Why didn't the Romans invent steam engines?

[Welchester]

The Romans had the words (and the declension) for a motor bus, as A.D. Godley demonstrated:

 

What is this that roareth thus?

Can it be a Motor Bus?

Yes, the smell and hideous hum

Indicat Motorem Bum!

Implet in the Corn and High

Terror me Motoris Bi:

Bo Motori clamitabo

Ne Motore caedar a Bo---

Dative be or Ablative

So thou only let us live:---

Whither shall thy victims flee?

Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!

Thus I sang; and still anigh

Came in hordes Motores Bi,

Et complebat omne forum

Copia Motorum Borum.

How shall wretches live like us

Cincti Bis Motoribus?

Domine, defende nos

Contra hos Motores Bos!

Edited November 28, 2017 by Bishop of Welchester

[pete_mcfarlane]

Just in case anyone isn't clear on this point, this motley crew - the renderings of some of whose tribal names are still in common parlance for the ill behaved or non-conforming, Vandals, Goths, Huns - were part of a huge migration westward; and among them are the ancestors of the present majority populations of Western Europe.

 

Or more bluntly, the 'Barbarians' who wore down the western Roman Empire to failure are 'us'.  (Being very thorough and not wishing to leave a job undone, once settled and organised they took a trip back East and played a major part in disrupting the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle ages.)

Technically, of course, a Barbarian is somebody who doesn't speak Greek........ 

[relaxinghobby]

The early steam engines of the industrial revolution where the great lumbering atmospheric pumping engines draining mines of flood water. And later used for pumping water in Birmingham

to keep the canals full, I think they still have a working one in the museum there. Much lower technology that later high pressure engines developed for

transport. As these early engines became smaller as they were developed over time they where put into ships or used to pull wagons up gradients on wagon ways.

 

The Roman navy would have been keen users of powered steam ships that could sail into the wind or against tides giving them an advantage over their eneimies.

I would have thought the Roman soldiers patrolling the Danube and Rhine to keep the barbarians out would have welcomed steam powered galleys.

 

Another lower tech' steam engine is the Stirling engine, would that have been within the Roman era metal working capability? The slaves freed from rowing the Roman navy could now be

sent down the newly and  safely drained deep mines to extract coal.

 

Once set in motion the Roman industrial revolution would develop quickly perhaps?

Edited November 28, 2017 by relaxinghobby

[Edwin_m]

Technically, of course, a Barbarian is somebody who doesn't speak Greek........ 

Isn't it somebody with a beard? 

[Hroth]

Surely they went directly to road transport, Caesar being proverbially sic in omnibus?

Only because he adsum iam forte!

[rockershovel]

Only because he adsum iam forte!

.....Brutus aderat

Caesar sic in omnibus

Brutus sic in at

[runs as required]

I've just remembered coming across an interesting detail in delving into the construction of the Canal du Midi - begun in 1666, nearly a century before our much more modest canal system was started by Brindley from Wormhill, above Millers Dale, Derbyshire.

Many of the hydraulics skills (and human earth moving labour) in creating the Canal du Midi were contributed by women. They were discovered by the Royal surveyors  to still possesss the otherwise lost complex hydraulics skills of the Romans, due to having continued, through the centuries, to practice in remote spas and hot springs originally opened up by the Romans in the uplands of Languedoc and the Pyrenees.

 

dh

[The Johnster]

I've just remembered coming across an interesting detail in delving into the construction of the Canal du Midi - begun in 1666, nearly a century before our much more modest canal system was started by Brindley from Wormhill, above Millers Dale, Derbyshire.

Many of the hydraulics skills (and human earth moving labour) in creating the Canal du Midi were contributed by women. They were discovered by the Royal surveyors  to still possesss the otherwise lost complex hydraulics skills of the Romans, due to having continued, through the centuries, to practice in remote spas and hot springs originally opened up by the Romans in the uplands of Languedoc and the Pyrenees.

