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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 cann
by 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 agoThe 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 agoAnd 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
- hef19898 4y agoMaybe even earlier with French artillery carriages. But yes, it sis really start around the Napoleonic Wars.
- michaelt 4y ago> 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 Based on the real history of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts :- By around 1778, Honoré Blanc began producing some of the first firearms with interchangeable flint locks, although they were carefully made by craftsmen. Blanc demonstrated in front of a committee of scientists that his muskets could be fitted with flint locks picked at random from a pile of parts.
- shagie 4y agoHeh, that's probably where that scene was from. The development of interchangeable parts, precision parts, higher performing weapons (which often is a driver of innovation) and the steam engine have more than casual linkages between them.
- Ancapistani 4y ago> 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?" It depends on the weapon. To this day, there are many designs that require "fitting" for some parts. The M1911, a .45 ACP semi-automatic handgun that entered US service in 1911 and is still a relatively popular, doesn't have truly interchangeable parts. The interface between the sear and hammer, or the trigger bar and sear, must be manually carefully shaped for feel, safety, and reliability. The "ramp" that guides the cartridge into the chamber is similar, and it's common to get new guns that won't reliably work with common brands or designs of ammunition.
- mercutio2 4y agoWow. I loved this series. I skipped essentially every line of character building, which was terrible. But the build up to creating the universe, the prelude, and then all the historical engineering details were so good I didn't mind skipping over all the attempts at having characters after the initial scene was set.
- shagie 4y agoI’ve found that I’ve enjoyed books more as audible… in most cases (there was one notable case where that reader and editor completely messed up the third book of a trilogy). The thing with audible is that I can’t skip over the “boring” parts as easily. Safehold and Anathem where two that this was important for (I will note the Recluse series got odd if you listened to them in chronological order rather than publication order as the author kept using the same phrase in later books and the quality from book to book varied wildly).