Rome and the Industrial Revolution

jegs2 · Post by **jegs2** » 2003-03-07 07:04pm

The post on Rome led me to ponder something: With all of the availability of education, science, a relatively stable govenrnment, and all other assets of Rome, what prevented them from making the key discoveries that could have led to an early Industrial Revolution?

Further food for thought: Where would we now be technologically and scientifically had that happened?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 07:08pm

they actually had the key discovery (steam engine). or rather, it was the greeks. Heron build his aeliopile which was a miniature steam jet. all throughout history up to the modern industrial revoltion people have used actual steam power to do things (there was a turbine powered printing press in like.. the 1600s). I think the real reason, however, is the lack of need or want -- when you have oh-so-many slaves, and you suddenly make them obsolete, youre in trouble.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-03-07 07:25pm

I think the fact that the empire crumbled had something to do with it.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 07:30pm

The Aeliopile was invented in 200BC before the empire ever existed.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-03-07 07:42pm

It was also funtionally useless.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2003-03-07 07:46pm

Yes, and even they had a fuctional model developed they lacked iron for anything remotely represents an industrial revolution.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 07:49pm

howedar, useless yes, but they had the ability to fashion a modern steam engine. it would have been a no brainer.

lennox, they did have iron, plenty of it infact. like i said in the other thread, the military used iron extensively.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2003-03-07 07:57pm

I don't think bronze is a good rail tie conductor. It was tired but it conducts too much heat and I believe is quite brittle when hot. Also, bronze was used very much in the city and also was used as armor and shielding. It was even rarer then iron I believe. Yes, there was iron but enough for the Empire's frontiers where it was needed.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2003-03-07 08:00pm

Just because the military did have it didn't mean their was enough for rail ties. Yes, there was iron but not enough for the Empire's frontiers where it was needed. So they could of used it but it would only extend too about the borders of Italy. It might get new and requipped legions too the areas of Piedmont, Grenbole, La Spezia, and most likely past the Po River. That was my whole point. There is extra iron from military use but not enough for a sufficeint rail ties.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 08:01pm

the rails get so hot their strength is altered greatly?

besides, the romans proper would not have developed the aeliopile, the greeks would have and i do believe they (and the egyptians who they ruled) could have provided the iron. and during the time Heron lived, darling Alex was conquering the middle east which only added to the iron supply.

**btw, they wouldnt need to equp the entire empire overnight, just enough to start. besides, rails arent the only major benefit -- powered ships and non-animal power would have greatly improved various things.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-03-07 08:03pm

kojikun wrote:howedar, useless yes, but they had the ability to fashion a modern steam engine. it would have been a no brainer.

lennox, they did have iron, plenty of it infact. like i said in the other thread, the military used iron extensively.

How would it have been a no-brainer to make a conventional piston-driven steam engine?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 08:05pm

it would have been a no brainer because Heron and the greeks had been using all the necessary piston systems for quite some time.

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2003-03-07 08:13pm

Ah, you're right probably not heating. but I'm pretty sure why it wasn't used in our industrial revolution was it's brittle nature or something like that. I've been looking for a link. Also, I'd doubt Rome would waste it's treasury of bronze would of been completely used on rails. And the very cost of transporting and placing iron would of been very high aswell. But I'm sure Rome could of done it. I'd doubt it could transport supplies but only reinforcements. So you'd constantly need more rail ties too support a growing fron even though a good railroad probably couldn't reach the frontiers of Constanine. Yes, iron was plentiful but enough too reach the frontier where it ws needed. Especially if there are more then one line and the Romans are advancing.

Post by **weemadando** » 2003-03-07 08:15pm

Rome had no need for steam powered devices. At least not at the time, they were a novelty/luxury (look at the baths) not a utility. Its the same reason that the South Americans had the wheel but never used it, because they had no practical use for it.

Warspite · Post by **Warspite** » 2003-03-07 08:24pm

weemadando wrote:Rome had no need for steam powered devices. At least not at the time, they were a novelty/luxury (look at the baths) not a utility. Its the same reason that the South Americans had the wheel but never used it, because they had no practical use for it.

You forgot to mention slave labour catering for all roman citizen's needs. But I guess your paper will have this, hum?