 

dh

 

So, the first navvies were French girls.  I need to re-adjust my mental image of a navvy...

[rockershovel]

So, the first navvies were French girls.  I need to re-adjust my mental image of a navvy...

Oh, I don’t know. Terry Pratchett had a running gag about whole civilisations being built upon the lifting power of little old women in black dresses..

[Nearholmer]

Someone may have mentioned this earlier, but technical progress tends not to be made in leaps and bounds, but increments, which gradually come together and lead to a self-accelerating process of progress.

 

My take is that the Romans simply weren't at it for long enough to accumulate enough of the little iterations, and certainly hadn't accumulated enough societal innovation.

 

For one thing (several things?) they probably lacked the vital set of iterations around the dissemination of knowledge to a broad-enough community educated-enough to understand it ..... printing, primary education of a large proportion of the population, dissemination of basic science as opposed to religious and political dogma, that sort of thing. Until that is in place, technical progress is bound to be limited, because so few people are clued-up enough to contribute to it.

 

One might argue that Martin Luther, for instance, is as much the father of the steam locomotive as Richard Trevithick, yet he wasn't (so far as I know) a technical innovator, he was a societal innovator.

 

And, one might argue that society currently seems bent on societal retrogression that will help us unlearn a lot of stuff, thereby slowing technical progress to a halt (which might be what some people want, because technical progress disrupts everything, upsetting elites and non-elite-conservatives alike).

Edited November 29, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Smiffy2]

"technical progress tends not to be made in leaps and bounds, but increments, which gradually come together and lead to a self-accelerating process of progress."

 

 

I've seen explanations that include the practice of large casting (from large-bell casting) which the Romans never managed; gears (from clock making) which the Romans never had which led to the use of eccentrics etc; advanced metallurgy (gradually developed and greatly aided by the scientific movement, which the Romans never had) and the availability of coke and coal as fuel. All of these had to come to the table, in the right order, to be incrementally developed.

 

The slave economy meant that there was no pressure to develop new technologies. When an engineer came to Vespasian with a new kind of water-mill to grind much more corn much more quickly he was paid to go away and forget it; without slaves the social system would be in danger of collapse.

 

Many years later, when the supply of slaves was drying up the water-powered mills were built.

 

Details here:

http://www.romanaqueducts.info/aquasite/arlesb/

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Many of the hydraulics skills (and human earth moving labour) in creating the Canal du Midi were contributed by women. They were discovered by the Royal surveyors  to still possesss the otherwise lost complex hydraulics skills of the Romans, due to having continued, through the centuries, to practice in remote spas and hot springs originally opened up by the Romans in the uplands of Languedoc and the Pyrenees.

 There's a thing. The use of inverted siphons on a large scale to move water from source to point of use, was a significant feature of classical civilisation. It must have worked as large populations were supplied in major towns built on arid rocky prominences in hot climates.  However, the detail of their construction and operation is far from clear, with the description by Vitruvius containing reference to the necessity of vents to reduce pressure (I suspect these were also utilised to slow the flow progressively by destroying the siphon action prior to closing off the head and fully draining for maintenance) and with seemingly insufficient constructional strength in the pipes to resist the pressure.

 

We just don't do it that way any more, so there is no contemporary insight. I have been up on the ruin* of a pretty enormous specimen  that once supplied ancient Aspendos, and it is some piece of civil engineering.

 

*All that lovely lead to loot ensured that there was high motivation to do some ruining once out of use. The cut stone came in handy too.

[pete_mcfarlane]

The slave economy meant that there was no pressure to develop new technologies. When an engineer came to Vespasian with a new kind of water-mill to grind much more corn much more quickly he was paid to go away and forget it; without slaves the social system would be in danger of collapse.

I suspect that attitude would have been influenced by their past experiences of slave revolts ("No, I am Spartacus..."). All were eventually beaten, but in some cases the revolts were on a massive scale and it was a close run thing. 

