4 ms·

Well, commenters made some decent points, but the real issue is that you need a reason, a seriously good reason, to legitimize the expense involved in building

Well, commenters made some decent points, but the real issue is that you need a reason, a seriously good reason, to legitimize the expense involved in building an engine. In the case of The Industrial Revolution, this was pumping water out coal mines, and air in to them. Coal was needed as other heat sources had been largely depleted (or nearly so) in Britain. People generally like being warm. This kind of pressure required the existence of a large population, which required the agricultural revolution to have preceded it. The agricultural revolution was also required because you needed some amount of people to be free of working in food production to have the time to improve and build all of the other required things leading up to automation. Rome had no agricultural revolution, no need for deep coal mines, rather frequent plagues to lower the population, and plenty of heating fuel.

skybrian 2y ago
Possibly helpful context, in case others don't know which agricultural revolution this is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio...
telotortium 2y ago
Not to mention the significant amount of technical innovation that had already happened in the Middle Ages. To make a good engine, you need to be able to bore cylinders accurately, which depended on cannons having been manufactured and improved upon for centuries.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Lathes are older than recorded history. The Antikythera mechanism required a lathe for it's construction. Romans clearly had access to metalworking capabilities sophisticated enough for clock making. Engines wouldn't be a huge stretch.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Romans clearly had access to metalworking capabilities sophisticated enough for clock making. Engines wouldn't be a huge stretch. You're vastly underestimating the complexity of making pressure vessels.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      I don't think so. Using the Antikythera mechanism as a basis for metalworking ability possible at the time, brass is a suitable material with many small brass engines of various types seen on youtube. The Antikythera mechanism demonstrates high quality bushings and axles, complex gear trains, precision flat surfaces, and soldering. Everything you'd need, just applied differently.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > with many small brass engines of various types seen on youtube Fair enough. The problem is more that "the Romans had put functionally no effort into figuring out how to make efficient pressure-cylinders, because they had absolutely no use for them." The author mentions the Romans couldn’t have built [a Newcomen steam engine] without developing whole new technologies for the purpose (or casting every part in bronze, which introduces its own problems)" without expanding on those problems. Presumably it would be material cost of bronze (or brass) relative to "any profitable use to put it to." So yes, the Romans technically could have figured out pressure vessels. But they had no need to, and so didn't go through the process of refining their materials and methods for the purpose.
Animats 2y ago
Yes. As the article says, they needed "a use case that could tolerate the inevitable inadequacies of the 1.0 version of the device". A Newcomen engine is a turkey. It's about 0.5% efficient. It's the size of a house with the power of a riding lawnmower. And it took most of a century to advance to a better model. There's another direction that might have created an industrial revolution. High-quality steel swords were known in Roman times, but they were not mass-produced items. The Roman army did produce swords in quantity, and they had a modest steel-making capability. But the Romans never made it to the Bessemer converter. The Bessemer converter is a simple, crude device. The Romans could have built one. But the metallurgy of making steel with it is hard. Early versions had serious yield problems - much of the time, the steel produced was terrible. It took over a thousand test runs by one of Bessemer's customers and some knowledge of analytical chemistry to figure out the additives that make the process work reliably. The demand wasn't there yet. But if someone had developed gunpowder...
Log_out_ 2y ago
Coal was needed because copper was needed because tradeships were eaten by shipworms. The trade with africa, america, india, kickstarted and involuntary financed the industrial revolution.
chomskyole 2y ago
Re agricultural revolution: I'm not an expert in this, but there were plenty of Romans with plenty of time to innovate. And innovate they did. They had significant achievements in engineering and construction. I mean some of their constructions still stand today. They also spent lots of time on other things and got pretty sophisticated (politics, negotiations, war, poetry). So I'm not really convinced that their agriculture practices would have been an issue...

skybrian 2y ago

Possibly helpful context, in case others don't know which agricultural revolution this is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio...

telotortium 2y ago

Not to mention the significant amount of technical innovation that had already happened in the Middle Ages. To make a good engine, you need to be able to bore cylinders accurately, which depended on cannons having been manufactured and improved upon for centuries.

timschmidt 2y ago
Lathes are older than recorded history. The Antikythera mechanism required a lathe for it's construction. Romans clearly had access to metalworking capabilities sophisticated enough for clock making. Engines wouldn't be a huge stretch.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Romans clearly had access to metalworking capabilities sophisticated enough for clock making. Engines wouldn't be a huge stretch. You're vastly underestimating the complexity of making pressure vessels.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    I don't think so. Using the Antikythera mechanism as a basis for metalworking ability possible at the time, brass is a suitable material with many small brass engines of various types seen on youtube. The Antikythera mechanism demonstrates high quality bushings and axles, complex gear trains, precision flat surfaces, and soldering. Everything you'd need, just applied differently.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > with many small brass engines of various types seen on youtube Fair enough. The problem is more that "the Romans had put functionally no effort into figuring out how to make efficient pressure-cylinders, because they had absolutely no use for them." The author mentions the Romans couldn’t have built [a Newcomen steam engine] without developing whole new technologies for the purpose (or casting every part in bronze, which introduces its own problems)" without expanding on those problems. Presumably it would be material cost of bronze (or brass) relative to "any profitable use to put it to." So yes, the Romans technically could have figured out pressure vessels. But they had no need to, and so didn't go through the process of refining their materials and methods for the purpose.

Animats 2y ago

Yes. As the article says, they needed "a use case that could tolerate the inevitable inadequacies of the 1.0 version of the device". A Newcomen engine is a turkey. It's about 0.5% efficient. It's the size of a house with the power of a riding lawnmower. And it took most of a century to advance to a better model. There's another direction that might have created an industrial revolution. High-quality steel swords were known in Roman times, but they were not mass-produced items. The Roman army did produce swords in quantity, and they had a modest steel-making capability. But the Romans never made it to the Bessemer converter. The Bessemer converter is a simple, crude device. The Romans could have built one. But the metallurgy of making steel with it is hard. Early versions had serious yield problems - much of the time, the steel produced was terrible. It took over a thousand test runs by one of Bessemer's customers and some knowledge of analytical chemistry to figure out the additives that make the process work reliably. The demand wasn't there yet. But if someone had developed gunpowder...

Log_out_ 2y ago

Coal was needed because copper was needed because tradeships were eaten by shipworms. The trade with africa, america, india, kickstarted and involuntary financed the industrial revolution.

chomskyole 2y ago

Re agricultural revolution: I'm not an expert in this, but there were plenty of Romans with plenty of time to innovate. And innovate they did. They had significant achievements in engineering and construction. I mean some of their constructions still stand today. They also spent lots of time on other things and got pretty sophisticated (politics, negotiations, war, poetry). So I'm not really convinced that their agriculture practices would have been an issue...