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If you know what you're making, sure. Europeans kind of lucked out historically, since there was a lot of glass technology in the lead up to optics and then mic
by extraduder_ire 3y ago
If you know what you're making, sure. Europeans kind of lucked out historically, since there was a lot of glass technology in the lead up to optics and then microscopes. Historical China got kind of fucked in that regard, since they did have mirrors, but porcelain was so good they never had to get into the glass part of the tech tree.
- Robotbeat 3y agoOh… that’s interesting. I’ve never thought of that aspect of why maybe the industrial Revolution took off in Europe but not China. Lenses allowed the development of the telescope, reading glasses (extending working years of scientists and engineers, etc, enabling finer work on clockwork mechanisms), the sextant, the barometer (and thus the study of vacuum that led to steam engines), and the microscope. All that predated the industrial Revolution, laying the scientific groundwork for all that followed. (Obviously things like that are multi-causal, but I had never heard that idea before, that the amazing porcelain of China kind of held back the development of glass and all its many, many applications.)
- extraduder_ire 3y agoYup. I've heard that the lack of easily navigable rivers and no coal to speak of caused more of an impact on china hitting industrial revolution before europe.