Boniface Reynaud from the twenty-second century is Reinault Bodel, wool dealer, and (secretly) Time Patrol agent in Harfleur, France, in 1307. His upstairs parlour contains:
a high stool;
a table cluttered with ledgers, quills, inkwell, knives, fanciful map, image of the Virgin etc;
luxurious chairs with hard backs, armrests and cushions;
a window admitting wavy light with no clear view.
Noises
street clamour;
mumbling, bustling work within the house;
cathedral bells.
Smells
wool;
smoke;
bodies;
unwashed clothes.
Three senses and a concrete setting for the conversation between Reynaud/Bodel and Everard.
11 comments:
"a window admitting wavy light with no clear view."
It was centuries before a *cheap* way to do better was developed, but I would think it became a "type A" innovation well before it was actually done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, but this kind of "frosted" glass had the advantage of preventing eyes from peering in.
Ad astra! Sean
It sounded less like 'frosted' glass and more like a 'funhouse mirror' view of things.
I would prefer a good view, then I can draw a gauzy curtain to limit the view or a thick curtain to cut out light.
Blown glass was actually clearer. One way to get clear window glass was to blow a cylinder, then cut it down one side and open it out, but that had limits on size.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: Curtains would work too.
Mr. Stirling: Hence the mentions I've seen of glass windowpanes being small.
Ad astra! Sean
The crucial innovation was casting molten glass on a bed of molten metal, usually tin. If you were careful, that kept both sides of the cast glass equally clear.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Something else to look up. Probably discovered by accident or trial and error.
Ad astra! Sean
I checked https://ptable.com/ and clicked on 'melting point'.
There are not a lot of metals with a melting point less than or not much higher than tin. They are mostly inconveniently toxic like mercury or lead, or inconveniently reactive like sodium, or inconveniently hard to get in large quantities like gallium.
Once Pilkington started working on the idea, he probably quickly realized tin was almost certainly the best option for providing the flat liquid surface. Then there was some trial and error, "The success of this process lay in the careful balance of the volume of glass fed onto the bath, where it was flattened by its own weight."
The quoted text is from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass
A lot of innovations were made in the 19th century that -could- have been made much earlier. People were just looking harder.
Kaor, to Both!
Even, possibly, a theory of evolution, as Harry Turtledove suggested in one of his "A Different Flesh" stories, "And So to Bed." In these stories Turtledove speculated that Homo erectus survived alongside Homo sapiens. "And So to Bed" comprises fictional entries from the Diary of Samuel Pepys and his speculations about the "sims" (Homo erectus) he saw in the London of the early years of the restored Charles II.
Ad astra! Sean
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