8 ms·

An important factor seems to be precision engineering. I saw the point made in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Wi

• bitexploder 4y ago
  In particular, the standardization of units and measurements and the lathe. Lathes with accuracy were a tremendously important component of producing steam engines.
  • MeteorMarc 4y ago
    But the first lathes could not be steampowered!
    • wongarsu 4y ago
      Almost any stationary machine that can run on steampower can be run on water power instead. Or by horses trotting in a circle, or humans walking in a treadwheel [1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel_crane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel_crane
    • bluGill 4y ago
      Even after the steam eninge was common foot powered lathes existed. Or you can power a lathe from water.
      • grogenaut 4y ago
        Bow lathes are fun looking and can be made with low tech. The fun thing with lathes is they are able to make things more precise than they are, power of screws really. So they're a bootstrap technology.
  • andrewla 4y ago
    This is a great thesis because it can be falsified. The contention you are making is that between 1640 and 1690 the standardization of units of measurement and the invention of the lathe meant that Kalthoff (say) could not produce a viable steam engine in the 1640s, but Savery could successfully produce one in the 1690s. I suspect this thesis is false, but I wanted to state it here before I did any research into it.
    • andrewla 4y ago
      Some basic research I think indicates we can rule out the standardization of units of measurement; there were no serious attempts at this in the timeframe in question. Hard to say about the lathe; as the article notes, Wilkinson's work in cannon boring machines certainly made James Watt's life easier, but that was still way in the future (circa 1774) so there doesn't appear to be anything relevant to the timeframe the article is discussing.
      • bitexploder 4y ago
        I think I conflated invented with reproducibility, etc.. Without relatively precise (for the tome) tolerances on your components you can’t build a steam engine that works. I have machined a steam engine from pretty limited pieces before on my lathe. The cool thing about them is they do tolerate a lot more variance than what comes next in the evolution of engine design, but only so much. Wish I had my books detailing the intertwined history of precision machine tooling and steam engines developing hand in hand. Anyhow I think other comments covered it. I should have been more precise with the claim :)
• telesilla 4y ago
  This is also cited as the reason the difference engine was not completed.
  • bklaasen 4y ago
    Alan Bromley and Doron Swade's rebuild of the Difference Engine, done using metals and techniques that were available in Babbage's time, seem to have put paid to that idea. These days it's Babbage's poor project management that's cited as the cause. He had a stormy relationship with his engineer, and couldn't settle on a design long enough for it to be implemented.
• steveBK123 4y ago
  Modern people overestimate how long we have been able to engineer things precisely. I used to use a lot of vintage German cameras. Really right up through the 1950s the tolerances were wide enough that no two cameras were exactly alike. The parts were all replaceable, and there were often adjustments & shims inside to keep things in spec. For example, one camera might have part A that's a little long so it's matching part B would be a little short to compensate. They'd sort it out at the factory where they have the parts bins and could keep trying different part Bs to match the part A installed until they had a close enough match, then shim it. This was even more so in the 1920s-1940s cameras. The cameras actually had stickers in the film compartment warning you to send it in for professional service for any repairs. Note the implication that the camera needed frequent enough service that they'd actually bother putting a sticker in it! So for some we look back on the era as things being user-serviceable and parts replaceable, but it was that way for reasons of manufacturing ability.
  • saalweachter 4y ago
    One of my favorite YouTube channels, "my mechanics", is a restorer who specializes in restoring beyond the original condition of the item -- he will frequently fill in holes and re-bore them when the initial machining was shoddy and led to a poor alignment of the parts.
  • anjc 4y ago
    > Modern people overestimate how long we have been able to engineer things precisely I think you're underestimating it also. For example, micrometres capable of measuring imperceptible differences have existed for many centuries, same for manufacturing machines (lathes, mills) that can shape objects to imperceptible requirements. Cameras probably just don't require such precision.
