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Steam's Last Stand
- LeoPanthera 2y agoI know about the post title rule but I would be surprised if anyone clicks on this not assuming it's about the video game digital distribution service and storefront. That said, here's a lovely video from YouTuber "Aging Wheels" about a (working!) scale model of a British steam truck: https://youtu.be/PFKa8K9qZBQ https://youtu.be/PFKa8K9qZBQ
- navane 2y agoSteam the software maker is definitely not making "a last stand", people know context.
- burnished 2y agoThere isn't a universal context for people to know or not know, you know? If anything I'd expect the most relevant 'Steam' in most readers lives to be the company
- Dalewyn 2y agoValve is the company, Steam is a product.
- smilevideo 2y agoThe irony here is that Steam is not the software maker, Valve is. So you don't even know the context.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- squigz 2y agoI don't know why Steam would choose the name of an existing element. Why would they choose to confuse us like this? (Just a joke about the LORA complaints that always come up)
- fifteen1506 2y agoNo clue what LORA is. But I've assumed they choose confusing names so it's more difficult to search for reviews or technical info about the modems online. See: "TVCABO" vs "NOS" ["We"]. "TMN" vs "Meo" ["mine", mispelled].
- dragontamer 2y agoLong Range Radio (LORA) vs Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models (LoRA)
- mgaunard 2y agoSteam is not an element; I don't get the joke.
- LoganDark 2y agoWell, it is an element of steam engines...
- yazantapuz 2y agoLike a valve...
- kibwen 2y agoIndeed, it's a secondary element, since it's produced by mixing the primary elements of fire and water.
- klyrs 2y agoWhen you mix elements, don't you get molecules?
- everforward 2y agoI believe it's an old alchemy joke back from when the "elements" were things like fire, air, water or earth.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TulliusCicero 2y agoYeah, I was quite curious, given Steam's current dominant position in the PC game store market.
- Reason077 2y agoYes, turned out not to be the "Steam" I was thinking of.
- HlessClaudesman 2y agoYouTube Goes Flat, more than youn need to know about the inner-tube industry.
- jamescun 2y agoThat channel is a gem!
- _zoltan_ 2y agoI automatically though about steam, the game distribution service. I guess most people would.
- cfmcdonald 2y agoAuthor here. Having been neck-deep in steam engine history for years, the possible confusion caused by the title didn't even occur to me. It's obvious in retrospect. I guess I created accidental clickbait.
- ngcc_hk 2y agoIt did confuse me … not going to waste my time on steam last stand. The game market is good enough … what last stand :-)
- markdeloura 2y agoThanks for your comment back… I clicked on it for game market Steam as well, but I learned a few years ago that my great grandfather built some steam cars in Rochester around 1900, so I found this fascinating. Thanks!
- johnchristopher 2y agoI don't know, (technicshistory.com) kinda give it away immediately for me.
- taeric 2y agoI confess when I saw "Steam" I thought it was about the game company. That said, working it into "Last Stand" made me think it was about the engine technology. The game company is still going strong, no?
- xhkkffbf 2y agoI also came looking for something about the game company, but I was happy for the confusion. Fascinating topic. Maybe if we can get nuclear cars, we can go back to steam turbines! :-)
- shmerl 2y agoSteam should have been replaced with electric engines right away, bypassing whole combustion engine age.
- spiderice 2y agoI think we should have gone straight from steam to faster than light warp drives
- kragen 2y agoworking on it
- RheingoldRiver 2y agowho said we didn't? we just haven't observed them yet (this is a bad relativity joke)
- avidphantasm 2y agoNo, teleportation, duh.