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-03-07 08:38pm

The Industrial Revolution requires more iron than the Empire had availiable to it. However, if we are to play with a thought experiment where the Empire somehow survives, it will weather the Revolution much better. It already has massive infrastructure along which to build railroads, so that will be acheived quicker. Would the people claiming slave labour was the end-all-be-all of that economy STFU already, please?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 08:38pm

has it been shown whether or not the southern US adopted mechanised power or not relative to the norths adoption?

i'd think that the northern US before the emancipation would have adopted much easier thanks to the lack of slave labor.

i'd say if anything, human and animal labor is the biggest inhibitor of technological progress from pre to post industrial so if any nation is to advance they would need to remove their human and animal laborers.

much the same can be said of industrial nations, to progress they must move from people manufacturing goods to people doing services. but who knows where a modern information economy will go. Toffler says genetics then space.

Perinquus · Post by **Perinquus** » 2003-03-07 08:45pm

The Romans were saddled with a fundamentally impractical view of the scientist's (or "natural philosopher's" as it was called then) role. In fact the entire Western world was saddled with this prior to the advent of Francis Bacon. The real problem is that for centuries people (including the Greeks and Romans) held science ("natural philosophy") to be purely an abstract thing, and actually sneered at practical application.

This seems astonishing to us today, but the truth is that "natural philosphy" was considered to have quite a different purpose than we think it has, and up until just a few centuries ago, any thought that science and technology were connected, or ought to be connected was accounted both vulgar and absurd.

For example, when the Roman writer Posidonius suggested that the arch and the use of metals were some of the humbler blessings that man owed to natural philosophy, Seneca repudiated these comments, which he regarded as actually an insult. Natural philosophy, he retorted, was not about teaching men to erect arches over their heads, or using metals to make things and do work. The "true" philospher cares not whether he has an arch over his head, or is exposed to the elements. He went on:

In my own time there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building, short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is a drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosphy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul. Next we shall be told that the first shoemaker was a philosopher!

These sentiments prevailed among nearly all intellectuals all through antiquity and the middle ages. Archimedes of Syracuse, who had one of the most inventive minds of history, disdained to apply his work. When the Romans invaded, and he had to put his genius to work defending his city, he was irritated at the need to pull himself away from philosphical speculation and sully himself with rude practical application.

So for century after century "natural philosophers" eschewed to put their considerable intelligene to any useful end, and instead occupied themselves with questions like: "What is the greatest good?" or "Is pain good or evil?" or "Can a wise man be unhappy?" etc. Abelard, the most respected philosopher of the 12th century stated that dialectic was the sole road to truth. In the words of one historian, " They filled the world with long beards and long words, and they left it as ignorant as they found it."

The man who did more to change that than any other was Francis Bacon, a 17th century Englishman. His writings effected a scientific revolution as significant as the industrial revolution. He preached simply that the proper function of science is search for fact and benefit people. Again, this seems so simple to us that it is too obvious to be worth remarking upon. But in Bacon's day the notion was quite novel. While at Cambridge, Bacon conceived a hatred for Platonic and Aristotlean schools of thought. Consider the following words of Plato regarding the constellations and stars:

We must get beyond them: we must neglect them. We must attain to an astronomy which is as independent of of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of an ill-drawn diagram... The true purpose of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to raise the mind to the contemplation of things which can be perceived by pure intellect alone.

Bacon likened the astronomy of Plato to the ox of Prometheus - "a sleek, well-shaped hide, goodly to look at, but stuffed with rubbish and containing nothing to eat."

For ages the views of Plato and Aristotle dominated "natural philosphy" and assured that it would contribulte nothing useful to humanity. Bacon started people thinking differently.

The problem is that as long as that old, fundamentally anti-scientific perspective was dominant, technological progress was always going to be slow and sporadic (as indeed it was for most of history).

