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In Netherlands, windmills have been used for a wide variety of applications - pumping out excess water for land reclamation, cuttings logs, making paint, pressi

In Netherlands, windmills have been used for a wide variety of applications - pumping out excess water for land reclamation, cuttings logs, making paint, pressing oil. I don't see why this couldn't have added up to an industrial revolution eventually if coal didn't take off nearby. You can use wind to pump water up and then use water for steady rotational power. Basic knowledge of electricity dates back to classical times, so you could potentially leapfrog to that eventually instead of going through an internal combustion engine. In fact, we are now trying to run our industries on wind power because coal is no longer practical for different reasons. All in all, it's always the case that what actually happened could have only happened in one place, because that place shaped all the details of what happened. Roman empire contributed hundreds of innovations without which one innovation of steam engine would not have been enough to build modern economy either.

scythe 4y ago
To store wind energy, you either need excellent pneumatics (high-precision manufacturing) to compress air or a rectifier (semiconductors!) to charge a battery. I don't think that was in reach. Maybe you could have spun a flywheel, but you'd have a hard time making magnetic bearings without a good theory of magnetic fields and probably Earnshaw's theorem. And it's very hard to move a flywheel. Pumped hydro won't get you portable power. That's a major limitation for, e.g., vehicles. The train was invented just 66 years after the steam engine (1738-1804).
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I think Tesla invented an electromechanical way to convert AC to DC. Also, vacuum tubes work as rectifiers, and are much lower tech than semiconductors.
  - scythe 4y ago
    A weak vacuum was first produced by Torricelli in the early 17th century using a long mercury-filled tube, but the manufacture of an effective vacuum tube takes you right back to the same high-performance pneumatic engineering I mentioned for compressed-air storage — the first effective model produced by JJ Thomson in the mid-19th century, thereby discovering the electron, which was a necessary step for this to be even imagined. But, to be fair, it's simpler than a semiconductor.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      You can create an effective vacuum in a glass tube by filling it with mercury, inverting it, then heating the tube and pinching it off. This is all low tech. BTW, Edison discovered vacuum tubes by playing around adding extra electrodes in his light bulbs. But he didn't realize what he'd discovered, and it went nowhere with him.
- bismuthcrystal 4y ago
  One can transform AC into DC without semiconductors. Vacuum tube technology is the first thing to come to mind. But it is practical even mechanically if the AC frequency is low enough.
  - _vdpp 4y ago
    DC generators work essentially the same as an AC alternator (motor in reverse). You can get AC-DC conversion by hooking these up to one another, just connect the rotors together.
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  There is a rather long history of wind being used to transport goods, with horses as a backup when you must transport people or things in any weather regardless of waterways nearby. Alternative paths to industrial revolution may not have produced 21st century conveniences right away, but neither did the actual industrial revolution. You can power factories with pumped hydro.
  - scythe 4y ago
    There is a long history of sails, but even modern sails can go quite a bit faster than their ancient counterparts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Apparent_wind_sailing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Appar... The necessary developments in math and physics are not to be underestimated. I'm not disputing whether you could eventually do it without coal, I'm attacking the supposition that medieval-to-earlier civilizations (the Song Dynasty, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Roman Empire, etc) could have industrialized if they had only realized one or two key things. There's a whole framework of understanding that had to be established: calculus, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, et cetera; the Europeans had the benefit of importing knowledge from all over Eurasia, from paper (China, imported via Middle East ca. 1200s) to positional numerals (India), to algebra (al-Khwarizmi, born near Uzbekistan, worked in Baghdad). Leonardo Bonacci's schooling in Algeria was transformative for Italian mathematics. Et cetera. A single wind turbine will only pump water at a measly rate up a large incline. In order to gather enough wind turbines' output to achieve useful energy storage, you need a means of transmission; the electric dynamo dates to 1831, while the electrostatic generator was developed around 1663, but could not operate while transmitting power. Pneumatics require, again, high precision. This stuff only seems easy now because we have so much understanding of the physical world that was unimaginable when Constantinople and Tenochtitlan were conquered. A modern train car can be pushed by hand; a sailing train car with the steel and lubricants available to da Vinci or Ben Sheng would hardly budge without a gale. Coal is so, so easy by comparison.

scythe 4y ago

To store wind energy, you either need excellent pneumatics (high-precision manufacturing) to compress air or a rectifier (semiconductors!) to charge a battery. I don't think that was in reach. Maybe you could have spun a flywheel, but you'd have a hard time making magnetic bearings without a good theory of magnetic fields and probably Earnshaw's theorem. And it's very hard to move a flywheel. Pumped hydro won't get you portable power. That's a major limitation for, e.g., vehicles. The train was invented just 66 years after the steam engine (1738-1804).

WalterBright 4y ago
I think Tesla invented an electromechanical way to convert AC to DC. Also, vacuum tubes work as rectifiers, and are much lower tech than semiconductors.
- scythe 4y ago
  A weak vacuum was first produced by Torricelli in the early 17th century using a long mercury-filled tube, but the manufacture of an effective vacuum tube takes you right back to the same high-performance pneumatic engineering I mentioned for compressed-air storage — the first effective model produced by JJ Thomson in the mid-19th century, thereby discovering the electron, which was a necessary step for this to be even imagined. But, to be fair, it's simpler than a semiconductor.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    You can create an effective vacuum in a glass tube by filling it with mercury, inverting it, then heating the tube and pinching it off. This is all low tech. BTW, Edison discovered vacuum tubes by playing around adding extra electrodes in his light bulbs. But he didn't realize what he'd discovered, and it went nowhere with him.
bismuthcrystal 4y ago
One can transform AC into DC without semiconductors. Vacuum tube technology is the first thing to come to mind. But it is practical even mechanically if the AC frequency is low enough.
- _vdpp 4y ago
  DC generators work essentially the same as an AC alternator (motor in reverse). You can get AC-DC conversion by hooking these up to one another, just connect the rotors together.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
There is a rather long history of wind being used to transport goods, with horses as a backup when you must transport people or things in any weather regardless of waterways nearby. Alternative paths to industrial revolution may not have produced 21st century conveniences right away, but neither did the actual industrial revolution. You can power factories with pumped hydro.
- scythe 4y ago
  There is a long history of sails, but even modern sails can go quite a bit faster than their ancient counterparts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Apparent_wind_sailing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Appar... The necessary developments in math and physics are not to be underestimated. I'm not disputing whether you could eventually do it without coal, I'm attacking the supposition that medieval-to-earlier civilizations (the Song Dynasty, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Roman Empire, etc) could have industrialized if they had only realized one or two key things. There's a whole framework of understanding that had to be established: calculus, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, et cetera; the Europeans had the benefit of importing knowledge from all over Eurasia, from paper (China, imported via Middle East ca. 1200s) to positional numerals (India), to algebra (al-Khwarizmi, born near Uzbekistan, worked in Baghdad). Leonardo Bonacci's schooling in Algeria was transformative for Italian mathematics. Et cetera. A single wind turbine will only pump water at a measly rate up a large incline. In order to gather enough wind turbines' output to achieve useful energy storage, you need a means of transmission; the electric dynamo dates to 1831, while the electrostatic generator was developed around 1663, but could not operate while transmitting power. Pneumatics require, again, high precision. This stuff only seems easy now because we have so much understanding of the physical world that was unimaginable when Constantinople and Tenochtitlan were conquered. A modern train car can be pushed by hand; a sailing train car with the steel and lubricants available to da Vinci or Ben Sheng would hardly budge without a gale. Coal is so, so easy by comparison.