Why Didn't We Invent Steam Engines Earlier? (Newcomen Steam Engine)

[@bpark10001]

It is amazing that the steam engine came as EARLY as it did! The cylinders and pistons that were first made were awful! They were cast, with huge clearances, as machinery did not exist that could make precision fits (are you aware that the Newcomen engines were sealed with leather and water over the piston?) But the real technology missing was the boiler THAT COULD HOLD PRESSURE and exchange heat at the same time. That is why both the Newcomen and the Watt engine were "atmospheric" engines. The boiler needed only operate at near-zero pressure. Look at the history of early railroad and stationary steam engines (with their riveted boilers). Boiler explosions abounded! Even today this is a problem, and is why anyone operating a steam engine of any moderate size must be licensed, and the boilers subject to annual hydrostatic tests. I conduct annual hydrostatic tests of my 1/8th scale steam engine boiler for this reason! The competitor was the Stirling engine. It required no license to operate (the housewife could pump water for the farm) but (lack of) technology was also in the way. Heat exchangers burned through for lack of high-temperature steel alloys, and the engine was large for the power produced (almost as bad as the Newcomen).

[@ronblack7870]

the ancients were able to cast bronze into huge items. there were screw pumps built for the hanging gardens of babylon. so making cylinders was an old idea.

[@Mark-dc1su]

Easy answer: The division of labor didnt call for it. It would've cost more to run a steam engine than it would've made the producer. History is an active process!

[@bmzaron713]

"Would've made the producer".. ??

[@therealmeik]

@@bmzaron713 slaves

[@hossskul544]

Well obviously not or it would not of continued ? I mean how many men would you have had to employee to carry buckets of water out of a mine ?

[@bigkiwimike]

Thomas Newcomen was quite probably pushing the limits of engineering when he did invent his engine.

[@Walter-w9v]

Bloomfield Colliery Near Dudley 1776: ' Birmingham, March 11th. On Friday last a Steam Engine constructed upon Mr Watt's new principles, was set to work at Bloomfield Colliery, Dudley. From the first moment of it's setting to work it made about 14 or 15 strokes per minute, and emptied the engine pit (which is about 90 feet deep, and stood 57 feet high in water) in less than an hour. This engine is applied to the working of a pump 14 inches and a half diameter, which is capable of doing to the depth 300 feet, or even 360 if wanted, with one fourth of the fuel that a common engine would require to produce the fame quantity of power. The cylinder is 50 inches diameter, and the lenth of the stroke is seven feet. These engines are not worked by the pressure of the atmosphere. Their principles are very different from all others.

[@risraelsen]

Have you read the book “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World” by Simon Winchester? It discusses some of the technology that was necessary for the industrial revolution that wasn’t developed yet.

[@StarScapesOG]

I think you're on the right track. How many "inventions" actually have a new concept behind them and aren't just an application of a bunch of old ideas? We have so many things and concepts around us that we get lost in them and overlook things that maybe in a few years will seem obvious? Not all geniuses are out there shattering the bounds of what we know, I would propose many overlooked geniuses are so because of their ability to take what we know and provide that idea that revolutionizes the world.

[@FourthRoot]

Actually, I don't think many inventions come about that way either. I think virtually all inventions are not the result of one guy suddenly realizing a novel concept or application, but rather, the advent of new technology is the result of technological infrastructure enabling the new invention to be manufactured or implemented in a way that wasn't previously viable. Watt failed for years to develop his engine until a precision tube boring machine was invented.

[@xnivaxhzne]

Guys read How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley

[@Aengus42]

Vacuums don't suck! The piston isn't "pulled" anywhere. Atmospheric pressure on the outside PUSHES the piston after the steam is condensed. Hence the name "atmospheric engine".