    • epicide 4y ago
      > Cameras probably just don't require such precision. Depends on the camera. I think if we combine both of your comments, we get a more clear picture of reality: we've had the ability to manufacture one instance of something with precision for a while, but not the ability to do so consistently, reliably, or quickly. i.e. tolerances have shrunk dramatically over the past century or so, along with time needed to produce things with such low tolerances. However, while that is generally true across the board, tolerances haven't all gotten to the same place! Materials involved, costs, time to build, and need for low tolerances still largely affect all of it, of course. And for some things, individual variations are even considered desirable.
• shagie 4y ago
  While science fiction, the Safehold series by David Weber gets into this. As the series opens, everything is made by its own guild/foundry to the point of cannon balls for one ship wouldn't work on another because of the lack of standardization. Guns (muskets) where such that if a part broke you needed a gunsmith to craft a new part for it... which might have slightly different dimensions so it was best if it didn't break in the first place. As part of the foundations for rapid technological advancement, standard weights and lengths were put into place by the crown... and that then allowed the foundries and factories which made the parts to specialize instead of needing a master gunsmith to craft each part for each gun, you could have many lightly trained people making the parts and then the gunsmiths only needed to assemble it. At a point later in the series, one of the characters on the other side of the war demonstrates this by taking three rifles and disassembles them, and then reassembles a working rifle with parts randomly selected from the different three disassembled rifles and asks his leadership if that was something that they would be able to do (it wasn't). This in turn allowed for tighter tolerances for the weapons of war which then in turn meant more powerful weapons and being able to out produce larger nations even with a smaller industrial base. Consider the question then of "at what point in the history of the world could you take three rifles made by the same maker and swap parts and still have it be perfectly serviceable?"
  • cdot2 4y ago
    The earliest example I know of with interchangeable parts were the 1819 Hall rifles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpW054cVfHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpW054cVfHc
    • shagie 4y ago
      And for a comparison of timeframes, Stephenson's Rocket was 1829. Early steam engines for work (not train) The Newcomen Engine in the 1700s (though fairly inefficient - and you can see that it could be made without precision parts). By 1800 (when Watt's patent expired) there was an estimated 450 Watt engines (totaling 7,500 hp) and over 1500 Newcomen engines in the UK. The first high pressure steam engine was built by Oliver Evans in 1801 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Evans#Developing_the_high-pressure_steam_engine,_1801–06 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Evans#Developing_the_hi... By the 1830s, you had this - https://youtu.be/zoBWAE0win0 https://youtu.be/zoBWAE0win0
• virtualritz 4y ago
  In the 80's my uncle, a trained mechanical engineer, tried to build a working scale small gauge steam locomotive at home for fun. He was a train geek. I reckon it was maybe 1/16 scale or the like. He machined all parts on his Emco Unimat II, a 70's hobbyist convertible lathe. The final piece was beautiful. Ultimately the kettle couldn't build up enough steam because of tolerances of parts. He machined the resp. parts from scratch with more rigor. A year later, the 2nd version moved half a meter before it stopped for the same reasons. I remember his swearing and disappointment. But then he explained calmly to my cousin and me why he couldn't do any better w/o an investment into heavier, more precise and much more expensive tools. Too expensive for a hobbyist. Go figure.
  • adrianN 4y ago
    I'd love to read a writeup on that project. Sounds fascinating.
    • virtualritz 4y ago
      Me too. But unfortunately my uncle passed away two months ago.
  • foobarian 4y ago
    I wonder if he was running into a cubed/squared scaling issue where scaling down the model made the operation impractical. Given same tolerances, a 16x larger dimension of the tank gives 16^3 more steam volume or at least 16^2 more heat flux which might make the gaps a lot more forgiving.
    • bell-cot 4y ago
      Partly. But the weights to be move - the locomotive itself, any model cars, etc. - also weigh 1/(16^3) as much as the full-sized ones.