 

Interestingly, one of the reasons given for the failure of the Confederate states in the US Civil war was detrimental impact of slavery on their economic development. Expanding your workforce required a massive capital investment up front to acquire more slaves, which isn't needed with paid labour. Criticisms of slavery tend, naturally, to focus on the sufferings of the individuals rather than the fact that the whole system doesn't work. 

[forest2807]

If the Romans had invented the steam engine, imagine where we might be now, technologically speaking. Use of fossil fuels and all their associated problems might have been a 16th century issue, long resolved and consigned to the history books.

[Colin_McLeod]

Of course if the Romans had invented steam trains, they could have been ultimately replaced by diesel and electric hundreds of year ago meaning that no one on this forum would have witnessed steam in company service.

[forest2807]

I wonder if we’d all be reminiscing about the romance and glory of the now obselete fusion powered fleet of the 19th/20th centuries?

[Colin_McLeod]

Didn't the Romans set the track gauge of 4ft 8.5in?

 

PS how do you write eight and a half in Roman numerals?

[Fat Controller]

Didn't the Romans set the track gauge of 4ft 8.5in?

 

PS how do you write eight and a half in Roman numerals?

Roman horse-drawn vehicles seem to have wheels about that distance apart- I measured the grooves they cut in the road surface at Jerash, Jordan.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...For one thing (several things?) they probably lacked the vital set of iterations around the dissemination of knowledge to a broad-enough community educated-enough to understand it ..... printing, primary education of a large proportion of the population, dissemination of basic science as opposed to religious and political dogma, that sort of thing. Until that is in place, technical progress is bound to be limited, because so few people are clued-up enough to contribute to it.

 

One might argue that Martin Luther, for instance, is as much the father of the steam locomotive as Richard Trevithick, yet he wasn't (so far as I know) a technical innovator, he was a societal innovator...

 It is all of the will and desire to widely disseminate knowledge, and the means, that must be present. Current concern is that too many people will be distracted by the tidal wave of trivial content to properly participate in the conversation that supports active democracy and all that goes with that.

 

Roman horse-drawn vehicles seem to have wheels about that distance apart- I measured the grooves they cut in the road surface at Jerash, Jordan.

 There's a good reason for this dimension. From a load capacity perspective floor width matters, and in wooden vehicle constructions is constrained by axle length. With the most suitable timbers for the job that supply the strength and elasticity for reasonable longevity in service, a conveniently man-carryable axle comes out about five feet or a little over in length. The wheeltrack is a bit narrower naturally.

[Smiffy2]

Didn't the Romans set the track gauge of 4ft 8.5in?

 

PS how do you write eight and a half in Roman numerals?

 

Semis = S

 

as in VIIS

 

but not often.

[Classsix T]

Why not? At bottom it was caused by an attitude of mind, that encompassed factors like mass slavery, but went further than that.

 

First thing to understand is that the Roman Empire still survives in part, with its characteristic attitude of mind still intact.

 

It was a highly legalisitic hierarchical system, based on the principle 'the decision maker's decisions are final, as in when we have made a decision, there's no going back'.( Exhibit 1, the surviving piece of the Roman Empire is a legal system inheritance, and most specifically the Roman Catholic church.)

 

It educated an elite in its system, which gave little place to concepts originating elsewhere in the territory of its empire which later societies have found useful. Greek thought, specifically philosophy - the beginnings of 'age of reason' science - and democracy, and Jewish radicalism of the 'all men are equal' brand are the two key ingredients in post Roman empire territory societies. The end result is that the Roman empire was not exploitiing its human resource very well at all, because education was narrow and restricted to a few. When it was challnged by such ideas, its usual response was first denial that an altenative was possible, and often vigorous action to discourage the perpetrators. (It is happening right now in the process of breaking away from an attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire again, this time labelled 'EU'.)

