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Bingo. When trees are abundant charcoal is the superior fuel. It’s much cleaner to burn than coal, weighs less and doesn’t require you to mine it out of the gro

Bingo. When trees are abundant charcoal is the superior fuel. It’s much cleaner to burn than coal, weighs less and doesn’t require you to mine it out of the ground which is difficult and dangerous. I’d argue the difficulty of mining and burning coal are what kicked off the industrial revolution. Mines necessitated the invention of coal powered pumps and other equipment. To burn coal efficiently you need iron stoves which drove demand for foundries and metallurgical development. Once you’ve got lots of coal and lots of iron and people who know how to work with it you start getting bright ideas about other things you can do with all that coal and iron.

Robotbeat 4y ago
That would be a good argument for the second half of the first industrial revolution, but in the 1700s (the industrial Revolution starting around 1760 or so), steam power was a footnote.
- notahacker 4y ago
  A footnote that was arguably one of the key driving forces though. Coal was burned in stoves and used in blast furnaces as well as in newfangled Newcomen Engines Even Canal Mania, the Industrial Revolution mass expansion of boat transport using horses and artificial ditches (all tech familiar to the Romans) kicked off in the 1760s as a way to get coal out of the Duke of Bridgwater's mines.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    They already transported the coal by boat, and they copied the idea of artificial canals as an obvious incremental improvement. I'd say the business aspects of canal mania might have been a bigger factor. So the overly neat "its was all about coal" story doesn't really hang together. One of the first canals in the UK was built, because someone blocked the river with a weir, so that they could run a watermill. It's all a bit fractal.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Sure, pound locks were an obvious incremental improvement back in the early centuries AD when the Romans built probably the first artificial cuts in the UK. But it took heavy loads of coal and the economics of canal operating companies halving the coal price in Manchester to convince people it was a good idea to invest in building artificial ditches up hills all over the country to return a profit[1], which of course then opened up scope for new industrial enterprises alongside them. The Romans were perfectly capable of that level of engineering, but they focused on other things, even closer to home. Agree that "it's all about coal" is too simplistic, but coal was a big deal even before steam mills and trains were commonplace. [1]not all of them did, obviously. But at least they had limited liability corporations by then...
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        You coukd say one of the big leaps with canals, beyond the initial ones that expanded/followed existing rivers and remained flat, was the building of aquaducts to take canals across valleys which of course is heavily associated with Romans (though as far as I'm aware that wasn't used for transport of anything but water). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_lat%C3%A9ral_%C3%A0_la_Loire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_lat%C3%A9ral_%C3%A0_la...

Robotbeat 4y ago

That would be a good argument for the second half of the first industrial revolution, but in the 1700s (the industrial Revolution starting around 1760 or so), steam power was a footnote.

notahacker 4y ago
A footnote that was arguably one of the key driving forces though. Coal was burned in stoves and used in blast furnaces as well as in newfangled Newcomen Engines Even Canal Mania, the Industrial Revolution mass expansion of boat transport using horses and artificial ditches (all tech familiar to the Romans) kicked off in the 1760s as a way to get coal out of the Duke of Bridgwater's mines.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  They already transported the coal by boat, and they copied the idea of artificial canals as an obvious incremental improvement. I'd say the business aspects of canal mania might have been a bigger factor. So the overly neat "its was all about coal" story doesn't really hang together. One of the first canals in the UK was built, because someone blocked the river with a weir, so that they could run a watermill. It's all a bit fractal.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Sure, pound locks were an obvious incremental improvement back in the early centuries AD when the Romans built probably the first artificial cuts in the UK. But it took heavy loads of coal and the economics of canal operating companies halving the coal price in Manchester to convince people it was a good idea to invest in building artificial ditches up hills all over the country to return a profit[1], which of course then opened up scope for new industrial enterprises alongside them. The Romans were perfectly capable of that level of engineering, but they focused on other things, even closer to home. Agree that "it's all about coal" is too simplistic, but coal was a big deal even before steam mills and trains were commonplace. [1]not all of them did, obviously. But at least they had limited liability corporations by then...
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      You coukd say one of the big leaps with canals, beyond the initial ones that expanded/followed existing rivers and remained flat, was the building of aquaducts to take canals across valleys which of course is heavily associated with Romans (though as far as I'm aware that wasn't used for transport of anything but water). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_lat%C3%A9ral_%C3%A0_la_Loire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_lat%C3%A9ral_%C3%A0_la...