[@stamasd8500]

My vacuum sucks. In more ways than one. :)

[@kevinrogan9871]

Yes exactly, almost everyone thinks vacuums suck no doubt because they are carrying their misconceptions across from sucking drinks up through a straw., not really appreciating that the pressure in their mouth is being lowered by their diaphragm which then allows the atmosphere to push the drink up the straw into their mouth. Negative pressures do not exist

[@PaulHigginbothamSr]

the reason was the same as the whittle jet engine. the first trope of steam engines worked on the condensation of steam, not the pressure part but the vacuum part condensing back to water. It took a while to make an axial flow turbojet like the Krauts had, instead of the gloster meteor like the roosians copied for the mig15. It would never perform up to specs, because they had the wrong blueprints.

[@bigunone]

Used to be a BBC show called "Connections" where they would take something modern and trace it back through different sometimes seemingly unrelated discoveries. I keep hoping someone will resurrect them here on youtube

[@garyv2498]

Loved Connections. That show and the sequels are on various youtube channels. James Burke, the guy behind the show, was working on something with a large scope at k-web.org/

[@johnjanpopovic4813]

James Burke Connections, Ep. 1 "The Trigger Effect" kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpbXoZ9-mLJql7M

[@bigunone]

@@johnjanpopovic4813 Thanks

[@ronblack7870]

james burke created the series and was the host. it was a great series. connections 2 with james burke on another network was not as good as the pace was quicker and the episodes were 1/2 the length.

[@hossskul544]

Yeah you just have to be aware of the left-wing historical revisionist trying to " include" what shouldn't be included to make people "feel" good . Almost everything has been corrupted by politics and or money . Constant skepticism required.

[@bluesrocker91]

It does seem amazing that no one at the time of Hero thought to attach a pulley to the Aeolipile, just to see what it could do... Humans have long known that rotation is an incredibly useful motion, be it wheels, cranks, pulleys etc, and have usually employed human or animal labour to achieve it. Yet apparently no one thought this device that rotates by itself had any useful application.

[@johno6861]

I’m glade someone explained it properly that it is a vacuum engine. Steam engines existed before the vacuum innovation but didn’t have the power to be really useful. If you watch a steam loc start up, the drive wheels will slip 1/2 turn and then slowly move, the slipping is the power stroke as the vacuum is formed. For the purists down below, I know it is not a vacuum but a differential in air pressure.

[@legolegs87]

If you ask of an existing modern technology which is not being practically used today but will be used the future - then my bet is on Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor. It can be made with XIX century tech and it does nuclear fusion!

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Hero was familiar with piston and cylinder mechanisms too, which makes it even more interesting. Here is another potentially huge "missed opportunity" idea. The Babbage situation is really ripe for speculation. I actually agree with critics that Babbage was genuinely too far ahead of his time, and that mechanical parts were just too expensive, slow, and limited in use. But what if Babbage had lived just a little bit later? Because a mind like Babbage's and Ada's probably COULD have used the electrical relay logic or carbon amplifier logic to build a usable and practical digital electronic computer by the 1880s. Relays can operate at a few hertz and carbon amplifiers (a little known early audio amplifier that made the telephone possible) can operate at a few kilohertz. Magnetic amplifiers (another even lesser-known form of amplifier) could operate at a few kilohertz as well. What would have happened if electrical computing became available in the late 1800s rather than the 1940s? To make matters even more perplexing, by the late 1800s, science and engineering had developed to a high state of existence. Engineers and scientists KNEW that there were certain mathematical problems requiring the solving of large sets of partial differential equations and matrix inversions, and yet no attempts to utilise general purpose electrical logic and computing happened. Heck, the Audion triode vacuum tube was invented in 1906 and probably could have driven logic capable of switching at several hundred kilohertz into the megahertz. In hindsight, what the hell took us so long to build a digital computer? What if the digital computer revolution had happened between 40 and 60 years before it actually did in the 1940s? The time gap is smaller than most of these other speculative exercises, but the revolutionary nature of digital computing could tend to produce highly radical scientific progress. Would we be living in the technological equivalent of 2080? Would we have already developed negligible senescence and biological immortality? (which are coming, and preliminary treatments are already here).

