Archimedean inventions include what many people including Leonardo Da vinci thought probably included a steam cannon. The greeks had a primitive steem engine that if connected to a Archimedean screw, could have powered a boat. If they had made the leap to steam engines, the world may look very different today.

I've seen this point discussed before. The ancient Greeks regarded machinery only as labor-saving devices. Since the people in charge had abundant slave labor, they could not see the point.

It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution was well under way that the other benefits of machinery were widely discovered, such as increased precision and, ultimately, whole new technologies. For example, I don't believe it would have been possible to build even prototypes of internal combustion engines without the precision of machine tools.

So the question becomes, why did the people of the post-Enlightenment period launch an Industrial Revolution when the equally academically sophisticated people of the Classical period did not?

I suspect it has everything to do with economics. The populations of the ancient nations were very low by today's standards and the middle class was miniscule. Most people were slaves and serfs. There weren't a lot of consumers to sell things to so there was no impetus to find ways to build more of them faster.

By the 17th and 18th Centuries the world's population was a sizeable fraction of a billion. Slavery and serfdom were not yet abolished, but the middle class was burgeoning in Europe and the more prosperous countries of the Western Hemisphere like the USA and Argentina. There was finally a reason to make more things faster, even if you weren't making better things with greater precision. Textiles were one of the first products to be "manufactured" because there were so many people to sell them to. The earliest factories were filled with machines powered by human muscles, but before long engines were introduced.

The rest is history.

Lets not forget that the Greeks were, as far as I am aware, missing many of the key parts of the kind of economics that we now take for granted, but really only grew up properly in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Plus, they didnt have science as we understand it. It was all too normal for them to reason something out and then just stop there, without testing the idea. Not to mention the difficulties of communicating ideas in an era before the printing press, when countries were small, people were very busy just surviving etc etc.

So no, the Greeks weren't on the cusp of an industrial evolution.

What about scientific background? I'm a little fuzzy on whether the Industrial Revolution spurred on techniques like calculus or the other way around, but surely without modern maths and physics we wouldn't have achieved our current technologies? The Greeks certainly contributed to maths, but unlike later generations, they didn't have the shoulders of Greek civilisation to stand on in order to develop even further ;)

Most scientific papers were passed around in single copies until very recently. The printing press was not necessary for scientific progress.

The Industrial Revolution provided impetus for advances in physics and chemistry, but not so much for math. That was going on asynchronously. It wasn't until we got into electronics and nuclear physics that industry required more advanced math than was available in the 17th Century.

don't forget steel. steel is probably the single most important part of the industrial revolution. just as steel was about to come on the scene, the dark ages hit. perhaps if the Greeks knew how to use crucible techniques while they were in their heyday, things would be different.

CAlculus is something like 400 years old, back to Leibniz and beyond.
As for modern maths and physics, modern = later 20th century ot me, and the industrial evolution started in the latter half of the 18th century. It was effectively mature by the time we had modern maths and physics.

Oh, Fraggle got to that point first.

As for the printing press, Fraggle, consider also that it made possible much more rapid dissemination of ideas, im pamphlets and books across Europe. It made it much cheaper. But then it also depends on whether you predicate scientific progress on some person shut up a tower, or whether you recognise the importance of communication and debate, as well as open minded, well educated laymen, in scientific progress. I argue that inventions like the printing press helped create a better educated populace, and helpd ideas move around faster and more easily than would have been the case had we been depending on simple hand copying. Thus, the Industrial Evolution could take place at the time it did, because the necessary ingredients were in place.

Peter Mathias, in his textbook "The first industrial nation" summarises the reaosns why the UK became the first industrial nation. Essentially they were a mixture of favourable natural resources, such as water and coal and iron, the presence of a well developed banking and economic system, some influences from Protestant non-conformist sects, (See Webers book on the topic) flexible social structure, applied science, and possibly one or tow other things which I dont have time to tease out from the book.

Essentially, in order to have an industrial revolution, you need to have a mixture of favourable factors, in the right place at the right time. The key point about the industrial revolution is that it set in motion changes which proceeded apparently as a massive rise in material standards, in PROGRESS. Is this soemthing that the Greeks could have concienved? Possibly not.