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 08:52pm

thats why we would need an empire like Alexanders or Rome which would DRIVE science because of necessity (shit, if the roman empire saw the possibilities of the steam engine theyd use it)

and Heron was different, he was an engineer, he designed for use. All of his works were for practical applications of pneumatica

Perinquus · Post by **Perinquus** » 2003-03-07 09:03pm

Even Heron wasn't that concerned with practical application. It was a fundamentally different approach. When Heron invented his engine, he was just testing a theory he'd come up with, and he never used his device for anything more practical than opening temple doors automatically. When Thomas Newcomen invented his steam engine, it was in answer to a practical problem - how to pump water out of mine shafts. The industrial revolution was driven by men who invented new things in response to some need, not as mere intellectual exercises.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 09:05pm

yeah but perinq, you have to admit that automatic opening of temple doors is far more practical then the nature fo the soul.

Johonebesus · Post by **Johonebesus** » 2003-03-07 10:33pm

Kojikun is right that the main stimulant for the Industrial Revolution was need. The attitude towards science was a factor, but for years after Bacon engineering and science were still largely unrelated fields. It was really the study of thermodynamics and electricity that brought science and technology together, and it happened gradually. The development of the steam engine was more an engineering problem than a scientific one.

The real reason the Romans never got started is because it was unnecessary. The steam engine was developed because it was economically and morally undesirable for miners to drown. The Romans had neither compunction.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-03-07 10:58pm

the original steam pump was little more then a pressure chamber with water cooling of the steam.

Steam was put into a chamber which raised a weight. It was then cooled, oddly enough, by cold water into the chamber. The vapor would condense, the weight would fall, and the pumping action would occur. The system failed in that the cold water eventually heated and condensing action failed over time. Why the idiot didnt just use a vent in the side controlled by the pump action of the device i have no idea. Probably shear stupidity.

The steam engine is a really simple design tho -- a valve controlled by the movement of the piston reverses the flow of steam, and thus reverseing the direction of the piston (in a double action design). a single action design could have the position of the piston push the control valve into open then closed again when it returns to its retracted position, but any intelligent person would have realised that doing so would be hard so putting steam on that side would work as well.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-03-08 07:59pm

Captain Lennox wrote:Ah, you're right probably not heating. but I'm pretty sure why it wasn't used in our industrial revolution was it's brittle nature or something like that.

Bronze has relatively poor compressional strength. It's too soft to be used for rail ways. It would have been deformed relatively easily.

One of the reasons that Iron came to be used so widely in the Industrial Revolution was the development of the techniques to refine and shape it at a much cheaper price. Even if Rome had enough iron, and they didn't, they could never have afforded to manufacture a 19th century infastructure.

The Industrial Revolution was made up of advances in more than just one area. Any single element alone would not have been enough to create an Industrial Revolution. It was a cummunlative process that hit it's peak in the 1800s.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-03-08 09:00pm

To answer this threads's original question: no, absolutely not. Not within a reasonable timeframe, anyway.

Perquinius has already illustrated the problems inherent in Roman society that would prevent a scientific revolution. To that I would add that the Romans never even had a printing press, which would be the first requirement for an industrial revolution (a printing press would have been within their capabilities, but they never invented it despite the apparent obviousness of the idea). On top of that, there was the economic problem: why would Rome develop an industrial economy when it had no need for one? Nitram, you can't just dismiss the slaves--cheap, widespread slavery meant that labor cost far, far less than the capital investements an industrial infrastructure would require. The first practical steam engine was developed to pump out mines. The Romans would have just had slaves work the pumps, and if they drowned or got too sick to work, they'd just get more. And Kojikun, there's an enormous leap from Heron's steam toy to even an experimental steam piston engine, let alone one that actually did something productive. If you don't believe me, then explain why neither the Greeks, nor the Romans, nor the Arabs who had access to Greek learning and actually developed several important inventions during the time of their empire, ever developed even an experimental piston, let alone a working steam engine. On a more practical note, Roman metallurgy, ironmaking, and ironworking was all very rudimentary compared to the late 18th century. By the late 1700s, Europeans had had centures of practical experience making canons and firearms to teach them how to deal with high temperatures and high pressures within a tube of metal. Now, give the Romans gunpowder and printing presses during the reign of Augustus, and maybe it could happen. I doubt it, but it could happen. The way things went in real life? Not much before it happened in our timeline, by which point the Roman Empire would have certainly morphed into something unrecognizable.