[@bmzaron713]

Awesome explanation and personal take

[@Jacob-yg7lz]

It's not just the idea, but the economics. Why were they mining coal in the first place, if there's no steam engines? It's because demand for fuel outstripped the supply of wood in britain, so people needed to figure out ways to use coal instead. This lead to people finding better ways to use coal, which lead to more demand, which lead to people finding more ways to get coal. This literally laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution; the very first steam locomotives operated on already existing railroads that were used to transport coal by horse more efficiently.

[@GoodandBasic]

Nailed it. JB

[@eelcohoogendoorn8044]

I read an interesting history of the bicycle, written from a similar perspective recently. Given how incredibly useful a bicycle is, and how little technology a minimum-viable-bicycle really requires, it is amazing it wasnt invented earlier. It should be a lot lower-barrier-to-entry than a capital-intensive steam engine. But even after the general idea came to be embraced as something useful, it took a good 100 years for the concept to converge on its modern form. Its not that people already tried the modern form but found in too hard to produce or lacking for the present circumstances; but it really took that long for people to connect the dots. I also find it inspiring to ponder how many obviously useful inventions must still be staring us in the face right now.

[@betoian]

The history of the bicycle made me understand what most people at this forum is giving as explanation. The medieval bicycle was mostly like the modern one, only that it was moved as it was created by the Flintstones. Without chains, gears and transmissions. But people were good with it. They wouldn't waist time trying to improve it.

[@whupdup62]

Answer: Abundant labor. There's a reason the Greeks didn't care about desk toys for doing work, and that's because they had tons of slaves, same with all other people who either had serfs/slaves or no massive labor cost or labor deficit. In fact, one of the theories as to why the industrial revolution happened at all claims that it was due to the massive population loss from the plague in the UK, putting labor at a premium.

[@ScienceChap]

The UK never had a slave population within the country either. That was all overseas. When the UK outlawed slavery from 1807 and then went on the rampage to stop it everywhere else, it had an industrial advantage in steam power and industrialisation which took many countries well over 150 years to catch up. Arguably some have yet to do so...

[@vincewood657]

Hey, I do some gallo-roman historical reenactment here in France and after your video about the pole lathe I decided to make one to bring it to some events. However, some people told me that we find iconography of this kind of lathe only by the 9th century (about a thousand years after the period we are interested in). By the roman era we only have depictions of bow lathes. This messed up my mind because the jump from a bow lathe to a pole lathe looks easy : get under a tree and attach your string to a branch. On the other hand, the size of some findings suggest that a bow lathe might not be powerfull enough.

[@GoodandBasic]

Fascinating! That deserves some study. JB

[@BartJBols]

It kinda was, but we never had a clear use case for it, since wind worked fine and was far easier.

[@FourthRoot]

No, I reject that premise. The advantages of steam engines seem too obvious. Power on demand any day of the year, and much more power for its size.

[@BartJBols]

@@FourthRoot at a higher initial investment and maintenance cost to the point that you can get lets say 6 sailing vessels vs 1 steam with roughly the same military power.

[@FourthRoot]

@@BartJBols There are clear advantages steam has over sailing that makes the two incomparable in terms of military strength. But yes, obviously steam was much more expensive. The question is why? I believe it was the difficulty involved in manufacturing precision machined cylinders and pistons. The fit between the piston and cylinder needs to be especially tigh and perfectly straight. There also was no vulcanized rubber in those days for manufacturing flexible heat resistant seals.

[@BartJBols]

@@FourthRoot yes and no, yes, it was hard and expencive, but no it was not impossible, just impractical.

[@FourthRoot]

@@BartJBols Actually it was not just impractical but impossible to manufacture a cylinder to Watt's specifications prior to John Wilkinson's boring machine.

[@betoian]

The Greeks that spent time playing with that steam toy didn't have to work. They weren't exhausted after a hard day job under the sun. So, why would they figure out any other use of the steam engine? I've also heard of another Greek inventor that built robots, and was planning to make an army. Then he made a bet with his creation and loosed the bet. He wasn't taking small steps... Then another could measure mostly exactly the size and shape of planet earth. That happened earlier than the 1000 years global idea that the Earth was flat. I guess that science was not important... Solar energy was created years earlier than gas combustion energy. And a German inventor was going to build a solar power station in the Sahara dessert. What is interesting about all this is to acknowledge the number of corrections that the steam engine required to achieve it's actual state. And build a graphic of time and distance of the authors of the corrections. And compare it with today's communication speed, to estimate for example , the creation of a finally working fusion engine.

