|
|
|
|
|
|
by wudangmonk
750 days ago
|
|
|
TLDR, it was cannons. Improvements in cannons so they wouldn't explode on you led to advanced metallurgy required for things like engines. Everything else about the right society, the right conditions, the right time seems unnecessary to me. Give the Romans fireworks, then someone might notice that putting on bigger shows can be quite dangerous, what if we shoot it sideways at someone instead of up in the air?. You then get better cannons, as you get better cannons you can make them smaller, then you get guns and your metallurgy knowledge allows you to create things such as engines that operate at high heat and pressure. |
|
|
The improvements in cannons was about precision, accuracy, and speed of making the bore. There is a chapter on this in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectioni...
Newcomen got an early idea going, and everyone knows that James Watt improved its efficiency, but even Watt's engine wasn't very good in absolute terms. This is because his tolerances were huge and lots of steam leaked out. It was John Wilkinson's expertise that solved that issue:
> James Watt had tried unsuccessfully for several years to obtain accurately bored cylinders for his steam engines, and was forced to use hammered iron, which was out of round and caused leakage past the piston. In 1774 John Wilkinson invented a boring machine in which the shaft that held the cutting tool extended through the cylinder and was supported on both ends, unlike the cantilevered borers then in use. With this machine he was able to bore the cylinder for Boulton & Watt's first commercial engine, and was given an exclusive contract for the provision of cylinders owing to the lower tolerance between the piston and cylinder and the resulting improvement in efficiency by lowering steam losses through the gap.[9][10] Until this era, advancements in drilling and boring practice had lain only within the application field of gun barrels for firearms and cannon; Wilkinson's achievement was a milestone in the gradual development of boring technology, as its fields of application broadened into engines, pumps, and other industrial uses.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkinson_(industrialist)...
See Winchester's for more details.