s/machines_08.ht... While air travel wasn't something the common person would do, planes weren't rare and commercial air travel was in its infancy. https://www.century-of-flight.net/commercial-aviation-industry-1920-1930/ https://www.century-of-flight.net/commercial-aviation-indust... The in-home electric refrigerator wouldn't appear until 1927, but in 1921 the technology was known and used in industry. https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/refrigerators-1900s-1920s-early-electric-refrigeration.html https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/refrigerators-190... https://bigchill.com/us/blog/refrigerators-through-the-decades/ https://bigchill.com/us/blog/refrigerators-through-the-decad... While I understand your sentiment, it's wrong to portray the early 20th century (or even the 19th century) as a technological backwater. We have certainly made advancements in material sciences and electronics (e.g. computers) in the past 100 years that have arguably changed many, many things; I don't think an engineer from 1921 would be lost in understanding the mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and non-computer electrical technology we have today. For what it's worth, I do wish we, as a society, had chosen or will choose to move to less energy-intensive means of living. I try to do my part, for instance I live somewhere where I can walk to 80% of the places I want to go or could take public transit to about 90% and I use a reel mower when the grass isn't too high. Even as, maybe especially as, a software engineer I hate that more and more devices are becoming computerized, or worse "smart" or "connected". Computers are wonderful, but my toaster oven and refrigerator doesn't need one, thank you very much. I also try to avoid single-use plastics when possible an purchase better quality items to last longer when possible. Don't get me wrong, there are many conveniences that I personally wouldn't give up (clothes washing machine), but in general I think we could stand to reëvaluate much of our culture and civilization in terms of energy and material usage.
jfoster 5y ago
One example where both are fairly common is coffee equipment. Obviously you've got big automatic grinders & espresso machines in most cafes, but it's quite common for coffee enthusiasts to use a hand grinder and AeroPress or V60 at home or for travel.
rgrieselhuber 5y ago
I read a series of novels called “The World Made by Hand,” which take more of a slow collapse approach to post-apocalyptic fiction. One part of the books that stood out was how important it is, both in terms of overall health and hygiene as well as morale, to have clean clothes. Some members of the town opened a town laundry where they would boil clean the clothes of their customers. Great series overall.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
We don't have much, no dish washer, no dryer, only one car in the extended family but I wouldn't want to let go of the washing machine. The reality would be a lot of drudgery traded off against wearing clothes long after they became dirty.
extra88 5y ago
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is an excellent novel set in a future in which "carbon fuel sources have become depleted, and manually wound springs are used as energy storage devices [0]." There are also genetically-engineered animals that are particularly strong and good at converting food calories into kinetic energy (for winding storage springs or other uses) and treadle-powered desktop computers [1], like sewing machines before electricity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle
BoxOfRain 5y ago
>"where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" I really enjoy questions like this! One area you can see this in practice is in the field of valve amplifiers, they're hideously inefficient and unreliable when compared to modern transistor amplifiers but there's huge numbers of guitarists and HiFi enthusiasts (myself included) who love the subjective qualities of the sound they make, so an effectively obsolete technology has been kept around and developed far longer than its "natural" lifespan and looks likely to be for a long while yet. Radio is another example of subcultures further developing "obsolete" tech, things like Morse code have been kept in modern use and further developed by amateur radio enthusiasts long after its commercial demise as a tool for communication, and even after AM radio's heavy decline in Europe you can still hear hobbyist pirates on Sunday mornings (especially from the Netherlands) keeping the ionosophere warm on those frequencies.
justnotworthit 5y ago
You might like this manual cement mixer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpxl5JizNc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpxl5JizNc4 "Improving on ... the plow". If I remember my history, there's a perplexing story around the asian (chinese?) plow and the highly inefficient (but necessary?) european plow that didnt improved for hundreds of years.
krona 5y ago
People 100-150 years ago washed their clothes one a month (victorian England). Rich families had more clothes and extra help; they could afford to have clean clothes. By using more efficient mechanical washing machines the effect wouldn't be more people with bulging biceps, they would just smell more. But slightly less than the victorians.
Animats 5y ago
"where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" As tractors started to become common, the Horse and Mule Association, in conjunction with, I think, Iowa State University, did considerable work on optimizing plowing with horses. The optimal angle between horse and plow (17° below horizontal) was worked out experimentally. A clever set of standard harness parts was worked out, with equalizers so none of the horses in the hitch could slack off. Didn't help much. Improved things maybe 20%, after which they'd hit an optimum. Those who farm with horses today do use those optimized techniques; they're in draft horse books. But tractors are just better.
geoduck14 5y ago
>"where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" I think that is relatively straightforward. We would have sharper, lighter plows - and they would be FAR LESS effective than modern farm equipment and food wold be more expensive. This would be a bad thing and I'm glad we don't live in that world.