[@d-s-ll2378]

Newcomen, an ironmonger(small hardware vender), and preacher, had some money, and had some sense of social liability, kindness, invented this marvelous automated machine! or we can call it auto-motion machine! Great ancestor of all heat machines that follows to change the whole world human history!

[@Cadwaladr]

You also wonder what technologies were invented and then lost again. There's some evidence to suggest the ancient Egyptians had some kind of giant stone-cutting circular saw (giant, like 10 m diameter) that they cut some of the blocks for the pyramids with, then apparently no one else thought of a circular saw again until the late 18th century.

[@Walter-w9v]

No James Watt Steam Engine and Steam Power, no Industrial Revolution! Just Newcomen Atmospheric Pumps and Arkwright's Water-Power.

[@xnivaxhzne]

6:33 great thought

[@walterbennie816]

James Watt dumped Newcomen's Atmospheric power and Arkwright's Water-Power for High Pressure Steam Power. He had to INVENT a new engine to achieve this, the world's first PRACTICAL High Pressure Steam Engine. The Newcomen Pump is an Atmospheric Pump, not a steam engine yet, strangely, no mention of Atmospheric Pressure! It doesn't provide Steam Power, it provides Atmospheric Power. Watt's engine provided Steam Power. It also worked without a codenser, straight from Watt's mouth, if there's not enough cold water for a condenser, just release used Steam to the Atmosphere. Watt didn't improve Newcomen's Atmospheric Pump, it couldn't be improved, he made his own INVENTION of the first PRACTICAL Steam Engine more efficient with a separate codenser. The codenser on a Watt engine recirculates hot water and at the same time, eliminates Atmospheric Pressure, ( Atmospheric Pressure opposses a Steam Engine). The Newcomen Atmospheric Pump was a 70 years long dead-end. It had an upper limit, 10psi of Atmospheric pressure, and couldn't provide rotary motion. Needs to replace Suction and Vacuum pull with Atmospheric Pressure, or are the words " Atmospheric Pressure " not allowed? Why didn't we invent the Steam Engine earlier? James Watt wasn't born earlier! James Watt's INVENTION was the one and only invention that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. It was a POWER Revolution. No more Newcomen Atmospheric Power or Arkwright's 2000 years old Water-Powered Water-wheels.

[@FourthRoot]

I don't think the Incans simply didn't think of making a wheeled cart. I think there were economic barriers. A wheel is only useful on flat terrain. They had the manufacturing ability in the Andes, but the terrain certainly wasn't suitable. Before the wheel could be put to good use, the empire would have to invest a great deal of resources preparing roads, often by leveling wide swaths along steep hillsides. I think it's no wonder why they didn't build carts. It wasn't that the application wasn't obvious, it was probably obviously impractical.

[@GoodandBasic]

I lived in the Peruvian Andes for a couple of months. Wheeled transport is definitely not feasible over long distances there without prepared roads. That said, many premodern cultures have managed to build roads and there are roads in the Peruvian Andes today... Plus over shorter distances a wheelbarrow or hand cart could still be useful. I don't think the question of why they didn't use wheels is totally settled. JF

[@hossskul544]

6:16 I'm skeptical of this idea, making a cart with wheels even if pulled only by humans could transport so much more goods even around villages and city states if nothing else. As far as the claim of economic feasibility, what kind of economy did they actually have? Did they have money exchange or trade and barter? I really don't know but the evolution is interesting. I know from visiting Peru their advancement in agriculture was impressive. The wheel was also not in use in sub-Saharan Africa either but it wasn't because of a lack of flatland ...

[@FourthRoot]

@hossskul544 Imagine trying to use a cart in a mountainous rainforest with no roads. Wheels suck unless you have a flat, clear surface on which to use them.

