7 ms·

The basic argument is that without a clear use case to overcome the version 1.0 troubles of (steam) engines, there was no incentive to work out the kinks and pu

The basic argument is that without a clear use case to overcome the version 1.0 troubles of (steam) engines, there was no incentive to work out the kinks and pumping water out of coal mines was the big "killer application" of such motors. That is, pumping water out of coal mines was the "early adopter" market for engine technology: > As we’ll see, this was a use-case that didn’t really exist in the ancient world and indeed existed almost nowhere but Britain even in the period where it worked. I remember reading a blog post by TechnicsHistory [0] (which was on the front page of HN at one point) that makes the same argument. The acoup.blog article goes on to give a reason why coal wasn't needed earlier as the need for heating fuel became scarce when wood became scarce: > Consequently wood as a heat fuel was scarce and so beginning in the 16th century we see a marked shift over to coal as a heating fuel for things like cooking and home heating. I'm still skeptical of why it took so long. Were there no other places in Europe, Asia or the Middle East that didn't have the same deforestation issues? Was it the combination of deforestation and population density? [0] https://technicshistory.com/2021/07/13/the-triumvirate-coal-iron-and-steam/ https://technicshistory.com/2021/07/13/the-triumvirate-coal-...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> Consequently wood as a heat fuel was scarce and so beginning in the 16th century we see a marked shift over to coal as a heating fuel for things like cooking and home heating I believe this is a common misconception. The author seems vaguely aware of it because just before this he says that the forests were cleared in antiquity, which is the usual response to point out this as being a wrong theory that doesn't add up. They cleared most of the forests for agriculture and kept and 'farmed' the ones they coppiced for fuel for a long time after clearing the rest. When they no longer felt they needed wood as fuel, they cut down more rather than managing them as they had for hundreds of years. This is like saying people started eating beyond burgers because they ran out of cows. No, we'll stop having herds of cows because we have a replacement that makes them less necessary.
- abetusk 4y ago
  I see, so you're saying the author of the post got the order wrong. In other words, Britain discovered coal, to some extent, then started using it earnest and neglected the forest-as-fuel-source infrastructure that was needed to keep repopulating the forests. So you're arguing that deforestation was a consequence of using more coal, not a driver of using more coal. So the question still remains, why was coal only discovered then? What prevented people from using coal earlier?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    People did use coal earlier, I'd say the increased mining activity came before the deforestation, but it's a slow ramp up over centuries so gets a bit chicken and egg. Wikipedia has an interesting history that includes Roman usage. Note the final cite, which has the traditional "we ran out of wood" story is cited to a 19th century source. > After the Romans left Britain, in AD 410, there are few records of coal being used in the country until the end of the 12th century. One that does occur is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 852 when a rent including 12 loads of coal is mentioned.[8] In 1183 a smith was given land for his work, and was required to "raise his own coal"[9]: 171–2 Shortly after the granting of the Magna Carta, in 1215, coal began to be traded in areas of Scotland and the north-east England, where the carboniferous strata were exposed on the sea shore, and thus became known as "sea coal". This commodity, however, was not suitable for use in the type of domestic hearths then in use, and was mainly used by artisans for lime burning, metal working and smelting. As early as 1228, sea coal from the north-east was being taken to London.[10]: 5 During the 13th century, the trading of coal increased across Britain and by the end of the century most of the coalfields in England, Scotland and Wales were being worked on a small scale.[10]: 8 As the use of coal amongst the artisans became more widespread, it became clear that coal smoke was detrimental to health and the increasing pollution in London led to much unrest and agitation. As a result of this, a Royal proclamation was issued in 1306 prohibiting artificers of London from using sea coal in their furnaces and commanding them to return to the traditional fuels of wood and charcoal.[10]: 10 During the first half of the 14th century coal began to be used for domestic heating in coal producing areas of Britain, as improvements were made in the design of domestic hearths.[10]: 13 Edward III was the first king to take an interest in the coal trade of the north east, issuing a number of writs to regulate the trade and allowing the export of coal to Calais.[10]: 15 The demand for coal steadily increased in Britain during the 15th century, but it was still mainly being used in the mining districts, in coastal towns or being exported to continental Europe.[10]: 19 However, by the middle of the 16th century supplies of wood were beginning to fail in Britain and the use of coal as a domestic fuel rapidly expanded.[10]: 22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining Seems relevant that the coal mining areas worked out the way to use coal more cleanly in home furnaces a couple of centuries before the 'running out of wood' shift was supposed to have happened. You might be able to trace whether the trees disappeared first in the areas where they had coal mines. edit: interesting take on this here: https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wood-scarcity/ https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wood-scarcity/ > In 1611, the agricultural writer Arthur Standish warned, ‘No wood, no kingdom.’ Deforestation, he claimed, threatened to undermine English agriculture, impoverish the poor, and provoke rebellions. In contrast, his contemporary Dudley Digges – a politician and investor in commercial and colonial ventures – took the opposite position. He argued that fears of wood scarcity were unfounded; a ploy by ‘beggars’ dwelling in forests and the greedy, feckless landlords who profited from these desperate tenants, both of whom wished to protect forests from conversion to more profitable uses. A third perspective was offered by the London merchant and deputy treasurer of the Virginia Company, Robert Johnson. Wood scarcity was real and incurable, and the only solution was to exploit abundant woods in the new English colony of Virginia.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  The author has a rather extensive post on the why forests we're cleared: iron. https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-ii-trees-for-blooms/ https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-... Tl;dr: 7:1 raw wood to charcoal conversion. And a lot of charcoal needed for each iron batch. Or "To put that in some perspective, a Roman legion (roughly 5,000 men) in the Late Republic might have carried into battle around 44,000kg (c. 48.5 tons) of iron – not counting pots, fittings, picks, shovels and other tools we know they used. That iron equipment in turn might represent the mining of around 541,200kg (c. 600 tons) of ore, smelted with 642,400kg (c. 710 tons) of charcoal, made from 4,620,000kg (c. 5,100 tons) of wood."