ch4s3 5y ago

That's all well and good, but the revolution of motorized washing machines and dishwashers was to free western women of having to spend large parts of their days washing things. Making it hand powered may shorten the time vs a wash tub, but is still going to miss the positive social outcomes. [EDIT] I don't mean to be dismissive of this pretty cool improvement on manual washing. It seems like it will be really helpful for a lot of people until their economic situation improves.

frutiger 5y ago
Indeed. And having women in the workforce is literally worth trillions of dollars, far exceeding the costs of “obese Americans”.
- koolba 5y ago
  IIUC the angle here, it’s not that they don’t go to work. It’s that rather than going to the gym, they’ll work out as they do their laundry at home.
- eagerpace 5y ago
  I'm not a fan of the gym, as I prefer to stay active other ways, but I often wonder if the effort and energy expended there could be put to better use? This is perhaps an example of that.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    How many men do you need before you have one horsepower? One horsepower is .7 kW. A horse working for an hour nonstop would be .7kW hrs. Now, how many men do you need working constantly before you have comparable strength to a 20kW generator sipping a little bit of gasoline?
    - kaybe 5y ago
      Here is an olympic cyclist barely managing to toast bread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ Electricity is nice.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        The idea that a singular man can output a horsepower (~700W) for enough time to toast bread is still very impressive to me! Clearly an Olympic-level athlete. That being said, I can't help but imagine that with some optimization, it could make the electricity generation a bit easier (maybe more RPM but less torque needed?). Clearly, the video shows him straining and pushing. Power == RPM * Torque, converting to less torque but more RPM with gears probably would be easier.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - rhn_mk1 5y ago
      > A horse working for an hour nonstop would be .7kW hrs. More like 8.4kWh. > data from the horse pulling contest at the 1925 Iowa State Fair showing that peak mechanical power output of a horse is 12-14.9 HP. https://doi.org/10.1038/364195a0 https://doi.org/10.1038/364195a0
      - Animats 5y ago
        That's peak. Average is much lower. 1 HP is supposed to be a horse on a treadmill for a full day of work. A horse in acceleration is outputting far more than that for a few seconds.
neartheplain 5y ago
On the other hand, manual laundry was one of only a few common means of self-support for 18th century working-class women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9OyW4Jx_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9OyW4Jx_g
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Crappy jobs shouldn't have to exist just for the sake of desperate people being able to have one. A justice issue demands a justice solution, not the scraps that fall from the table. See also: the current argument raging around minimum wage in the US, and whether the the millions of grocery-bagging and burger-flipping gigs are supposed to be something you can actually survive on, or are they just meant to be short term jobs for middle class teenagers who have no dependents or living expenses to cover? Or maybe we don't love this reality but there's nothing anyone can do about it because The Market has declared that these jobs are worth less than a living wage so whatever (obligatory FDR meme: https://imgur.com/gallery/SvuwZrm https://imgur.com/gallery/SvuwZrm).
  - neartheplain 5y ago
    Yes, washing clothes was a crappy job, just like coal mining was/is in certain parts of Appalchia. That said, it was an important and necessary job in its day, and it generated valuable income for workers with no other useful skills. Removing crappy jobs and the income they generate is rarely good for the laid-off workers, especially in the absence of any social safety net. I wonder how many laundresses became washing machine mechanics, or laundromat owner-proprietors. I'm guessing the answer is "not many." I'd certainly agree that both coal miners and laundresses deserved better wages and working conditions.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      Absolutely, but of course "better wages and working conditions" has a time and place element to it as well. Coal mining conditions were obviously terrible in hindsight, but my impression is that they were considered "good jobs" at the time, with union protection and so on (depictions in media like October Sky notwithstanding). In any case, it appears that the purpose of this human-powered laundry machine is not to put anyone doing laundry for pay out of work, but rather to allow some combination of doing laundry at home cheaper, faster, or with less physical strain (a crank may be more ergonomic than being bent over a tub, and your hands don't have to be in wet soapy water the whole time).
lbriner 5y ago
But wasn't the counter-intuitive result that women spent more time washing since it was so "easy" now, they could wash things much more frequently. I can't find the reference but I did read it recently.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  If the time spent stays the same but more stuff gets washed that's still a win for living standards. If you reduce the cost of something then that labor gets spent elsewhere, maybe on more of the same but then you have more to show for it. Labor hours are fairly fungible at scale like that. Your cuts are less likely to get infected when your clothes don't have the manure you put on the field last week on them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ch4s3 5y ago
  No [1], that's not the case. Even while we own more clothing and wash it more often, it still takes less time. You can also do other tasks while a washing machine is running. [1]https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfr/4919087.0011.104/--deconstructing-laundry-gendered-technologies?rgn=main;view=fulltext https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfr/4919087.0011.104/--deconstr...
  - suyjuris 5y ago
    I do not think that your source supports your claim, although I might have missed something. To the contrary, it states: > Although the physical labor of laundry was lessened somewhat by the machines, the actual time housewives allocated to their family laundry increased. (This is claimed to be the result of housewives being responsible for the entirety of laundry, instead of employing help, however.)
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  That's the Jevons Paradox, generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