[@sirnikkel6746]

my brother in christ said that the Watt Engine "only" had around 6% efficiency compared to the 2% of the Newcomen engine like if it wasn't a 200% efficiency increase.

[@goranserka3601]

One of the problems is scale. Building a large cylinder is not easy and from what I read the technology was adapted from cannon boring machines. It is one thing to build something on a "toy" scale and quite another to reach industrial scale.

[@libvlog2264]

straight to the point 🦈. Low-key tho, if you look at this, it's not rock science like he said at 5:04

[@websitesthatneedanem]

Interesting! 👍

[@jeffcampsall5435]

For what possible reason did he use the CONDENSING of steam as the active force and not the EXPANSION of steam ? Too high a pressure on seals maybe?

[@ericsaul9306]

I guess it was the exact same phenomena as with the space race, for something to be developed into a practical profitable technology first it has to go for a rather painful and expensive research and development phase and here's the catch, we need a reason for this investment, 99% of the time those R&D end in nothing, it's usually that 1% the one that will change the world, against those kinds of odds its hard to give a reason to do anything if the issue it's already settled, before machines we had slaves, problem solved, steam motors were not needed as it was way cheaper to just get more slaves, except this tactic failed after the plages, using human labor as a cheap source of work became unfeasible, that gave us motivation to do the investment in time and resources to find an alternative, the same way the threat of a ww3 give people motivation to create and innovate as never before, the quest to create the ultimate doomsday weapon also gave the hability to arrive to the moon...

[@michaelweston409]

Eric saul it’s a all fascinating

[@wattage-uk9zt]

Newcomen's Suction didn't exist, it was Atmospheric Pressure. In Watt's Steam Engine it was High Pressure Steam Power.

[@walterbennie816]

One minute you say Watt increased the efficiency by not that much, then later you say, he increased it massively. Actually it was nothing to do with efficiency. It was all to do with James Watt's dumping of Newcomen's Atmospheric Power and Arkwright's Water-Power for High Pressure Steam Power. To achieve that he had to invent a new engine, the world's first PRACTICAL High Pressure Steam Engine.

[@walterbennie816]

Britain in 1800 to 1900. 20,000 Water-Wheels decreased in number. Windmills decreased in number. Englishman Thomas Newcomen's 1,500 Atmospheric Pumps disappeared. Scotsman James Watt's 500 Steam Engines and their descendants increased in number to 10,000,000 !!! So, for every SINGLE Water-wheel in 1800, we now had 500 Steam Engines in 1900 !!! That's an increase in Power availability for the whole country of 500 times, in one ( possible ) human lifetime !!! You don't need a flowing river of water for each and every one, and they could be sited anywhere. This WAS the Industrial Revolution. It was a Power Revolution! Spinning and Weaving and Water-Wheels had nothing to do with it. Neither had Newcomen's Atmospheric Pumps.

[@eifionjones559]

easy answer to your question , this was an atmospheric engine . No progress could be made to these labour intensive huge low powered engines until boiler technology caught up

[@wattage-uk9zt]

An Engine that provides Steam Power ( Watt's High Pressure Steam Engine) is a Steam Engine. Why is a Pump that provides Atmospheric Power ( Newcomen's Atmospheric Pump), also called a Steam Engine? Strange?

[@samuelfisher6743]

Also reminds me of blockchain tech. All the ingredients were there, just took a while to put them together and boom! Autonomous communities

[@davidlatoche8751]

that's pretty cool!

[@bpark10001]

Your statement about the "vacuum engine' being a distinctly different process from a "pressure engine is not true! There is nothing special about atmospheric pressure, or whether you are going above or below it. After all, when you boil the water to steam in ANY steam engine, you are pushing the piston upward against atmospheric pressure. It is the pressure SWING that is important, and all engines, steam or gasoline, work on the same principle. The real distinctions between these are the presence/absence of a phase change in the "working fluid", and in the magnitude of the pressure swing relative to atmospheric pressure.