Also look at Da Vinci- he drew many wonderful inventions, but many of them were totally impractial at the time. Yet nowadays we can do them all, and even better than hec ould have thought possible, since we have had the past 400 years of improvement.

I would not take issue with Guthrie (or Peter Mathias, for that matter) in nominating the UK as the first industrial nation, and find myself in agreement with the favourable factors nominated. Two forgotten factors, oddly, are SHEEP and RAIN! The export of wool was at the heart of the mercantile economy of Medieval England, and the source of wealth for many of its leading merchants. Britain's plentiful and regular rainfall produced a potential power source, via the millwheel, by no means as readily available in continental Europe. Britain was thus a favourable venue for the marrying (via invention and experiment) of millpower to the mechanised spinning and weaving of wool. And not by accident was the famously wet Manchester, adjacent to the Pennine Hills, the greatest milltown of all! The impetus to engineering begun at the mills was enabled to develop through the ready availability of coal and iron ore in many parts of the island of Britain.

POWER is at the heart of industrialisation, and rainfall and coal ensured that Britain was benificently endowed. However, I would also rank PRECISION as a prerequisite to industrialisation. The machines of the eighteenth century may seem crude by our present standards, but their crafting was well in advance of medieval standards. Something important had happened between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries: it was the coming of precision.

The development of precision engineering largely happened in South Germany, Switzerland and Bohemia -- and hardly at all in Britain. The development of printing has been mentioned earlier in this thread. The idea of printing from blocks was not new in the fifteenth century, and several persons experimented with movable type. Johann Gutenberg's printing press in Mainz was not so much the product of a new idea or invention; rather it represented a major pushing forward in the development of precision engineering -- here applied to the casting of type. The same area of Europe saw the principal developments in clockmaking and personal firearms – all of these depending upon, or it turn supporting, precision in craftsmanship.

So the development of the printing press was not only important for its product – the mass-produced book – but also in its own right as one of the contributing threads in the evolution of precision engineering. Although little (if any) of this evolution had taken place in Britain, there had grown up a local community of skilled craftsmen (some of them jewellers like Gutenberg!) capable of working to the precise tolerances demanded in building the machinery of the industrial revolution. Without them, it could not have happened.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the Ancient Greeks were a long way off building Stevenson’s Rocket! (But an interesting topic, Tortise.)

Ah ha, someone else who has read MAthias, perhaps?

Also, wasnt there some Greek inventor, I think whose name began with an A, who was killed afte rthe ROmans took some town somewhere? To me that kind of epitomised the problem with things back then. You could kill the inventor of something, and the secret would be safe, since communication was sliightly different, more dangerous, and there wasnt much in the way of methods of preserving and transferring knowledge set up.

This is an interesting idea that one of the more thoughtful sci-fi writers picks up every five years or so. What if the Greeks had taken just one more step? In one fun story a man travels back in a time machine and manages to truly inspire some of the famous classical thinkers into inaugurating an era of scientific discovery.

He hurls back toward the 22nd century envisioning the fabulous technology that will exist with a 2,000 year head start. Instead his time machine vanishes because it was never invented. The world appears to be in the Middle Ages. Yet vastly better in many ways. The Egyptian, Aztec, and Inca civilizations have survived because Rome never became a great power and the Abrahamic religions did not take over the world.

It turns out that within the lifetime of the Greek sages whom he inspired, they were able to see the results of technological advances and foresee where that would take the world. So they stopped dead in their tracks and didn't even produce the learning that the Greeks in our world bestowed upon us. They did not want to be responsible for human beings creating new technology faster than our culture could adapt to it.

Ah ha, someone else who has read MAthias, perhaps?

Also, wasnt there some Greek inventor, I think whose name began with an A, who was killed afte rthe ROmans took some town somewhere? To me that kind of epitomised the problem with things back then. You could kill the inventor of something, and the secret would be safe, since communication was sliightly different, more dangerous, and there wasnt much in the way of methods of preserving and transferring knowledge set up.
Archimedes. IIRC, he was doing an experiment when a roman soldier came in and told him he was being taken prisoner. Archimedes wasn't listening and carried on with his experiment, or said "Sure, just let me finish this". The Roman soldier grew annoyed and killed him.