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    His sources seem to mostly focus on timber for makong things, but he does link to coppacing and pollarding, which would have been used for traditional charcoal.
- baix777 4y ago
  However, by the middle of the 16th century supplies of wood were beginning to fail in Britain and the use of coal as a domestic fuel rapidly expanded.[10]: 22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#:~:text=Coal%20was%20cheaper%20and%20much,South%20Wales%20coalfield%20and%20Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#:~:text... Similar comments here about the lack of wood driving the use of coal. https://industrialrevolution.org.uk/coal-mines-industrial-revolution/ https://industrialrevolution.org.uk/coal-mines-industrial-re... And: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24953925 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24953925
- sgt101 4y ago
  >They cleared most of the forests for agriculture and kept and 'farmed' the ones they coppiced for fuel for a long time after clearing the rest. When they no longer felt they needed wood as fuel, they cut down more rather than managing them as they had for hundreds of years. It's not a simple story. There were distinctly regional transitions and pressures from things like the expansion of urban centers that created demand for food which could not be mined unlike fuel that could be both mined and grown. Other factors like the spread of horses for ploughing (displacing oxen) and improvements in agricultural machinery were also important. The growth of distribution networks (canals) was also very important. Still copicing was practiced commercially right into the 20th century, and some copices were not cut back - they were just abandoned. You can see these weird old trees out in the English countryside today. So it's accurate to say "wood as a heat fuel was scare for some people in some places". Conversely it is fair to say that coal displaced some other fuels including wood gradually, and that the use of land for crops other than wood became gradually more attractive. https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/62_1_WardeWilliamson.pdf https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/62_1_WardeWilliamson.p...
paganel 4y ago
> Were there no other places in Europe, Asia or the Middle East that didn't have the same deforestation issues? There certainly were, I remember reading that most of what is now France (Gaul, back then) had already lost most of its forests in the present Île-de-France region, i.e. Paris and its surroundings.
chasil 4y ago
The Romans killed Archimedes, (eventually) closed all the Greek schools/universities, and decayed into superstition. Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view.
- callmeal 4y ago
  >Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. > >Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
- abetusk 4y ago
  If I understand your argument right, this is essentially saying that the dark ages were dark. First off, I'm not even sure that narrative is true. Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia. I, unfortunately, don't know a lot about the Middle East during the European dark ages period but, from what I understand, they went through a type of renaissance themselves. The question still is, why didn't people need or use coal at the levels they did until the 1600s?
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    > Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia Don't write off Mesoamerica and South America either. I know many people that strongly argue "The Mayan Empire never fell it was crushed." There especially was no direct equivalent to the European Dark Ages in the Mayan Empire. It remained a productive agricultural empire right up until post-Industrial Spanish Conquest (and right down until contemporary periods of not just the Roman Empire, but even as far back as various Mesopotamian empires as well). That's just the Mayan Empire. We also have an impression that Aztec Empire and even the looser "Confederations" of North American Indian tribes at various times all had economies comparable to European agricultural sense of "Empire" at least, but all also lost a lot history/institutions during American conquests. It seems reasonable to wonder if that deforestation of England truly was a strange precursor in the face of what we know of non-European empires at the time. (Which we don't know enough given how many of them Europe managed to burn to the ground in the American conquests.)
Salgat 4y ago
Steam engines and other technologies simply had no hope of happening on a large scale until materials science, including metallurgy and chemistry, had caught up, and that wasn't going to happen for a very long time regardless.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Newcomen steam engines did not depend on any metallurgy, chemistry or material science the Romans didn't have. These are low pressure steam engines; the work is done by atmospheric pressure when the steam is condensed. They can be built with a copper boiler and a hand-finished cast brass cylinder with leather piston seals. The Romans could do all of this, but nobody had the idea. And it's the sort of idea that doesn't just spring into somebody's head out of the blue, Newcomen was applying principles and ideas other people came up with first (story of the entire industrial revolution.)
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Additionally, "If you had given the Romans the designs for a Newcomen steam engine, they [...] wouldn’t have had any profitable use to put it to."
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      If they did see the utility, they might have simply killed you for threatening the pack animal / slave industries.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