[@Walter-w9v]

Newcomen's machine was designed and built to supply Atmospheric Power. Watt's machine was designed and built to supply Steam Power. They are two different machines, so they shouldn't have the same name. What's wrong with Atmospheric engine and Steam engine, seems pretty logical to me. Or is it something to do with the Steam Engine being the Industrial Revolution, logic goes out the window? There's an Industrial Revolution's worth of difference between Newcomen's Atmospheric engine and Watt's Steam engine.

[@davidjacobs8558]

no, I disagree. The idea was there, but the technology were not available to make it happen. in order for steam engine to be possible, you need metalurgy, large scale production of refined metal and precision machining of metal parts have to exist first. which only came about in the mid 19th century. Same thing with devices like smartphone. It was inevitable invention, but technology necessary to make it possible only came around in 21st century.

[@michaelweston409]

The proper metalurgies needed to use steam power effectively would not be discovered until the 18 century thus rendering the technology stagnant until further developments.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Bronze, iron, brass, copper, and wood are totally adequate to produce early, low pressure steam engines and boilers. Indeed that's all that was available during the early industrial revolution. It's fascinating that we had no knowledge of material failure theories or thermodynamics when we first started building steam engines. Indeed failure theories were developed specifically to design better boilers (and locomotive axles). Thermodynamics was envisioned by Sadi Carnot as a framework for improving the efficiency of the steam engine. Lord Kelvin is quoted as saying "The steam engine has done more for science than science ever did for the steam engine".

[@wattage-uk9zt]

It's an Atmospherically powered Pump, but no mention of Atmospheric Pressure??? It provides Atmospheric Power. A Steam Engine provides Steam Power, like James Watt's High Pressure Steam Engine.

[@GoodandBasic]

Atmosphere provides the push of the piston, but the source of the energy differential necessary for a heat engine to move is the burning of the coal and the steam heating the chamber. JB

[@wattage-uk9zt]

@@GoodandBasic That's what I mean, in Newcomen's Atmospheric Pump, Atmosphere Pressure provides the push! So it's an Atmospheric Pump, not a Steam Engine. In Watt's Steam Engine, Steam provides the push, so, it's a Steam Engine! They both use coal, but they are two entirely different machines. One gets it's Power from Atmospheric Pressure, the other gets it's Power from Steam Expansion. Newcomen's machine provided 10psi Max. of Atmospheric Pressure and couldn't provide rotary motion. So we still needed the 2000 years old Water-wheel. Watt's machine provided unlimited Steam Pressure and could replace the Water-wheel. In 70 years Atmospheric push didn't start an Industrial Revolution. Steam push did start an Industrial Revolution. 70 years after Watt's invention, the world had changed.

[@edgeeffect]

In "Cosmos", Carl Sagan raised the issue of slavery in relation to technology a couple of times... one of the reasons that Hero of Alexandria's steam engine wasn't used to do work was that there were plenty.... plenty of slaves to do all the hard work in The Roman Empire. And this possibly also fits in with The arrival of The Industrial Revolution.... the first steps towards abolition, on home soil at least, if not in the colonies, (can anyone name a big, important historical empire that WASN'T based on the slave trade?) were around the end of the 16th Century... about the same time as the Newcomen engine.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

I have a hard time envisioning ANY scenario in which human labor which requires lifelong food and housing, would ever be cheaper than wood or coal, which in the ancient world in deposits at the surface. The Romans knew about coal and mined it extensively for both heating fuel and for smelting and blacksmithing.

[@ScienceChap]

There never really was any chatel slavery on English "home soil". It was taxed out of existence by William the Conqueror in the 1070s. It was outlawed in the empire starting in 1807 and British efforts to stop the trade globally carried on until the US took over the reins of global superpower in 1945. Winston Churchill was involved in anti-slavery warfare in the late 1890s and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who commanded Operation Dynamo (the Dunkirk evacuation) and who later led the Naval element of Operation Overlord actually started his naval career in 1909 raiding and destroying slave factories in Zanzibar.

