10 ms·
There's a great book about the progression of clothing, textiles, and fabric being scarce and expensive to commonplace and cheap. It runs through the various te
by Fenrisulfr 5y ago
There's a great book about the progression of clothing, textiles, and fabric being scarce and expensive to commonplace and cheap. It runs through the various technological innovations (think cotton gin, but plenty more), culture, and economics. The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. Great quote about Viking sail ships:
"Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight hours a day with a heavy spindle whorl to produce relatively coarse yarn, a spinner would toil 385 days to make enough for the sail. Plucking the sheep and preparing the wool for spinning required another 600 days. From start to finish, Viking sails took longer to make than the ships they powered."
- duxup 5y agoIt doesn't strike me as surprising that the sail would take longer than the boat. The skill to make a boat is impressive but the mechanics of getting it done aren't enormous. Fabrics and sewing, gathering and prepping those materials and the tedious work seems enormous.
- Ekaros 5y agoThe sewing of sail fabric is something different. You need to use heavy duty needle and force it through the fabric. It is somewhat similar I would imagine as dealing with leather. Wood work deals with big pieces comparatively.
- samstave 5y ago
- edmundsauto 5y agoAll of human history is the same at its core. Suffering, exploration, profiteering. Yet we have progressed, bit by bit. We have a ways to go, but the arc of history is bending towards less suffering.
- avgcorrection 5y agoWe have exploited our way into climate change, which entails more suffering.
- javajosh 5y agoIf we manage to exploit our way out of climate change, it will entail more suffering.
- bserge 5y ago
- tagoregrtst 5y ago“ but the arc of history is bending towards less suffering.” I don't see it bending towards anything but increasingly vulgar, decadent, forms of violence.
- edmundsauto 5y agoI won't disagree with the things that you see, but would encourage you to resist assuming that is representative of the world at large.
- meristohm 5y agoLess suffering for some of us, at least in the physical toiling sense and in the short term, but with more humans on the planet than ever before, and so many servings to funnel wealth to a minority, I reckon we’re still collectively suffering quite a bit, with more to come as climate change exacerbates weather extremes and aberrations. And then there’s the suffering of non-human animals. What we’re doing doesn’t feel like progress if I value ecological resilience through diversity, deep connection with the environment and my community, and a history unbroken for thousands of years.
- javajosh 5y agoI bet weavers fought like hell against textile industrialization. I'm not an historian, but there must have been such a conflict, and given the scale of it I bet it was bloody. Industrialization freed them from this toil, but at the cost of centralizing the means of production. It is a strange thing, progress.
- 3pt14159 5y agoI'm 90% sure you're telling a subtle joke, but on the off chance you're not "luddite" is worth a Google.
- Someone 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite: “The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery”
- wongarsu 5y agoThe Luddites were a movement of British textile workers who fought industrialization, at first with sabotage then with open rebellion that was violently put down [1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
- avgcorrection 5y ago> It is a strange thing, progress. That time is correlated with progress is a very political-liberal idea, to no one’s surprise.
- taneq 5y agoReminds me of the comparison between computer software and hardware. Hulls are fairly linear. Sails are combinatorial.
- dimitrios1 5y agoI encourage you to watch some videos online of traditional (mostly hand-tools) Shipwrights. Even with the use of a bandsaw to do the rough milling, it is an arduous and lengthy process. Shipwrights also work with some of the longest planks of wood any form of woodworking does. In the days before machines, there would be scores of workers simply preparing the wood and getting it ready for the ship building. My hunch would be the reason shipbuilding is faster is it is easier to scale to multiple workers, and there are parts you can do in parallel.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago> 100 meters square I think that might take a bit more than 154 km of yarn. Presumably you meant 100 square metre. :-)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- soperj 5y agoYou'd have to cut the trees, get them from the forest to the build site, and then make lumber out of them and dry them. Can't imagine it would be that much different.
- Someone 5y agoIn those times, chances are they moved the build site to the trees, and made sure the trees were close to the water (with more forest and a much smaller population, such trees could probably be found fairly easily) Also, they didn’t dry the wood. https://regia.org/research/ships/Ships1.htm https://regia.org/research/ships/Ships1.htm: “Timber was used green – in other words, shortly after felling. This is different to more modern practice, where the timber is "seasoned" – left to dry for several years. Green wood is easier to work, and more flexible, which can help with some of the more complex shapes found in Viking boats. Wood can be kept "green" for several years by keeping it immersed in water – a stem (or stern) of a Viking style boat was found on the island of Eig in what, a thousand years ago, had been a lake. As it had never been used – there were no indications of rivet holes – it was probably made up when the boat-builder had got a spare piece of suitable timber, and he was waiting for a similar bit for the stern (or stem) which never arrived. It is also possible to steam green wood without complex equipment like the steam boxes used today. Simply by heating a plank over a fire, the moisture inside the wood heats up and causes the fibres to loosen. This means that – for a few minutes – it can be twisted into shape with less danger of it splitting and breaking. It is highly likely that this was done during Viking times – we know the technique was used to make "expanded" log boats, for example.”
- rags2riches 5y agoBefore mechanization, logging was typically done in the winter so horse-drawn sleds could be used to transport the logs out of the forest. https://picryl.com/media/framkorning-av-timmer-fran-skogen-med-hast-och-slade-i-angermanland-bild-fran-ff40de https://picryl.com/media/framkorning-av-timmer-fran-skogen-m...
- bregma 5y agoPlucking sheep. You shear sheep, not pluck them. If you're experienced you can sheer about 100 sheep per day. You can skirt and wash the fleece of those same 100 sheep on day two. How are you spending the remaining 598 days? While I'm not an expert at spinning (although my spouse may be), I would venture that 12 or 15 village women carding and spinning 10 to 12 hours a day would be able to go from sheep to sail in about 3 months. Spindle spinning is very portable and something a woman would do during pretty much every spare moment when her hands were not busy doing something else. Making sails would have been a drop in the bucket when it came to yarn consumption since she also had to make all the clothes and cloth for other uses like sacking, ticking, blankets, etc.
- Someone 5y agoShearing requires advanced technology that the Vikings may not have had. https://www.griggsagri.co.uk/blog/sheep-shearing-a-brief-history/ https://www.griggsagri.co.uk/blog/sheep-shearing-a-brief-his...: “The sheep were shorn using very basic tools, such as metal, or sharp glass, fashioned into an implement to take whole clumps of wool off at once. Over time, the tools were adapted into scissor-like blades to make the job easier.” I think you can call that plucking. People use tools to pluck grapes, too. And 100 a day without a powered tool? Is that realistic?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rags2riches 5y agoThese are examples of Viking era shears, found in what is now Sweden. I just did a quick search. Search words: sisare järnålder. http://samlingarna.gotlandsmuseum.se/index.php/Detail/objects/76643 http://samlingarna.gotlandsmuseum.se/index.php/Detail/object... https://historiska.se/upptack-historien/object/364462-sax-sisare-av-jarn/ https://historiska.se/upptack-historien/object/364462-sax-si...
- pdw 5y ago12-15 women working for 3 months is close to 4 person-years of work. That's higher than the numbers in Fenrisulfr's quote.
- Koshkin 5y ago> 154 kilometers (60 miles) 154 km = 95.7 mi