JKCalhoun 5y ago

> "where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" The bicycle, I guess. Thank god for bicycles. We could use more inventions like that.

UI_at_80x24 5y ago
I can't find a citation for this, but a favorite quote of mine from Twain(?) is: "The bicycle is unique in that it's engine is also it's cargo."
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  I always liked Steve Jobs's description of the Mac as "a bicycle for the mind." It's not like he was unaware of the Ferrari or whatever, he chose to use a human-powered vehicle for his analogy.
- hiddencache 5y ago
  Until the invention of the pogo stick. Which the internet informs me was only a few years later...
hiddencache 5y ago
Apparently the combustion engine was invented before the bicycle as bikes need ball bearings to function smoothly, which also requires advanced machinery. https://www.ft.com/content/9084f6ad-6146-4b38-8e7c-faf850f90005 https://www.ft.com/content/9084f6ad-6146-4b38-8e7c-faf850f90...
- datameta 5y ago
  Indeed! Interesting. According to wikipedia it may have been a feedback loop primarily in the direction of the car. > The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that eventually played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets and tension-spoked wheels.

mc32 5y ago

Freeing people from the tedium of ordinary housework (as can still be witnessed in parts of Mexico, Philippines, etc.) allows for innovation. Half the population alive would likely not been born or survived to adulthood if we had followed a steampunkish model of industrialization and progress. We'd probably have more pollution as well.

asciimov 5y ago

Even the dumbest among us are clever, particularly when it comes to reducing work loads. It's not gonna be long before somebody figures out an alternative way to power that washer. > One of the biggest health problems in America is lack of physical exercise. I disagree. The biggest health problem is the abundance of high calorie foods that are designed to taste so good that it confuses are dumb monkey brains into eat more than we should. Limiting or eliminating the amounts of sugars and simple carbohydrates in our foods would go a long way at improving our overall health.

MikusR 5y ago
I would like to know the evil mastermind that invented burning meat and adding salt.
adventured 5y ago
That's the correct answer. You can't exercise your way out of a high calorie, high sugar diet, unless you're willing to dedicate several hours per day to intense exercise. Normal exercise is an atrocious approach to countering high calorie intake, it simply can't work. You can work out for an hour, and one soda wipes it out entirely, or a couple slices of pizza. No, the problem is and will remain dietary in nature. Americans could stop all exercise across the board, change their diets, and lose massive amounts of weight trivially, just by cutting out a few common items that nearly all obese Americans over-consume. I've yet to meet an obese American whose diet I couldn't trivially radically alter by just removing a few particularly horrible things (eg sugary drinks, ice cream, pasta/pizza, high sugar snack goods). People think they have to change everything about what they eat and go to the gym five times per week to drop weight, and that's entirely false, all they have to do is eliminate or dramatically reduce the couple worst items in their diet and that's usually enough (it's rare that there are dozens of villains in their diet that matter, it's almost always just a few items that are doing 3/4+ of the damage).
- porlune 5y ago
  >> You can work out for an hour, and one soda wipes it out entirely, or a couple slices of pizza. Not exactly, just because you've replaced those calories doesn't mean that your body didn't gain muscle mass which itself requires calories just for your body to maintain. This leads to a higher basal metabolic rate, which ends up burning calories even while you rest.

Turing_Machine 5y ago

> I read Wendell Berry quite a lot, and in one essay (I forget which) he posed a question, "where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" We'd still have slaves. That's where we'd be. The development of steam, IC, and electric machinery is what actually put an end to slavery, by making it uneconomic. Slavery (or near-equivalents, such as serfdom) was a constant of virtually all human societies above the hunter-gatherer band level, until the development of powered equipment.