  • Damogran6 4y ago
    That makes me wonder if I could do so with my 1966 South Bend...but then I think I'd probably finish the cylinder bore with a cheap Chinese Reamer, which is not something he would have probably wanted to purchase for a one off operation. (Think $300 for a cutting tool, vs one I can buy today for $25) You bore thecylinder to rough dimension, then use the reamer to set it to final tolerance.
• mc32 4y ago
  I suspect metallurgy and metallic and alloy purity is part of it too. One needs the vessel to handle certain types of pressures without catastrophically failing.
• andrewla 4y ago
  The article specifically talks about the availability of precision engineering in the concluding section, and attempts to rule it out. Not that the rebuttal is conclusive; I tend to think that you are closer to being correct than the author's conclusion (which is that the inventors themselves are rare). But I think you would need to specifically address the argument in the article rather than claiming that the article failed to consider this point.
• mannykannot 4y ago
  So then the next question is: why was precision engineering not developed earlier? One apparently plausible answer is that the perceived need did not arise earlier, but that leads into the question of what changed that perception? If the answer is "the development of the steam engine", we have a causal loop which is not clearly anchored to any particular time. One of the often-overlooked prerequisites for Watt's improvement of the steam engine through the use of an external condenser was the need for a precision cylinder. Then-recent advances in boring machinery for making cannons provided the means, but cannons had been around for centuries before this development came about. Furthermore, while this improvement depended on an advance in precision engineering, Newcomen's steam engine was already eighty years old. The industrial revolution and its successors depended on the mutually-supporting bootstrapping of several disparate facets of technology, all of which could possibly have started earlier, so it seems unlikely that the timing of the initial spark can be attributed to an until-then absence of just one of them.
  • grogenaut 4y ago
    Non-precision items can be more field expedient to fix. If you're 30 days from the factory do you want something only they can fix, or something you can with the local blacksmith or an axe, rope and a log?
    • mannykannot 4y ago
      But for this to explain the prior absence of precision engineering, and for that absence to explain the timing of the development of the steam engine, this would have to change around 1700. As far as I know, it didn't.
  • Iv 4y ago
    The progressive end of slavery is often quoted as a possible cause for the sudden interest in moving machines.
• soneil 4y ago
  I believe metallurgy played a big part in it too. It may actually be the improvement in canon during the age of the great european land laws that brought our steelworking to the place needed. It's amazing how many details needed culminate into what now seems a relatively obvious technology.
• csours 4y ago
  A YouTube channel primarily dedicated to precision: https://www.youtube.com/c/machinethinking https://www.youtube.com/c/machinethinking Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 I think it's fair to call these mini-documentaries.
• ravedave5 4y ago
  The Antikythera mechanism is shockingly precise for how old it is. (100-200BC)
• MichaelCollins 4y ago
  The atmospheric steam engines which were first put to practical use did not require precise manufacturing. The cylinder and pistons were finished by hand and eyeballed for correctness (far from precise.) The gap was made up using leather seals and a layer of water sitting on top of the piston.
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    This just poses further questions as to why electric motors weren't popularized before the steam engine instead. They're so easy to make that it's entirely possible to make one out of a literal box of scraps. We have some records of batteries dating back far even to ancient Egypt, magnets can be found on the ground, the only real obstacle is making thin copper wire reliably I guess.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      Electric motors have some of the same problems that steam engines do. You need very precise bearings because of the relationship between magnetic field and distance. You need lots of copper wire, as you mentioned, and while magnets might be "found on the ground" I don't know that powerful enough ones to be useful were known of. It's easy to make a proof of concept electric motor. It's far more difficult to make a useful one. And then, of course, you need a source of electricity to use them in the first place, whereas the steam engine just needed heat and water.
• Iv 4y ago
  Another important factor was interest. It is noteworthy that fast development in the steam engine came after slavery started being outlawed everywhere. Before, moving machines powered by wind or steam were just an intellectual amusement (that was actually known since antiquity).