It turns out that within the lifetime of the Greek sages whom he inspired, they were able to see the results of technological advances and foresee where that would take the world. So they stopped dead in their tracks and didn't even produce the learning that the Greeks in our world bestowed upon us. They did not want to be responsible for human beings creating new technology faster than our culture could adapt to it.
Hmm, that sounds like a case of 'the grass is always greener in the other universe' to me. I think if we went back in time and corrected our mistakes, we'd just make different ones. ;)

Still, an interesting idea. Do you remember the name of the author?

Hmm, dont think I have read that story.

Another point, although since I cant find my book on the history of iron and steel making right now, you'll have to accept is a very generalised point:

Metallurgy. I know they had iron, obviously. But to go from Heros revolving ball, essentially a pot with a restricted exit for the steam, then to a steam boiler is quite a leap.
Even the simplest steam engine possible, that of a vertical tube in which steam is passed from teh boiler, forcing the piston up, then gravity pulling back down when the steam condenses, requires a fair bit of pressure resistant capability. Possibly more than the Greeks could have managed, and even had they made small, working demonstration models, where would they get the iron ore, the coal/ charcoal to smelt it, and the blacksmiths and others to weld it all together?

To reiterate- the Industrial Evolution occurred because a lot of factors came together in the one small geographical area, at the right time. It was quite a unique event.

Consider also China, which during its heyday invented more stuff than Europeans, before them, yet never actually put it all into wide use.

Does anyone know how much math (beyond simple geometry to make sure your pieces fit together) was actually used in the early industrial revolution? Keep in mind that the greeks didn't even have algebra.

Not off the top of my head I am afraid. Most of my books tend to be about the economics or the industrial side of things.

Archimedean inventions include what many people including Leonardo Da vinci thought probably included a steam cannon. The greeks had a primitive steem engine that if connected to a Archimedean screw, could have powered a boat. If they had made the leap to steam engines, the world may look very different today.
This seems to me to be rather like saying "the Chinese had rockets in the twelfth century, so why didn't they take the next step and invent space flight?"

Although burning something to heat water and use the steam to do useful work is the core idea of steam power in the industrial revolution, there's a world of difference between being able to make something spin with steam and using steam power to run a complex machine. A lack of precision machining ability, math, and steal would seem to me to be huge barriers for an industrial revolution.

This seems to me to be rather like saying "the Chinese had rockets in the twelfth century, so why didn't they take the next step and invent space flight?"

Although burning something to heat water and use the steam to do useful work is the core idea of steam power in the industrial revolution, there's a world of difference between being able to make something spin with steam and using steam power to run a complex machine. A lack of precision machining ability, math, and steal would seem to me to be huge barriers for an industrial revolution.

I was going to say the same thing. I agree totally. You cant jump from stone age to computer age.

well ancient Egypt was also a centre of science and industrial evolution, perhaps the very beginning of idustrialization as we know it, even people like pythagoras travelled to Egypt; many wonder today how in the bejeesus they built those huge pyramids.

Archimedean inventions include what many people including Leonardo Da vinci thought probably included a steam cannon. The greeks had a primitive steem engine that if connected to a Archimedean screw, could have powered a boat. If they had made the leap to steam engines, the world may look very different today.
The Greeks were probably too smart to do anything as stupid as start an industrial revolution.

well ancient Egypt was also a centre of science and industrial evolution, many wonder today how in the bejeesus they built those huge pyramids.It wasn't industrialization, which is based on standardization and acceleration of production. The pyramids were built one at a time and rather slowly.

What it was was the dawn of civil engineering. Large projects to construct large artifacts for the community as a whole--or for the government. It involves large-scale planning, a huge labor pool, and multiple layers of management. I think that a pyramid was a larger-scale project than even the city walls that preceded them by many centuries, and if so the pyramids were the largest civil engineering projects until, by my reckoning, the Great Wall of China. But they were not industrial projects because there was no machinery involved. They used one-off hand-tooled production methods.

I believe the next milestone in civil engineering, which like the Great Wall was performed to serve the citizens rather than only the rulers, was the Roman aqueducts.

Wait, I thought the egyptians had cranes? How else did they raise their obelisks? With V1AGR4?