[@WilliamSmith-zk4tj]

Nothings pulled atmospheric pressure pushes piston. Also James Watt improve performance by adding the same action to the reverse side of the piston almost tripling the production this also how did the lever that switch the valves on the Supply of steam this led to the heavy pressure steam valve most people can't see it but look at that lever and look at how the early control valve work if you can't see where that came from then you should teach not do

[@AtlasReburdened]

The phrasing "vacuum pressure" is a bit inaccurate and kind of obscures what's actually happening on a base physics level. In reality, this engine operates similarly to a balloon jack, where mechanical advantage is attained by the small cross section of the feed port and the much larger cross section of the acting surface, allowing large forces to be built up slowly. The differences being that steam is being generated as the slow force input, and the balloon is the atmosphere. When the steam is condensed the air which it displaced is allowed to push back into that volume, pushing the piston down as opposed to "the vacuum pulling the piston down". In reality, an engine will still function exactly the same if you take our 14.7psi and treat that at the zero point whilst considering lesser pressures as negative, and that's all well and good, but in my opinion, why stop at relative accuracy when it's one step further to the truth of the matter?

[@IamCrusaderRUS]

3:08 You meant same as ones limited to 2 atm?

[@rogerscottcathey]

Judging by the saw marks and drill holes in ancient Egyptian granite and diorite and other things, it is the opinion of Chris Dunn they did have some form of power equipment. Maybe it was steam driven.

[@paulhorn2665]

Well, yes the parts like cylinders and boilers where there before the steam engine. Right. In brewery boilers and cannons for example. BUT. There was no cheap and precise making of those things until the age of Mr. Newcomen or Mr. Savery (Who invented a steam engine even before Newcomen!!! Patented in July 1698!). And you forget a huge point about those things: MONEY. The people like owners of mines had the money, but those fancy new technology like Newcomen Engines where a HUGE & RISKY Investment for them. Why invest in such thing, which consumes huge amount of coal, stinks like hell and can explode? When you got horses and child labour "for a song" in your district??? So these investors did not want to take risks after all, only after they saw what the good things where about the "Fury engine", only after some venture capitalist tryed it out, only after then, the other mine owners wanted also their engine. Before that- Nope!

[@1KingJacob]

Pyramids. Being generators too

[@jorgemuruaazpiroz3600]

Maybe they just needed to come up with a solution because the mines flooded the deeper they went and also a certain precission was needed to make such an engine which was only available in contemporary UK. It's not only a matter of inventing but also engeneering your brainchild

[@TheCraigy83]

Englishman where busy...im one and proper busy.. Im working on a human powered vehicle , a bit different to the rest..its got G force grin face capabilities

[@twj73]

Soft close toilet seats! A) Why did they take so long to invent? B) Why haven't we outlawed "non soft-close."? No excuse for that! ;-)

[@GoodandBasic]

😅 JB

[@gregorymalchuk272]

They call them "church toilet seats" and are available in every hardware store.

[@chucknewcomb3577]

I would like to believe that I'm related to the family that came up with this concept although my father and I in 1979 got an award engineering award for the tomahawk and Apache helicopter , only took less than eight hours of work, perhaps my father and I just got lucky? Monrovia Eubanks Engineering California

[@jackhreha4907]

why do it with a machine when you have all these slaves to do it with.

[@rustyholt6619]

the andies are hilly and labor is cheep maby wheels wernt worth the manufacturing time

[@Joe-xj2tb]

Question is why have we enslaved the human race!!!

[@hossskul544]

Yes intelligent people but obviously not intelligent enough to make the intellectual jump, is the ability of abstract thinking the key ? Or just random luck ? The technology that the Romans brought into Britain has to play a role I would think? In the transmission of the concept of gears alone. Time + geography = advancement?

[@the4thj]

Steam power has been around for well over 200 years. But a few people have wanted to become rich and we have OIL! YAY! Needs of a few, check. Steam can be condensed back into water and reused.

[@ScienceChap]

Bravo Einstein. So how do you heat up the water to make steam? Oh yeah. Coal. I suppose you could use nuclear power, but you get my point.

[@richardwatts9562]

WE DIDNOT INVENT THE STEAM ENGINE.PAT.OWNED BY WATT.IM WATTS.