Innovations:
wheelbarrows
stirrups
harnesses
horseshoes
a threshing machine
spinning wheels
paper
printing
a nineteenth century plough
gunpowder
These are happening or planned in the opening chapters. There is considerable technical discussion to which I am unqualified to contribute.
I am more inclined to theology than to technology. In fact, we are informed that it is illegal to invoke Jesus but that Jeremy McCladden, supervising the threshing machine, the plough and the planting of potatoes, feels self-conscious invoking Jupiter, Mars or Venus. Imagine coping with that while simultaneously inspiring an industrial revolution. This is a time travel novel inspired by its predecessors but going further.
Manse Everard thinks that attempts to change history make things worse...
8 comments:
Well, Manse has to think that to live with himself -- he's safeguarding the Danellians, by preserving the established history.
As Artorius points out, there are two types of technological innovation -- Type A, where only the idea is necessary, and Type B, where new methods of construction are needed.
Type A includes saddles with stirrups and wheelbarrows and horse-shoes. Type B would include steam engines.
Oddly enough, an early-19th century type of hot-blast iron furnace would be more Type A than Type B -- it's a whole lot of new ideas, but existing methods of construction would be able to do it, and iron and steel would fall more than 90% in. price.
There would be -lots- of new ideas, but the only thing that would be difficult would be fire-brick.
Of course, -using- the increased output would require some Type B -- boring machines, lathes, and so forth.
Many of the Type A innovations are really, really important.
For example, horse collars enable horses (and mules) to pull with their full strength; previous types of horse-harness choked them if they tried.
That speeds things up massively -- makes all sorts of things faster, like plowing, and makes stage-coaches possible. And of course framed saddles with stirrups have significant implications too.
Paper and printing are equally so -- books were -expensive- before those. With paper and printing, they drop (eventually) by about 90%, and the number of copies goes up exponentially. That increases literacy because it's more useful.
Gunpowder -- which is very simple if you know the formula, 75-15-10 -- has implications beyond war. It makes construction and mining much easier by shattering rock, for example.
Likewise, advanced sailing ships are just -miles- more effective than the ones Romans had. They can beat upwind much much more effectively, they can ride out storms, and they can carry much heavier cargoes.
Likewise, miter-lock canals can bring down transport costs massively.
And ideational innovations like Arabic numerals, and algebra, and double-entry bookkeeping, and modern filing systems make -information- much more accessible.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I understand, re technical explanations being often difficult to grasp, but I still thought them interesting while reading Stirling's Antonine books.
I was amused by Jeremy's difficulties satisfactorily swearing! My late mother, who had very Edwardian manners, hated cussing, and that rubbed off on me, meaning I seldom swear (aloud, anyhow!).
Considering the utter catastrophe Artorius and his grad students were shanghaied from, I see no need for them worrying about changing the future.
Mr. Stirling: I was amused by the minor Type A innovation of POCKETS. So much more convenient than carrying small things in pouches or sleeves.
I agree gun powder was a huge advance in making mining and construction much easier, but it still had serious limitations. And was replaced by dynamite (using nitroglycerin) after Alfred Nobel invented it.
Ad astra! Sean
I remember Martin Padway had to explain that it was useful to have a numeral for zero. ("Why have a name for it when there's nothing there?")
Kaor, Paul!
I think it was hard for people to grasp the value and convenience of having a zero before Indo/"Arabic" numbers were invented. It was only in the 1200's that those numbers started to be widely used in Europe. I might be wrong, was it the 1100's?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: arabic numerals were gradually adopted in Europe between the 10th and 15th centuries. It was a slow process.
Then there are eyeglasses.
As I read in L. Sprague De Camp's "The Ancient Engineers" the first known reference to them is from 1306 "It is not 20 years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses.."
So Artorius et al. introduce that roughly 1100 years early. Very useful for doing any sort of close work, including but not only reading, for people with presbyopia. Also for seeing at a distance for anyone with myopia, eg: me, or in Stirling's novel Marcus Aurelius.
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