Yes, I agree, the Egyptioans probably had cranes, although I dont have any pictures to hand. Certainly they had sleds.
Technically, I suppose you can raise Obelisks without machinery as we know it. What you do is dig a hole for the base of the obelisk, lay it down with one end over the hole, and then pull up up with the end stuck into the hole. Theres some complex stuff to angle the hole walls right, but its all possible using what knowledge they had then.

The Greeks, Egyptians, and every other group worthy of 'civilisation' used as a noun have relied upon machines. A laser is a machine, but so is an anvil. In retrospect, it is tempting to weave arguments to imply that the Industrial Revolution was inevitable, and that places like Manchester were just waiting to be exploited to be used in this manner. But this misses the soul of the beast: creativity. The place now called Manchester existed for a very long time before human beings began using it industrially. So why wasn't the Revolution ignited 100 years before it was? or ten?

Several posts have alluded to the transience and fragility of human thoughts, and this adds a lot of spice to our enjoyment of historical speculations. It really isn't a question of whether any amazing inventions died untried by ancient Greeks, but how many. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? The first relevant step is the one made by the individual inventor, who elects to act upon his epiphany. I sadly suspect that only a very tiny fraction of inventors in any era ever do so. And inventors themselves are far from common, so the odds are always stacked against something being created, even when there are no artificial obstacles.

Ingenuity is not predicated upon pure reason, nor economic calculus, and thank God, because I rather enjoy the arts. By factors known and unknown, some nations have been more industrially and artistically prolific than others. No one will seriously argue that the Greeks were uncreative, or less intelligent than people living in 18th century Britain. Yet again, it is only the tiniest minority of people in any culture who adds to its scientific knowledge, and it is still hugely a matter of sheer luck how these geniuses will be inspired to create.

But of course, not all creation is a good thing for humanity, and had Greek civilisation relied upon computers such as we have now, I shudder to think of all the wonderful thoughts we would have lost from e-mails and message board posts that weren't printed out.

We're blurring our terminology here and that's confusing the discussion. A "machine" is merely a device for converting energy. There is a defined set of "simple machines" that merely convert energy from one rate or direction of application to another.

They are (I cheated and had to google them, it's been a long time) the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw, the wheel, and the pulley. It's a rather arbitrary taxonomy if you ask me. The wedge is simply an inclined plane that moves under the object instead of standing still while the object moves. The screw is simply an inclined plane twisted around a shaft. The pulley has a wheel in it.

But anyway, the concept that we're stumbling around here is not machines, but engines. An engine is a machine, but one that converts stored or natural energy into kinetic energy. The stored energy can't be muscular, by universal convention. The whole point of an engine is to exploit a source of energy superior to human or animal power. So it's the energy of falling water, as in a traditional mill, heat energy from burning fuel, as in a steam engine, chemical energy from more sophisticated use of fuel, as in an internal combusion engine, solar energy, wind energy, or nuclear energy, to bring us more or less up to date.

It was engines that brought about industry, not machines. Engines increase the supply of power by orders of magnitude beyond what can be provided by muscles, thereby allowing work to be done on a scope previously unimaginable.

The water wheel, used to power mills, was really the first engine. I can't find an authoritative source on the date of its invention. But it's clear that the principle had been known for quite a long time, and the devices only became widespread in what we call the Middle Ages when the need for power outstripped the supply of human labor.

This is another perfect example of what we're talking about. Like the steam engine, people knew the far simpler principle of the water wheel but didn't see any practical reason to build any.

Unlike many previous improvements in technology and engines, the industrial evolution was such a step change into a wider arena (apologies for mixing metaphors) that it was a discontinuity much greater than any other set of changes, except maybe the learning to farm ones, but they probably happened over a much longer time period.

Also, I think we can say that water wheels became more widespread because knowledge of how to build and use them increased. Whereas I have read a convincing book saying that the ancient Egyptians had rock crystal lenses, but then they lost the technology and knowledge because it was kept within the priestly class, and thus the potential for more advanced optics earlier in history was lost.

I believe there was a disconnect between artisans and natural philosophers in ancient Greece. The aristocracy who had time to engage in scientific thought and experiments would never reduce themselves to seeking practical applications for their ideas. They were simply playing games, thought experiments. To actually produce or sell something was for the lower classes, therefore, no industrial revolution could occur.

