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Author 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 e
by cfmcdonald 2y ago
Author 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...
- kragen 2y agoi see, thanks! i still think 'combustion engine' is incorrect terminology. maybe your blog will turn out to be so popular that everyone will adopt your terminology, and it'll just be a pet peeve for the olds like me, like using 'literally' as a figurative intensifier. until then, though, it will make people familiar with the field cringe when they read your posts i think there were a lot of things that were obviously true to people about motorcars in 01903 that turned out to be false; to mention a few, the ridiculous level of danger involved in traveling over fifteen miles an hour, the impossibility of them ever becoming as widespread as horses (due to their overwhelming mechanical complexity), and the utter impracticality of electric cars, though that one took quite a while to change. hindsight is 20:20 maybe if henry ford had still been building steam cars in 01899 when he founded the company that eventually became cadillac (acquired by gm in 01909), the first decade of the twentieth century would have seen the kinds of advances in low-thermal-mass heat exchangers and flash boilers that ford instead had to make in areas such as transmissions and the engine block. but maybe that wouldn't have been enough, or maybe ford's mind was better suited to mechanical and industrial engineering than to thermodynamics. maybe the inherently larger thermal mass of a steam engine doomed it for this application in a non-path-dependent way, much as there are no diesel motorcycles you probably know more than i do about the relevant history, so you're more likely to be right
- burnished 2y agoI appreciate the back and forth your comment sparked, very educational, but unrelated to that I would like to know why you precede years with a 0?
- eszed 2y agohttps://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-an... "It’s an idiosyncrasy to which we are dedicated."
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EdwardDiego 2y ago> i still think 'combustion engine' is incorrect terminology I doubt anyone other than your good self is going to be confused by the differentiation between "steam engine" and "combustion engine" tbh.
- kragen 2y agoconfusion was not the emotion i was experiencing. it was more like vicarious embarrassment, usually called 'cringe'
- 2y ago