> Consequently wood as a heat fuel was scarce and so beginning in the 16th century we see a marked shift over to coal as a heating fuel for things like cooking and home heating I believe this is a common misconception. The author seems vaguely aware of it because just before this he says that the forests were cleared in antiquity, which is the usual response to point out this as being a wrong theory that doesn't add up. They cleared most of the forests for agriculture and kept and 'farmed' the ones they coppiced for fuel for a long time after clearing the rest. When they no longer felt they needed wood as fuel, they cut down more rather than managing them as they had for hundreds of years. This is like saying people started eating beyond burgers because they ran out of cows. No, we'll stop having herds of cows because we have a replacement that makes them less necessary.

abetusk 4y ago
I see, so you're saying the author of the post got the order wrong. In other words, Britain discovered coal, to some extent, then started using it earnest and neglected the forest-as-fuel-source infrastructure that was needed to keep repopulating the forests. So you're arguing that deforestation was a consequence of using more coal, not a driver of using more coal. So the question still remains, why was coal only discovered then? What prevented people from using coal earlier?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  People did use coal earlier, I'd say the increased mining activity came before the deforestation, but it's a slow ramp up over centuries so gets a bit chicken and egg. Wikipedia has an interesting history that includes Roman usage. Note the final cite, which has the traditional "we ran out of wood" story is cited to a 19th century source. > After the Romans left Britain, in AD 410, there are few records of coal being used in the country until the end of the 12th century. One that does occur is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 852 when a rent including 12 loads of coal is mentioned.[8] In 1183 a smith was given land for his work, and was required to "raise his own coal"[9]: 171–2 Shortly after the granting of the Magna Carta, in 1215, coal began to be traded in areas of Scotland and the north-east England, where the carboniferous strata were exposed on the sea shore, and thus became known as "sea coal". This commodity, however, was not suitable for use in the type of domestic hearths then in use, and was mainly used by artisans for lime burning, metal working and smelting. As early as 1228, sea coal from the north-east was being taken to London.[10]: 5 During the 13th century, the trading of coal increased across Britain and by the end of the century most of the coalfields in England, Scotland and Wales were being worked on a small scale.[10]: 8 As the use of coal amongst the artisans became more widespread, it became clear that coal smoke was detrimental to health and the increasing pollution in London led to much unrest and agitation. As a result of this, a Royal proclamation was issued in 1306 prohibiting artificers of London from using sea coal in their furnaces and commanding them to return to the traditional fuels of wood and charcoal.[10]: 10 During the first half of the 14th century coal began to be used for domestic heating in coal producing areas of Britain, as improvements were made in the design of domestic hearths.[10]: 13 Edward III was the first king to take an interest in the coal trade of the north east, issuing a number of writs to regulate the trade and allowing the export of coal to Calais.[10]: 15 The demand for coal steadily increased in Britain during the 15th century, but it was still mainly being used in the mining districts, in coastal towns or being exported to continental Europe.[10]: 19 However, by the middle of the 16th century supplies of wood were beginning to fail in Britain and the use of coal as a domestic fuel rapidly expanded.[10]: 22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining Seems relevant that the coal mining areas worked out the way to use coal more cleanly in home furnaces a couple of centuries before the 'running out of wood' shift was supposed to have happened. You might be able to trace whether the trees disappeared first in the areas where they had coal mines. edit: interesting take on this here: https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wood-scarcity/ https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/wood-scarcity/ > In 1611, the agricultural writer Arthur Standish warned, ‘No wood, no kingdom.’ Deforestation, he claimed, threatened to undermine English agriculture, impoverish the poor, and provoke rebellions. In contrast, his contemporary Dudley Digges – a politician and investor in commercial and colonial ventures – took the opposite position. He argued that fears of wood scarcity were unfounded; a ploy by ‘beggars’ dwelling in forests and the greedy, feckless landlords who profited from these desperate tenants, both of whom wished to protect forests from conversion to more profitable uses. A third perspective was offered by the London merchant and deputy treasurer of the Virginia Company, Robert Johnson. Wood scarcity was real and incurable, and the only solution was to exploit abundant woods in the new English colony of Virginia.
ethbr0 4y ago
The author has a rather extensive post on the why forests we're cleared: iron. https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-ii-trees-for-blooms/ https://acoup.blog/2020/09/25/collections-iron-how-did-they-... Tl;dr: 7:1 raw wood to charcoal conversion. And a lot of charcoal needed for each iron batch. Or "To put that in some perspective, a Roman legion (roughly 5,000 men) in the Late Republic might have carried into battle around 44,000kg (c. 48.5 tons) of iron – not counting pots, fittings, picks, shovels and other tools we know they used. That iron equipment in turn might represent the mining of around 541,200kg (c. 600 tons) of ore, smelted with 642,400kg (c. 710 tons) of charcoal, made from 4,620,000kg (c. 5,100 tons) of wood."
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  His sources seem to mostly focus on timber for makong things, but he does link to coppacing and pollarding, which would have been used for traditional charcoal.
baix777 4y ago
However, by the middle of the 16th century supplies of wood were beginning to fail in Britain and the use of coal as a domestic fuel rapidly expanded.[10]: 22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#:~:text=Coal%20was%20cheaper%20and%20much,South%20Wales%20coalfield%20and%20Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#:~:text... Similar comments here about the lack of wood driving the use of coal. https://industrialrevolution.org.uk/coal-mines-industrial-revolution/ https://industrialrevolution.org.uk/coal-mines-industrial-re... And: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24953925 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24953925
sgt101 4y ago
>They cleared most of the forests for agriculture and kept and 'farmed' the ones they coppiced for fuel for a long time after clearing the rest. When they no longer felt they needed wood as fuel, they cut down more rather than managing them as they had for hundreds of years. It's not a simple story. There were distinctly regional transitions and pressures from things like the expansion of urban centers that created demand for food which could not be mined unlike fuel that could be both mined and grown. Other factors like the spread of horses for ploughing (displacing oxen) and improvements in agricultural machinery were also important. The growth of distribution networks (canals) was also very important. Still copicing was practiced commercially right into the 20th century, and some copices were not cut back - they were just abandoned. You can see these weird old trees out in the English countryside today. So it's accurate to say "wood as a heat fuel was scare for some people in some places". Conversely it is fair to say that coal displaced some other fuels including wood gradually, and that the use of land for crops other than wood became gradually more attractive. https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/62_1_WardeWilliamson.pdf https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/62_1_WardeWilliamson.p...

