The author would have done well to leave out of a lot of the engineering details, or at least give them less emphasis. That would have made it less interesting

The author would have done well to leave out of a lot of the engineering details, or at least give them less emphasis. That would have made it less interesting to HN, no doubt, but would have concentrated the reader's attention on his point (expressed in several bolded passages) that socioeconomic factors stood in the way of industrialization in spite of any particular technological advance. It would be interesting to compare Rome with Imperial China, where development was similarly hampered by structural factors, such as the lack of incentives for increasing agricultural output.