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Author has an interesting point of view, I always assumed that the issue was the quality of the steel available at the time was too low to prevent explosive fai

Author has an interesting point of view, I always assumed that the issue was the quality of the steel available at the time was too low to prevent explosive failure under pressure or collapse under vacuum: > "Now, one might suggest that Petty and Kalthoff simply lacked the tools or materials to make sufficiently strong and precisely fitting vessels and pipes. But I highly, highly doubt this." This issue has been historically researched with respect to artillery development, which seems to have been mostly bronze up until the 18th century, when reliable iron/steel artillery was introduced. For example: https://www.billstclair.com/weaponsman.com/index.html%3Fp=32625 https://www.billstclair.com/weaponsman.com/index.html%3Fp=32... Perhaps the pressures and temperatures involved in steam engines weren't as great as those involved with artillery, but the cost of making a bronze steam engine might have been prohibitive.

rofrol 4y ago
Similar comment here: The British industrial revolution was built from iron, not steel. Mass production of steel didn't appear until the 1880s, with the Bessemer converter. This was half a century after the deployment of successful railroads. Iron and steel was known to the Roman empire. The steel wasn't very good, even by the standards of antiquity, but it was good enough for short swords and some tools. They got as far as the "bloom" process, but no further. Despite this, there was a modest iron and steel industry. A Bessemer converter is a simple thing. It's a big iron vessel lined with brick attached to a furnace and blower. Roman ironworkers could have built one. It's the metallurgy that's hard. Bessemer built the thing, but steel quality was random at first. Robert Mushet, a metallurgist, after about 10,000 experiments, figured out how to get consistent quality from the process. The basic idea, from Wikipedia, is to apply enough heat and air to burn off almost all the carbon in iron ore, leaving pure iron. Then add 'spiegel glanz' or spiegel eisen, a "double carbonate of iron and manganese found in the Rhenish mountains" which was iron, 86…25; manganese, 8…50; and carbon, 5…25. Controlled amounts of manganese and carbon are thus put back into the molten iron, and steel comes out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32611002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32611002
- hef19898 4y ago
  Until the end of the 19th century iron production out paced steel by roughly 9:1, after that it slowly changed and reached, IIRC, in the early 20th cebtury the opposite ratio. Good luck finding iron nowadays...
scythe 4y ago
>This issue has been historically researched with respect to artillery development, which seems to have been mostly bronze up until the 18th century, when reliable iron/steel artillery was introduced. But then couldn't they have simply made steam engines out of bronze? It might be more expensive, but it's certainly enough to demonstrate the concept.
andrewla 4y ago
In this particular article, we're looking at the window between ~1640 and ~1690. A fifty year interval is a pretty long time in human terms. But it is fairly narrow in technological terms. Steel production did not change significantly during that time. I still, without evidence, cling to the notion that external technologies (like advances in precision engineering) held things up, but the article makes a very compelling argument that this is not the case, and that it really was a question of having an individual inventive and ambitious and persistent enough to really attempt to reduce to practice the concepts that were floating around at the time.

rofrol 4y ago

Similar comment here: The British industrial revolution was built from iron, not steel. Mass production of steel didn't appear until the 1880s, with the Bessemer converter. This was half a century after the deployment of successful railroads. Iron and steel was known to the Roman empire. The steel wasn't very good, even by the standards of antiquity, but it was good enough for short swords and some tools. They got as far as the "bloom" process, but no further. Despite this, there was a modest iron and steel industry. A Bessemer converter is a simple thing. It's a big iron vessel lined with brick attached to a furnace and blower. Roman ironworkers could have built one. It's the metallurgy that's hard. Bessemer built the thing, but steel quality was random at first. Robert Mushet, a metallurgist, after about 10,000 experiments, figured out how to get consistent quality from the process. The basic idea, from Wikipedia, is to apply enough heat and air to burn off almost all the carbon in iron ore, leaving pure iron. Then add 'spiegel glanz' or spiegel eisen, a "double carbonate of iron and manganese found in the Rhenish mountains" which was iron, 86…25; manganese, 8…50; and carbon, 5…25. Controlled amounts of manganese and carbon are thus put back into the molten iron, and steel comes out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32611002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32611002

hef19898 4y ago
Until the end of the 19th century iron production out paced steel by roughly 9:1, after that it slowly changed and reached, IIRC, in the early 20th cebtury the opposite ratio. Good luck finding iron nowadays...

scythe 4y ago

>This issue has been historically researched with respect to artillery development, which seems to have been mostly bronze up until the 18th century, when reliable iron/steel artillery was introduced. But then couldn't they have simply made steam engines out of bronze? It might be more expensive, but it's certainly enough to demonstrate the concept.

andrewla 4y ago

In this particular article, we're looking at the window between ~1640 and ~1690. A fifty year interval is a pretty long time in human terms. But it is fairly narrow in technological terms. Steel production did not change significantly during that time. I still, without evidence, cling to the notion that external technologies (like advances in precision engineering) held things up, but the article makes a very compelling argument that this is not the case, and that it really was a question of having an individual inventive and ambitious and persistent enough to really attempt to reduce to practice the concepts that were floating around at the time.