IncRnd 5y ago
Emancipation happened over 100 years ago, so no that is not what would have happened when imagining an alternative future starting 100 years in the past.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  > Emancipation happened over 100 years ago, So did the introduction of steam, IC, and electric machinery. Your quibble is with the OP. Emancipation happened right around the time of the introduction of large-scale steam power. This was not a coincidence.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    That also doesn't apply to the conversation, which was about a branch of history that could have started 100 years ago, not 160 years ago.
    - Turing_Machine 5y ago
      The "conversation", such as it is, had its origin in the OP (or the person he's citing) incorrectly stating that the power revolution happened 100 years ago. It didn't. Now, some might try to argue that the process of eliminating slavery/serfdom just happened to coincide with the development of non-human-powered machinery (like maybe humans just somehow became more moral and less-prone to exploiting their fellow-humans). But you know what? That's basically just a load of crap. It doesn't explain the near-perfect correlation between the development of powered equipment and the disappearance of slavery/serfdom, world-wide, carried out over the course of centuries, appearing first (again, apparently just by coincidence) in the more technologically-advanced countries (such as Western Europe), and later in the less-technologically-advanced countries (such as Russia, Asia, and (at that time) the United States) Water, steam, internal combustion, and electricity is what ended slavery/serfdom. Get rid of those and slavery/serfdom will be back before you know it.

wodenokoto 5y ago

There's a story about the introduction of a scythe to a remote village in - I want to say - 90s or early 2000s, and the mayor thanking the charity for showing them this new invention, that really helped them during harvest. It's not like the place didn't have sticks or blades, but the combination isn't obvious. I saw it on a TIL on reddit, so take it with a grain of salt. Trying to google it now, but all results for queries containing the word "scythe" seems to be related to a board game.

dredmorbius 5y ago
There's Scythe Works Without Borders: https://scytheworks.ca/scythe-works-without-borders/ https://scytheworks.ca/scythe-works-without-borders/ They seem to be active in Nepal. There are other similar groups elsewhere. This DDG search turns up several: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=introducing+scythe+village+-game&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=introducing+scythe+village+-game&i... Including a Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/i14bak/oddly_mesmerizing_introducing_scythes_to_indian/ https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/i14bak/oddly_mesmer...
JasonFruit 5y ago
It's not even that the combination isn't obvious; it's also that the orientation of the parts is touchy and makes the difference between "I could do this all day!" and "Can I please just hold the knife in my hands?"
Thlom 5y ago
For some reason I have a scythe in my shed. I've used it a couple of times when my lawn mower was dead after I came back from holiday and the grass and weeds were waist high. It's surprisingly efficient and easy to use as soon as you get the hang of it.

rnhmjoj 5y ago

You should take a look at the Low-tech Magazine[1]: there are several articles where the possibility of brinding back some outdated but still intersting technology is explored. For example DC transmission lines, wooden wind turbines, sailing ships for transporting goods, compressed air energy storage, etc. There's also an analysis on basing a society on human power[2]. [1]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com https://www.lowtechmagazine.com [2]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-society-on-human-power-alone.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/05/could-we-run-modern-...

jimktrains2 5y ago

100 years ago was 1921. We had many very advanced electric, internal combustion, and external combustion (e.g. steam) machines. > In the 1920s, mass production led to falling prices for washing machines (Cowan, 1983, p. 94). As of 1926, 80% of affluent households studied by market researchers in 36 American cities had washing machines. Only 28% of homes in small town Zanesville, Ohio had electric washers. Most of those with washing machines were among the affluent homes (Cowan, 1983, p. 173). During the single year of 1936, over 1.4 million washing machines were sold in the U.S., and the average price had dropped by more than half. However, many could not afford washing machines during the Great Depression (Cohen, 1982, p. 95). https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/washing-machines-1920s-to-mid-20th-century-integrated-electric-washers.html https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/washing-machines-... Tractors on farms were already pretty common and became more so over that decade. > In August, 1917, a small tent city was erected in Fremont, Nebraska. Under the canvas, 48 tractor companies exhibited their wares. There were over 300 tractor models on display worth over $1.5 million. But that was only a fraction of the tractors being offered to farmers in the 1920s. The number of tractor manufacturer peaked in 1921 when there were 186 different firms trying to entice farmers to buy their tractors. The next decade saw amazing changes in the technology, and more and more farmers moving from farming with horses to farming with tractors. https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe20s/machines_08.htm https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe20s/machines_08.ht... While air travel wasn't something the common person would do, planes weren't rare and commercial air travel was in its infancy. https://www.century-of-flight.net/commercial-aviation-industry-1920-1930/ https://www.century-of-flight.net/commercial-aviation-indust... The in-home electric refrigerator wouldn't appear until 1927, but in 1921 the technology was known and used in industry. https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/refrigerators-1900s-1920s-early-electric-refrigeration.html https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/refrigerators-190... https://bigchill.com/us/blog/refrigerators-through-the-decades/ https://bigchill.com/us/blog/refrigerators-through-the-decad... While I understand your sentiment, it's wrong to portray the early 20th century (or even the 19th century) as a technological backwater. We have certainly made advancements in material sciences and electronics (e.g. computers) in the past 100 years that have arguably changed many, many things; I don't think an engineer from 1921 would be lost in understanding the mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and non-computer electrical technology we have today. For what it's worth, I do wish we, as a society, had chosen or will choose to move to less energy-intensive means of living. I try to do my part, for instance I live somewhere where I can walk to 80% of the places I want to go or could take public transit to about 90% and I use a reel mower when the grass isn't too high. Even as, maybe especially as, a software engineer I hate that more and more devices are becoming computerized, or worse "smart" or "connected". Computers are wonderful, but my toaster oven and refrigerator doesn't need one, thank you very much. I also try to avoid single-use plastics when possible an purchase better quality items to last longer when possible. Don't get me wrong, there are many conveniences that I personally wouldn't give up (clothes washing machine), but in general I think we could stand to reëvaluate much of our culture and civilization in terms of energy and material usage.