paganel 4y ago

> Were there no other places in Europe, Asia or the Middle East that didn't have the same deforestation issues? There certainly were, I remember reading that most of what is now France (Gaul, back then) had already lost most of its forests in the present Île-de-France region, i.e. Paris and its surroundings.

chasil 4y ago

The Romans killed Archimedes, (eventually) closed all the Greek schools/universities, and decayed into superstition. Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view.

callmeal 4y ago
>Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. > >Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
abetusk 4y ago
If I understand your argument right, this is essentially saying that the dark ages were dark. First off, I'm not even sure that narrative is true. Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia. I, unfortunately, don't know a lot about the Middle East during the European dark ages period but, from what I understand, they went through a type of renaissance themselves. The question still is, why didn't people need or use coal at the levels they did until the 1600s?
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia Don't write off Mesoamerica and South America either. I know many people that strongly argue "The Mayan Empire never fell it was crushed." There especially was no direct equivalent to the European Dark Ages in the Mayan Empire. It remained a productive agricultural empire right up until post-Industrial Spanish Conquest (and right down until contemporary periods of not just the Roman Empire, but even as far back as various Mesopotamian empires as well). That's just the Mayan Empire. We also have an impression that Aztec Empire and even the looser "Confederations" of North American Indian tribes at various times all had economies comparable to European agricultural sense of "Empire" at least, but all also lost a lot history/institutions during American conquests. It seems reasonable to wonder if that deforestation of England truly was a strange precursor in the face of what we know of non-European empires at the time. (Which we don't know enough given how many of them Europe managed to burn to the ground in the American conquests.)

Salgat 4y ago

Steam engines and other technologies simply had no hope of happening on a large scale until materials science, including metallurgy and chemistry, had caught up, and that wasn't going to happen for a very long time regardless.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
Newcomen steam engines did not depend on any metallurgy, chemistry or material science the Romans didn't have. These are low pressure steam engines; the work is done by atmospheric pressure when the steam is condensed. They can be built with a copper boiler and a hand-finished cast brass cylinder with leather piston seals. The Romans could do all of this, but nobody had the idea. And it's the sort of idea that doesn't just spring into somebody's head out of the blue, Newcomen was applying principles and ideas other people came up with first (story of the entire industrial revolution.)
- mcguire 4y ago
  Additionally, "If you had given the Romans the designs for a Newcomen steam engine, they [...] wouldn’t have had any profitable use to put it to."
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    If they did see the utility, they might have simply killed you for threatening the pack animal / slave industries.