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Why did the Industrial revolution only start in 18th century England and not Ancient Greek

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  Posted by mickachu (U3354663) on Thursday, 2nd March 2006

  The aeolipile, invented in the first century by Hero of Alexandria, is considered to be the first recorded steam engine. Therefore why did it take so long for the actual, modern Industrial Revolution to take place? I have heard that I might have had something to do with the importance of slaves to Ancient Greek society, but I don't really understand this argument.

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  Posted by mickachu (U3354663) on Thursday, 2nd March 2006

  The aeolipile, invented in the first century by Hero of Alexandria, is considered to be the first recorded steam engine. Therefore why did it take so long for the actual, modern Industrial Revolution to take place? I have heard that it might have had something to do with the importance of slaves to Ancient Greek society, but I don't really understand this argument.

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  Posted by RainbowFfolly (U3345048) on Wednesday, 8th March 2006

  Hi,
  
  I think they had a working replica on the greek episode of Adam Hart-Davis's "What the Ancients Did For Us" (the programs are repeated on UKTVHistory about once every few weeks). It looked fantastic spinning around and it was hard to believe the technology was so ancient! They also had an example of his automatic fire-powered temple doors - incredible guy that Hero.
  
  On one hand it's a real shame that Hero never realised its potential. On the other hand, can you imagine the damage to the environment if the Industrial Revolution had got under way in the first century?
  
  Cheers,
  
  RF

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  Posted by Mister Dreadful (U651852) on Wednesday, 8th March 2006

  The Greeks understood both steam power and hydraulics, but never put two-and-two together... as far as they were concerned both were simply novelties with no practical application.
  
  I've often speculated what technology would be like now if the Greeks had said "hang on... we can build some serious stuff with principles used in these little toys."

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  Posted by DL (U1683040) on Thursday, 9th March 2006

  To add to this one, what about the stone jars with electrodes fitted on top that appear to be some sort of ancient battery? I forget where they were found, I think in the Middle East somewhere, but I recall seeing a reconstruction, and they did produce a weak electrical current. Why didn't this advance further too? If they have built a battery cell, then they must be aware of electrical power, so why not find a use for it?
  

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  Posted by marduk-slayer of tiamat (U2258525) on Thursday, 9th March 2006

  Hi,
  
  I think they had a working replica on the greek episode of Adam Hart-Davis's "What the Ancients Did For Us" (the programs are repeated on UKTVHistory about once every few weeks). It looked fantastic spinning around and it was hard to believe the technology was so ancient! They also had an example of his automatic fire-powered temple doors - incredible guy that Hero.
  
  On one hand it's a real shame that Hero never realised its potential. On the other hand, can you imagine the damage to the environment if the Industrial Revolution had got under way in the first century?
  
  Cheers,
  
  ΈιΉσΜύ #
  
  you know in one of them it says the muslims invented soap, and i was like, "what, horrible histories says we (the britons) did way back before those toga wearing eyeties got over their fear of water and banned decent trouser wearing folks from non-homo-erotic bathing!

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  Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Thursday, 9th March 2006

  The industrial revolution happened when it did and where it did because it was needed then and it wasn't needed in ancient times - yes, because of the slaves, and the general lower wealth (lack of sufficient middle classes.)
  
  The real IR happened because demand pressed against supply - ie, producers could not keep up with demand coming in from the booming middle classes. So necessity was the mother of inventoin - hence augmenting human/animal/water/mechanical power with steam.
  
  Technology was a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of the IR. The IR required a wealthy, growing and aspiring middle class to trigger it.
  
  Eliza.

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  Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Friday, 10th March 2006

  To my mind, Hero's ivention was not a steam engine but a steam TOY, by which I mean it could not do really useful work.
  
  Eliza6Beth, your explanation of 'demand from the middle classes' itself demands an explanaation. Surely there was plenty of demand expressed by the Roman upper classes in the first century? It could be argued that they had slaves, and so less use for steam engines, but I find this argument insufficient as an explanation,because people will generally go for the best option, so long as it is available. It is like saying 'steam engines could never be useful because people had horses', which is plainly untrue. Were slaves really that much cheaper to pay for than free labour? The fact that so many slaves were freed in the first 3 centuries suggests not. Anyway, there were slaves, in the colonies, at the start of the industrial revolution - their presence did not prevent it happening.
  