jfoster 5y ago

One example where both are fairly common is coffee equipment. Obviously you've got big automatic grinders & espresso machines in most cafes, but it's quite common for coffee enthusiasts to use a hand grinder and AeroPress or V60 at home or for travel.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

I read a series of novels called “The World Made by Hand,” which take more of a slow collapse approach to post-apocalyptic fiction. One part of the books that stood out was how important it is, both in terms of overall health and hygiene as well as morale, to have clean clothes. Some members of the town opened a town laundry where they would boil clean the clothes of their customers. Great series overall.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

We don't have much, no dish washer, no dryer, only one car in the extended family but I wouldn't want to let go of the washing machine. The reality would be a lot of drudgery traded off against wearing clothes long after they became dirty.

extra88 5y ago

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is an excellent novel set in a future in which "carbon fuel sources have become depleted, and manually wound springs are used as energy storage devices [0]." There are also genetically-engineered animals that are particularly strong and good at converting food calories into kinetic energy (for winding storage springs or other uses) and treadle-powered desktop computers [1], like sewing machines before electricity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle

BoxOfRain 5y ago

>"where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" I really enjoy questions like this! One area you can see this in practice is in the field of valve amplifiers, they're hideously inefficient and unreliable when compared to modern transistor amplifiers but there's huge numbers of guitarists and HiFi enthusiasts (myself included) who love the subjective qualities of the sound they make, so an effectively obsolete technology has been kept around and developed far longer than its "natural" lifespan and looks likely to be for a long while yet. Radio is another example of subcultures further developing "obsolete" tech, things like Morse code have been kept in modern use and further developed by amateur radio enthusiasts long after its commercial demise as a tool for communication, and even after AM radio's heavy decline in Europe you can still hear hobbyist pirates on Sunday mornings (especially from the Netherlands) keeping the ionosophere warm on those frequencies.

justnotworthit 5y ago

You might like this manual cement mixer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpxl5JizNc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpxl5JizNc4 "Improving on ... the plow". If I remember my history, there's a perplexing story around the asian (chinese?) plow and the highly inefficient (but necessary?) european plow that didnt improved for hundreds of years.

krona 5y ago

People 100-150 years ago washed their clothes one a month (victorian England). Rich families had more clothes and extra help; they could afford to have clean clothes. By using more efficient mechanical washing machines the effect wouldn't be more people with bulging biceps, they would just smell more. But slightly less than the victorians.

Animats 5y ago

"where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" As tractors started to become common, the Horse and Mule Association, in conjunction with, I think, Iowa State University, did considerable work on optimizing plowing with horses. The optimal angle between horse and plow (17° below horizontal) was worked out experimentally. A clever set of standard harness parts was worked out, with equalizers so none of the horses in the hitch could slack off. Didn't help much. Improved things maybe 20%, after which they'd hit an optimum. Those who farm with horses today do use those optimized techniques; they're in draft horse books. But tractors are just better.

geoduck14 5y ago

>"where would our technology be if we had continued improving on simple things like the plow, without using combustion engines" I think that is relatively straightforward. We would have sharper, lighter plows - and they would be FAR LESS effective than modern farm equipment and food wold be more expensive. This would be a bad thing and I'm glad we don't live in that world.