3 ms·

I wonder if this history was the inspiration for the parts of Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle where the protagonists had to boil vats and vats of urine to make

by jahnu 2y ago

I wonder if this history was the inspiration for the parts of Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle where the protagonists had to boil vats and vats of urine to make phosphorus?

throwaway5752 2y ago
I'd expect the inspiration was the actual historical practice of collecting urine for industrial use. The ammonia in urine was used for leather tanning for at least 10,000 years. Urine contains all the elements in the NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) acronym in fertilizers, and was used for agriculture, also. https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/money-does-not-stink-urine-tax-ancient-rome-003408 https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/m... is just one of many examples. The practice of collecting urine was less unusual at the time than this article suggests.
- compiler-guy 2y ago
  Urine has dozens of uses historically, including as a detergent, at least since Roman times. Also as a an ingredient for setting dyes, with pregnant women’s urine being especially valued for this. So valued that pregnant women could actually sell their own urine during medieval times. It’s hard for the modern mind used to modern chemistry to wrap around just how cleverly people used the chemicals available to them.
utrfdew 2y ago
Also in bill Brysons a complete history of nearly everything he recounts a story of a serial entrepreneur who was trying to come up with an inexpensive way to synthesize penicillin and one of his ideas was putting buckets of urine in his basement. He found that months later there was a substance that collected on the surface that glowed in the dark. He purified it and found it had a very low ignition temperature, one so low it was achievable through friction, so he put it on the end of a stick and invented strike anywhere matches.

3 ms·

I wonder if this history was the inspiration for the parts of Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle where the protagonists had to boil vats and vats of urine to make

by jahnu 2y ago

I wonder if this history was the inspiration for the parts of Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle where the protagonists had to boil vats and vats of urine to make phosphorus?

throwaway5752 2y ago
I'd expect the inspiration was the actual historical practice of collecting urine for industrial use. The ammonia in urine was used for leather tanning for at least 10,000 years. Urine contains all the elements in the NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) acronym in fertilizers, and was used for agriculture, also. https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/money-does-not-stink-urine-tax-ancient-rome-003408 https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/m... is just one of many examples. The practice of collecting urine was less unusual at the time than this article suggests.
- compiler-guy 2y ago
  Urine has dozens of uses historically, including as a detergent, at least since Roman times. Also as a an ingredient for setting dyes, with pregnant women’s urine being especially valued for this. So valued that pregnant women could actually sell their own urine during medieval times. It’s hard for the modern mind used to modern chemistry to wrap around just how cleverly people used the chemicals available to them.
utrfdew 2y ago
Also in bill Brysons a complete history of nearly everything he recounts a story of a serial entrepreneur who was trying to come up with an inexpensive way to synthesize penicillin and one of his ideas was putting buckets of urine in his basement. He found that months later there was a substance that collected on the surface that glowed in the dark. He purified it and found it had a very low ignition temperature, one so low it was achievable through friction, so he put it on the end of a stick and invented strike anywhere matches.