  The making of a useful steam engine, rather than just a steam toy, cost a fortune, in fact it bankrupted at least one of Watt's backers. Where did this money come from? Apparently, most of it was from the profits of slave-run sugar plantations.
  
  One reason why Hero's inventions were not more widely used must surely be that his ideas were not widely disseminated. Certainly some hundreds, possibly thousands, of people became aware of his ingenious inventions, but the vast majority did not. And anyway no book would have included diagrams showing how things worked.
  
  What I am coming round to is the crucial factor of the invention of printing having a pivotal role in jump-starting the industrial revolution. Printing made books about 5 times cheaper, and of course allowed dissemination of ideas through reproduced pictures, which would have been a big boon.
  
  Printing had also helped to make sure that many of the readers were educated enough to understand what was written. By the 18th century, books had become cheap enough for a significant wedge of the populace to be educated in science. This is a crucial foundation for the production of really useful technology. I do not think it is accidental that Watt came from a country (Scotland) which had an eductional system.
  
  One cannot fail to mention the political situation in the 18th century compared with the 1st. In the earlier case, a fascist state (Rome) had taken over, and would have hardly been conducive to the building up of capital and genesis of new ideas.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 10th March 2006

  that is part of the truth Elisabeth since a 'slave-system' society only hinders the development of capitalist economies (abscence of sufficient large numbers of buyers as 1/3 of population, the slaves, are only fed and not paid). But then capitalist economies are not necessarily the one and only way to 'technical progress' - it was just the English (and northern europeans) that did it that way.
  
  For me the process of how technical civilisation is being developed is very complex. One had asked me why ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs had not developed printing like did Gutenburg? Was Gutenburg more smart? Gutenburg was very smart indeed but then so where the others - the "little" detail that was diffeerent is that in Gutenburg's times common paper, a relatively cheap and practical material was already invented (by Chinese in the 12th century) and its use was getting widespread while in previous centuries papyre, leather and other materials were prohibitively expensive (due to their production methods)so that none would risk buying large quantities of say papyre, use a kind of printing machine to print books... simply: he would go bankrupt! Even in Gutenburg's time, the driver was the catholic church (if I am not wrong) that wanted to fight back the heresis thus it supported the printing of bible so more people can read it - didn't the church contribute to the expenses or not, not to mention that it had a huge market (pretty much every christian that could read and write or should learn to do so). Thus quickly this became a profitable industry.
  
  I presume printing existed before (chinese used various forms earlier than 12 A.D. century), Greeks could possibly have used something to reach a volume of millions of books (they were all copied) in their libraries. But then papyrus was very expensive (Phoenicians had made their fortunes out of that) and that is why 'printing' would be a luxury of the few. To give another example, when Byzantines had lost Egypt to Arabs papyrus prices had risen spectacularly which led to the ... invention of small letters: curvy-round letters that could be easily written in a smaller scale in order to enable quick writting as well as primarily saving papyrus!!!
  
  In the same sence it could be a 1000 reasons why the ancients did not put in machines in mass production in a fashion that occured in the late 18th early 19th centuries and certainly it is not as simple as saying 'it was due to slaves'.

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 10th March 2006

  very sharp points Fas.
  
  one small comment: Greeks and Romans and above all Byzantines and their competitors Arabs, they all classified even the last detail of an invention in technical plans, descriptions and common practice advices. For example, a complex, very precise, hydraulic clock-planetarium designed in hellenistic Alexandreia was constructed to its last details a couple of centuries later in Roman Athens (the horologion still is standing in modern Athens though emptied of its mechanism since christians in Theodosius times had turned it into a... church). We have even found a late 6th - early 5th century text curved on stone that is one of the first known table of specifications / international standards: it described the material (bronze cast) that should be used to make a specific type of metal turning machine for bronze and it is impressively detailed (e.g. it asks for copper only from specific mines in Cyprus and mainland Greece that could provide with the quality wanted!!). Romans had classified (to be mass produced) their weaponry, smae thing Byzantines (greek fire) and Arabs (Damascus sword) though their secrecy never let us know how exactly they produced them (especially the two latter). Indeed the parallel increase of printer paper books and literacy was the basic prerequisite for maintining (first of all!) and developing knowledge.