 

This system worked very well in an environment in which there was little change; the technology they had - mostly developed elsewhere by peoples with a talent for speculation - served perfectly well. (The parallel is with a simlarly legalisitically bound system is China, and look at its endurance as an empire with successive invaders integrating themselves into the proven system.)

 

Rapid change was destructive to both systems however, and the jury is still out on the Chinese version of the process.

What he said, the inability of those who could, to "learn more". Knowledge stagnated without the need or desire to do so.

 

This doesn't explain to my mind how the tribal Europeans started to gain the upper hand though and the explanation I've seen bandied about for the implosion of Imperial Rome, as opposed to the conversion to Holy Rome, was the immense amount of lead added to red wine for colour and drinking water pipes basically turned the elite into infertile nutcases.

 

C6T.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Classsix T

[BG John]

turned the elite into infertile nutcases.

That's probably preferable to the fertile nutcases we have nowadays!

[The Johnster]

The Romans thought of themselves as warriors, conquerors, civilisers, and administrators of an empire based on law and order, and were to some extend justified in that view.  It was paid for by tribute.  They never reckoned themselves as great technical innovators or inventors, relying heavily on the civilisations they thought of as classical, the Egyptians and Greeks.  These were the true innovators and developers of the ancient world, and it is not unreasonable to say that the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted until the end of the medieval period before succumbing to Islamic expansion at a time when the Islamic world had long taken up the baton of scientific, mathematical, technological, and philosophical development, was in many ways the continuation of the classical Greek civilisation and culture at a time when Italy, and for that matter Greece, had become backward and barbarian.  It is significant that, at the time of the First Crusade, the City of Byzantium was more concerned with hosting hordes of uncivilised 'Franks' (i.e. us) than invasion by the hosts of Islam!

 

This view of themselves by the Romans is at odds with that of the British Empire, which purported to hold the same values but added missionary christianity and industrial revolution technology to the mix!  Ours didn't last as long as theirs, perhaps because whatever else the Romans were, they do not seem to have been racists and had a very tolerant attitude to religious beliefs, Christians and Jews running foul of Roman City bylaws that insisted for public health reasons on cremation of the dead; those two religions believed in the corpereal resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgement and insisted on burial.  Other city bylaws prohibited human sacrifice or temple prostitution.  Christians and Jews were fully tolerated outside the City in the rest of the Empire, but ran foul of another law, this one applying to the entire Empire, introduced at the beginning of the Empire period, that all citizens of whatever belief had to have a shrine to the Emperor's god in their home and pray to it twice a day.  This was unacceptable to religions that held the belief that there was only one god, theirs.  

 

Such technological developments that the Romans did achieve were highly dependent on their Greek and Egyptian subjects, who were employed in ether slave or paid capacity to do this, but when it came to organising a straight road, nobody could hold a candle to them...

Edited November 30, 2017 by The Johnster

[Hroth]

What he said, the inability of those who could, to "learn more". Knowledge stagnated without the need or desire to do so.

 

This doesn't explain to my mind how the tribal Europeans started to gain the upper hand though and the explanation I've seen bandied about for the implosion of Imperial Rome, as opposed to the conversion to Holy Rome, was the immense amount of lead added to red wine for colour and drinking water pipes basically turned the elite into infertile nutcases.

 

C6T.

All the public water supplies were fed from the aqueduct terminals via lead pipes, so it wouldn't be just the "elite" who would be nutters!  Anyhow, I thought that once the inside of a lead waterpipe oxidised and furred up, the amount of lead in the water dropped to near zero. As for wine, its possible that the amphorae used to store the wine would have lead-based glazes, so lead would leach into the wine over time, again affecting most of the population, especially the poor as rotgut wine would be more effective in stripping lead out of the glaze!

 

Female usage of lead-based makeup (discounting some of the more theatrical loony emperors) would be more consistent with possible poisioning of the upper classes...

[Classsix T]

Quite John. Albert and Victoria suffered no such handicap, with an extremely tenuous consequence of around 80m deaths!

 

C6T.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Classsix T