Unlike many previous improvements in technology and engines, the industrial evolution was such a step change into a wider arena (apologies for mixing metaphors) that it was a discontinuity much greater than any other set of changes, except maybe the learning to farm ones, but they probably happened over a much longer time period.Only agriculture and industry are labeled Revolutions because anthropologists recognize the qualitative difference they created in the way humans live. Even civilization doesn't get that honor. We talk about the "Information Revolution" but it's way too early to tell whether the change brought about by computers and the internet will really be as profound.

The printing press was not necessary for scientific progress.
What?!?! It most certainly was. At least, progress beyond a "snail's pace". The ability to distribute ideas and knowledge to many people is vital to the rapid progression of science, both then and now.

Only agriculture and industry are labeled Revolutions because anthropologists recognize the qualitative difference they created in the way humans live. Even civilization doesn't get that honor. We talk about the "Information Revolution" but it's way too early to tell whether the change brought about by computers and the internet will really be as profound.
Hehheeheee. You did notice that I put "Industrial Evolution, didnt you? I started calling it that a while ago, then was talking with a friend who did history of economics at University, who said that one of the first elctures consisted of the lecturer telling them how it wasnt really a "revolution", it was not as fast etc as everyone now seems to think.

Well said. Agriculture took even longer, probably a couple of millennia.

The thing is, the more I read about that period, the more I can see that it was quite slow. Alright, the cotton mills did get going in the latter half of the 18th century, but what we would nowadays call industrialisation only really took off in the earlier part of the 19th century. There were changes all the way through the period from 1750 to 1850, enough so that people felt slightly uncomfortable, but never enough all at once that they ended up totally confused.

That was still pretty fast. To me, a real "revolution" occurs when change is so quick that young people can't rely on the wisdom of their elders. That, after all, is the advantage we have over the other animals: We pass down so much knowledge and craft to our young that it takes twenty years before they're ready to go out on their own, and when they do they are prepared to add to the store of human culture so that there's even more for their offspring.

I think by that measure industrialization qualifies. My father was unable to sit in his grandfather's lap and apply any of the experiences related to his own life. I suppose he never quite felt "totally" confused but he was very confused. :)

By my generation the gap had become more serious. All of the garage and kitchen lore that my parents passed down to me turned out to be useless when confronting an electronic ignition or a food "processor."

This is a wrenching blow to civilization. If each generation has to learn how to cope with the world entirely from their own experience, we've broken the link to the past and we no longer have the advantage of all those billions of people as teachers and mentors. We're not much better of than coyotes, whose parents taught them how to track prey, but they have to learn the pickup schedules of garbage trucks.

The Information Revolution is even worse. Kids can't even learn from older kids. The advance of civilization could stop right here. Knowledge is being developed faster than it can be passed on.

Sure, but your grandfathers period was around about pre-WW1, wasnt it? Thats still after, by my reckoning, industrialisation was in full swing, and pretty much after the Industrial evolution was finished. Unless you want to extend it as a continous series of changes to today, which is a point we could debate all day, and would be quite interesting.


The Information Revolution is even worse. Kids can't even learn from older kids. The advance of civilization could stop right here. Knowledge is being developed faster than it can be passed on.
INterestomg idea. But I think you are being too pessimistic. How are you defining the advance of civilisation? From my point of view, working in a small manufacturing company in Scotland, technology is advancing steadily on many fronts, and i can access magazines, information sources, scientific papers etc etc from all over the world.

If on the other hand you mean that the things which make up culture, from cooking to games to tv to clothes are in a state of constant flux, then I think you are broadly correct. But it is counterbalanced by the formation of world wide bands of knowledge. Take for example films. Because of the number of blockbusters, that are released across the globe, you have a global film community of people who have seen and will talk about a smallish number of films.

Plus, what do you mean by information? In a time like just now, when immediate survival needs are satisfied for a billion or two people, who have then moved onto Aspirational needs etc, (Think Maslows hierarchy of values) there is plenty of room for a massive multiplication and recombination of information, in such a fashion that there are many tiny splinter groups with their own specialised interests, yet they can still interact with the mainstream, or are in some way connected to the rest of society.