Show HN: The Roman Industrial Revolution that could have been

The steam engine took along time to develop for exactly that reason. You needed something that was big and strong enough for it. https://technicshistory.com/the-age-of-steam/

A fun fact is that the steam engine in England was originally developed to pump water out of mines, where flooding was a frequent problem.

Technological revolutions aren't just driven by opportunity, but also practical need; mine draining was the first "killer app" for steam that let it catch on because it solved a real problem and allowed it to be proven as a concept.

But England was also in a unique position in other ways: It had natural resources like coal and iron, as well as rivers to efficiently transport these, a stable government, and relatively high wages compared to mainland Europe, which served as an incentive to replace workers (and animals) with machines. All of these stars aligned at the right time for steam to become a viable entrepreneurial project, which simply wasn't the case in, say, Germany or France.

And if you have a wheel without a wide axle... then you can build narrow paths instead of roads! [1] (so much for establishing rail gauges)

1: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-...

Yes, exactly! Even the simplest printing press needs a screw, a nut, and movable types, each one is its own little invention. To make just those three things, they need good metalworking skills, a way to make threads that fit together, and tools to shape the letters. So even one simple machine like the most basic printing press depends on a bunch of other smaller breakthroughs. That’s what makes it so fun to think about, every step opens the door to ten more.

I also believe that a lot of simple ideas require the right context. A bike could be made out of wood long ago, but without very flat roads you cannot ride very far without getting exhausted.. meanwhile in the 19th, it was a lot nicer and obvious idea.

Same with textiles: automating weaving wasn’t the critical jump; automating spinning was.

Before the Saxony (flyer) spinning wheel was developed and spread through Europe in the late Middle Ages, about 9-10 spinners using hand spindles were required to keep one weaver in sufficient yarn (thread), and that includes the most tedious part of weaving, dressing the loom. Such was the need for yarn that most girls and women spun hours a day - possible while waiting for something to cook, watching children, walking around the village (I was able to spin while walking within a few weeks of learning)

Even with spinning wheels, there were still more people spinning than weaving. There were advances in loom technology in the early 1700s that increased the spinner to weaver ratio again. It wasn’t until Arkwright’s Water Frame that a powered device could reliably spin yarns strong enough to be warp; the Spinning Jenny that preceded it produced less-strong yarns.

Anyhow, ACOUP has a really great textiles series that shows some of that math. TL;DR - it’s all about the spinning (and the picking and combing)

I’m familiar with it. Not sure what ended up happening to the project though.

Sadly the author mentioned that the script itself is stuck in rights limbo, where they sold off the rights but never saw that it'd amount to a movie, yet.

Everything you see on your screen was created in part by a computer model, this seems like a way to be rude and dismissive as some kind of status game.

Because you can't actually tell the difference, reliably, for the rest of your life.

You will never know if that detail was borrowed directly from a human hand without alteration, generated and composed, or added with the flourish of a digital pen or brush, or modified via very specific prompt, or edited with photoshop, or edited by an AI agent using photoshop, or a tiny grease stain, a weird compression artifact that ended up looking cool, etc.

You're a fraud if you say that you can reliably know absent of context, and you grasp for metaphysical assertions because you're a fraud.

This is very interesting. It seems similar to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which also features a time traveler. I'll try to get a used copy from eBay.

Came here to post this as well and took a moment to reflect that Martin Padway has probably inspired me more than almost any other character in all literature to memorize and know things that might come in handy some day if for the most absurdly impossible reason that I might be pulled through a wormhole to ancient Rome.

This plot device is known as a "time slip": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_slip

Which is also the alternative title of the Sonny Chiba film "G.I. Samurai" (1979), in which a few dozen Japanese Self-Defense Forces soldiers find themselves in the 1560s.

I see your point, however, the idea is to introduce engineering knowledge from the outside. Think of the duct tape scene in Apollo 13: a group of engineers gathered around a table, someone dumps a pile of random items, and says, "We have to find a way to make this thing using nothing but that." What's the minimum set of tools and knowledge that, dropped into the Roman world, could solve a specific technological problem.

Very true on all of those accounts (and I mentioned in another comment about the Bessemer Process). What's interesting on an economic level is that they knew about hyperinflation but were powerless to actually combat it at a high level. Diocletian tried but they simply were unaware of what truly creates hyperinflation and tried price ceilings which of course do not work for scarce goods.

Thanks for taking the time to dig in, this is exactly the kind of feedback I'm after.

Apologies, I use 11ty for most of my personal projects. It’s primarily a static blog generator, but I also use it for plain web pages. I forgot to delete the example blog post pages that came with the template. It didn’t even occur to me that someone might want to use the RSS feed!

There's a short story similar to that by Peter F. Hamilton.

https://www.stevenhsilver.com/hamilton.html

Absolutely, I get that. But the whole idea behind the story is to introduce outside knowledge into the Roman world. If someone managed to bring steam power to ancient Rome, it would trigger a complex chain of events, a kind of technological revolution. It probably wouldn't resemble our own Industrial Revolution. For example, I don't see railroads becoming a priority. Rome's geography is centered around the Mediterranean, and most trade happens by sea. So steamboats it is.

Slightly related, but Antikythera mechanism was build ~150BC and has a lot of advanced construction steps. If you have a few hour to go down the rabbit hole I recommend the Clickspring reconstruction serie https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0...

Perhaps someone can ask the guy to build a "roman" steam engine.

It’s not so much about using only Roman technology to build a steam engine directly. The more interesting question is: what’s the smallest set of tools the Romans could have made that would let them build a basic working steam engine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

I explain the whole process in “The Making Of” section, but happy to share more here if you have specific questions!

> kicked off the industrial revolution early.

Short answer: no. Longer answer: read https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... (which covers it better than I could, from an actual historian).

The Antikythera mechanism was likely within Archimedes' lifetime or not long after his death, so he certainly knew what gears were.

He might have a "cameo". At some point I will need the Romans to make screws and nuts!

Absolutely. One of the reasons I chose ancient Rome over other settings is simply because, while I’m no expert, it’s the one I know the most about.

Nah they were too centralised. Actually I think the Greeks were closer by having city-states and inventing the aeolipile.

故事讲的是未来的人将达芬奇的设计图送给罗马人