- cmcclellan 2y agoThey should have invented Li-ion batteries as well. What were they thinking…
- shmerl 2y agoThey could focus on battery technology more for sure and much sooner than they did. Demand didn't drive it until much later primarily because they thought that combustion engine is good enough. First electric cars existed already in 19th century by the way.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoThat's still 19 centuries too late. They had simple batteries in ancient times; they should've doubled down on that back then. /s
- rgmerk 2y agoI don’t think there’s anything particularly mysterious here. Of the three early automotive propulsion technologies, internal combustion engines were the best compromise at the time, as it was compared to the gas turbine in the 1950s and 1960s, rotary engines in the 1960s and 1970s, and lead-acid and NiMH battery vehicles in the 1990s.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kragen 2y agoevery coal and nuclear electric power station, and a good fraction of the oil ones and part of each combined-cycle gas power station, runs on steam. these are still the majority of the electric power grid. so all those electric cars you see on the road, as well as the streetlights above them and the factories they were built in, are powered primarily by steam. it's just coupled to them through wires instead of driveshafts so 'The steam car was an inflection point where steam power, for so long an engine driving technological progress forward, instead yielded the right-of-way to a brash newcomer. Steam began to look like relic of the past, reduced to watching from the shoulder as the future rushed by' is utterly clueless (so is contrasting steam engines with 'combustion engines'. steam engines are combustion engines, except for the ones in nuclear power stations; they're external combustion engines, while the onboard engines that commonly run cars are internal combustion engines. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_engine) so the overall framing of the article is wrong, but that isn't its main thesis. its main thesis is that steamers were slow to start up and complicated to run, and then the matthew effect took over. i don't know enough about early automotive history to evaluate this thesis, but an obvious alternative hypothesis is that only henry ford knew what the fuck he was doing, so everybody else (including gm, which he had sort of founded before he founded ford) copied him once he outsold them ten to one in the 01910s
- cfmcdonald 2y agoAuthor here. Some of the apparent errors here are due to the fact that this is part of a larger series, more of a book in blog form. > every coal and nuclear electric power station, and a good fraction of the oil ones and part of each combined-cycle gas power station, runs on steam. I'm aware of this. This is written in the context of the cultural decline of steam power as something people think and dream and write science fiction about, not its physical elimination from the world. See this post [0], particularly the last section, "The Twilight of Steam." > so is contrasting steam engines with 'combustion engines'. steam engines are combustion engines I'm aware of this also. But internal combustion engine is a mouthful, so I elected to shorten it, as described this post [1] > but an obvious alternative hypothesis is that only henry ford knew what the fuck he was doing, so everybody else (including gm, which he had sort of founded before he founded ford) copied him once he outsold them ten to one in the 01910s This can't be correct, because internal combustion cars left steam cars in the dust well before the 1910s; it was obvious to most people that internal combustion was winning by 1903. [0]: https://technicshistory.com/2024/04/25/twilight-of-the-age-of-steam-part-2-petroleum-and-after/ https://technicshistory.com/2024/04/25/twilight-of-the-age-o... [1]: https://technicshistory.com/2024/03/21/twilight-of-the-steam-age-part-1-internal-combustion/ https://technicshistory.com/2024/03/21/twilight-of-the-steam...
- cjensen 2y agoSteam has fundamental problems beyond engine startup time that are just not solvable. Gas engines can quickly switch from low-power to high-power, meaning that you can kick it up quickly to pass another car or maintain speed up a hill. It's all tradeoffs, but responsiveness matters. And in terms of responsiveness steam < diesel < gas < electric. There's a reason both diesel and gas have long coexisted: sometimes you need more responsiveness, and sometimes more constant power. Steam was just too far from acceptable for high speed responsive output.
- mikewarot 2y agoIf you had a larger boiler volume, you could have a far larger reserve of power on demand... however, that would have come with a huge amount of danger. Steam explosions killed far too many people back in that era. Keeping the boilers small was a wise precaution.
- Animats 2y agoThat's not the problem. If you have boiler pressure, going to higher power briefly is fast. But you might run out of steam on a long hill if the thermal inertia of the boiler is high and something isn't done to increase the fuel feed. In locomotives, thermal inertia is so great that fuel input has to be increased in advance of long hills. That's part of the fireman's job. Lack of advance planning can result in a train stuck on an upgrade, with the locomotive unable to generate enough power to get the train started again.[1] (There's some wheel slip, too.) "Little and Often", a training film for steam locomotive fireman, covers this.[2] This is the source of the phrase "running out of steam". This is the full startup procedure for a Stanley Steamer.[3] Shows what all the gauges, levers, valves, and pumps do. Cold startup takes 20 minutes, is very tricky, and if botched the vehicle will be seriously damaged. Nice looking car, though. Pinstriping on the leaf springs! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJlXB965SAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJlXB965SAQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVIr66K_rUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVIr66K_rUA [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv1VH07e608 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv1VH07e608
- somat 2y agoThe stanly was a much earlier tech, perhaps the best car of it's generation. But compare that to the doble, perhaps the high point of steam car technology before that personal motive power route was abandoned. https://youtube.com/v/rUg_ukBwsyo?t=1012 https://youtube.com/v/rUg_ukBwsyo?t=1012 Now admittedly the doble was a high end luxury item, But you can see how it could be possible to have a every mans steam car.
- tejtm 2y agoIf you are interested experiencing old steam engines running and can get to western Oregon there is the "Great Oregon Steam-up" every summer. https://www.antiquepowerland.com/steam-up/ https://www.antiquepowerland.com/steam-up/
- snaily 2y agoJay Leno has a Doble car (mentioned in the article as a 1920s attempt at a "user-friendly" steam car revival). The video has great production and really shows the starting and driving processes: https://youtu.be/rUg_ukBwsyo https://youtu.be/rUg_ukBwsyo
- xkcd-sucks 2y agoIt's surprising that the Watery nature of steam isn't mentioned in the article at all, as it is a terrible material on which to build any reliable consumer technology: * Corrosive * Heavy * Does not lubricate * Huge heat capacity, i.e. you get cooked if even a little bit of it gets on you) About the only advantage it has is being cheap, available, and nontoxic which is cool for factories built on rivers
- telotortium 2y agoI thought maybe the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Steemer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Steemer carpet cleaning company might be a descendant of the Stanley steam car company. But it doesn’t look like it - the carpet cleaning company just wanted a memorable name, and a nostalgic name for a ridiculous but charming machine from 40 years earlier fit the bill.