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  Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Monday, 13th March 2006

  Nikolaos, the question of why other civilisations did not invent printing is very curious. When you think of all the countries that produced thousands of coins with words and pictures on, by the simple operation of making a coin dye and stamping out the coins with it, that is but a small step from printing. Of course Guthenberg's pivotal invention was printing BY MOVEABLE TYPE. But even that, in another form, was invented by the Chinese, centuries before (and they also had a cheap form of paper). Perhaps the Chinese version did not take on because of the difficulty of making the dies for so many hundreds of characters needed for their language.
  There again, I think there is something even more fundamental than that. The Chinese also invented mechanical clocks, apparently, but, just like printing, the idea was not widely taken up.
  
  In medieval Europe, there seems to have been a readiness to accept new ideas, for all inventions such as clocks, books and lenses, were taken up. Perhaps an expert in Chinese history can enlighten us as to why such things were not fully developed in China. Even gunpowder, known to the Chinese, was not fully exploited by them.
  
  Regarding printing, I can see where the main demand came from - the Church. Every individual church, I presume, woould want to have its Bible, and in Latin. Furthermore there was a renewed interest at the time for ancient Christian works.
  
  

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 13th March 2006

  Very interesting points again.
  
  There is no argument in that: western Europe was in a very long process of continuous development after the collapse of the western part of the Roman empire. The visible logarithmic increase started with the first crusade (that took out western Europe of its obscurent position in the international scene) which came some 70 years after the process of decline (for some of average speed for others quick paced) of the Byzantine empire (that started in 1025, death of emperor Basilius, interstingly right from its peak point!). Western Europeans, eager to compete with the southern "civilised states" would do anything to gain advantage thus copying and acceptance of everything that circulated around became at last a "hobby" for them also. Marco Polo's trips and the impression they had done show the westerners' change of attitudes and their attraction to new things - something which the Chinese did not show at the time: we did not see many Chinese Marco Polos travelling to the west and bringing stuff from there... perhaps maybe because at that time China was already under Mongol control (so they had other problems to think off) - Mongols were not exactly the most progressive in all sectors (though mongols indeed tried to be progressive in certain aspects), then maybe because it was the age old pride of Chinese that they were the best in the world and that the rest did not matter much... thus the "All Under Heaven" could possibly be a reason.
  
  Now on printing with moveable type one cannot claim that it was the most complex machine ever to had been produced up to 1600s thus your questioning of why others had not made it comes back (my personal view) to the printing material: paper. Paper was invented in China in 12th century (I think, or am i wrong? you mentioned they had cheap forms of paper back then, maybe. Chinese naturally opted for plate-printing rather than moveable type most probably due to the large number of letters but then even with that you could print very cheaply large numbers of text so it is a good question to make "why Chinese did not do it years before?".
  
  For Byzantines (same for Arabs) I do not see any alternative. Their invention of the small letters says it all! Papyrus was so expensive to be bought in tons and used for mass printing. No other local plant would be suitable for making kinds of paper suitable for writting or printing and the process of making paper from local plants or wood would require chemicals they simply had not been yet discovered. Other materials were simply not practical or just prohibitevely expensice making it finally more cheap to pay a monk to sit down and copy the book in 1-2 days on a papyrus or leather paper than take up to such solutions such as metal or wood etc. Books however did never lack either in the Byzanine or Arabic empires and were only lost after great distructions - do not forget that such civilisations were highly centralised thus the conquest of one city meant the loss of large percentages of written material at once.
  
  I think paper came just at the right time for western europeans.

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  Posted by thegoodbadugly (U2942713) on Monday, 13th March 2006

  at the time neither the steam eingine or hydraculics had any use in war if it did then the steam eingine would have been mass produced by the greeks,war has made a lot of inventions real because an edge was need in war.

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  Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Tuesday, 14th March 2006

  Nikolaus, thank you for your observations. You obviously know a lot more than me.
  
  Regarding the price of papyrus, I have been looking up the price in 1st century Rome. The poet Martial wrote that one of his books of epigrams could be had for six sesterces (20 sesterces in the deluxe binding) another, shorter one for only 4 sesterces. The latter is the equivalent of a day's wages for a labourer, so a book was expensive, and you realise how expensive when you consider that these books were really short (only 276 lines long in the latter case). Even taking account binding, other expenses, and clear profit (50% of the price according to Martial), less than a dozen sheets of papyri would have been at least one sestertius, which is enough to feed a person for a day, just about.
  
  Lots of documents have been found at Roman frontier garrisons, and they are basically made of thin sheets of wood, so very cheap, if not very practical.
  
  When exactly did cheap paper become available in Europe? As you say, it still remains a question as to why the Chinese did not exploit their invention of printing.

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