[HN Gopher] Reconstructing Roman Industrial Engineering
___________________________________________________________________
Reconstructing Roman Industrial Engineering
Author : samizdis
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-07-08 11:46 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, being an industrial engineer myself, I was always at awe
| looking at Roman engineering. And ancient Greek and Macedonian
| engineering as well. Especially compared to medieval Europe,
| those empires were much more modern in terms of standards and so
| on. Medieval engineering was top notch, especially architecture
| (gothic churches and cathedrals really stand out), but at that
| large a scale.
|
| IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil
| engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run.
| iSnow wrote:
| >IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil
| engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run.
|
| Interesting thought but why would the Empire have fallen then?
| Most likely, civil engineering remained top notch throughout.
| wavefunction wrote:
| In early Imperial Rome prestigious families would fund public
| works as a public symbol of their wealth and power. This
| shifted over time to a more self-interested display of wealth
| and power in the family's villas. If the aqueducts and roads
| have existed for centuries in your region there is less
| opportunity for those public displays of civil engineering
| and I would suspect the skills and knowledge did wither
| though I can't say to what extent. Look how fast the
| knowledge to build the space-race era rockets was lost in the
| US, and that's with modern record keeping and no major
| domestic disasters or upheavals.
| nickik wrote:
| The knowledge of space-race ear rockets wasn't lost, the
| money to build them was no longer available or going into
| other projects.
|
| For the cost of shuttle NASA could have recreated the J-2
| and F-1.
|
| We unfortunate don't have good data on Roman private and
| public infrastructure spending detailed enough to really
| make a god case for how it changed over time.
| bpiche wrote:
| The empire never ended
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| There's some truth to that, but at the same time it's
| undeniable that there was a dramatic decrease in political
| organization, stability, and economic complexity in the
| Western Empire. Only for brief periods would there be
| anything like imperial control of Western Europe, but never
| with the inclusion of Britain and Spain again, and never
| with the economic engine of Rome. The multi-centric world
| of Western and Central Europe didn't come close to matching
| the Roman economy until the Renaissance, and wouldn't
| surpass it in engineering achievement until the
| Enlightenment.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Building roads and sewers and such in a new province is a
| great way to secure the new people's loyalty. But after the
| bridge you built has stood for 400 years, people start to ask
| "but what have the Romans done for me lately?"
| monocasa wrote:
| "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
| nickik wrote:
| Not sure if you are just doing a joke reference, but this
| doesn't really hold up. In the Imperial period most
| infrastructure was build the empire didn't grow all that
| much anymore.
|
| Binding of territories to the Roman state worked primarily
| by co-opting local elites by giving them a fair bit of
| local power and protection from their enemies.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Those local elites would have even more power if they
| were independent, and imperial protection didn't mean
| much during the decades of civil wars. People tolerated
| Roman rule for centuries, during good times and bad,
| because they recognized that quality of life was better
| under the Romans. For centuries, barbarians migrated into
| the empire and were easily integrated into the empire.
| However in late antiquity Rome stagnated, infrastructure
| projects weren't being built anymore and various tribes
| were no longer being effectively assimilated into the
| empire. Rome's military was still very large, and the
| elites were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell
| because those elites and armies were no worse off setting
| themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms.
| nickik wrote:
| > Those local elites would have even more power if they
| were independent
|
| No they wouldn't. Because they would face both their
| internal rivals and external rivals most importantly the
| empire itself.
|
| > and imperial protection didn't mean much during the
| decades of civil wars
|
| There was not as much civil war as you think and not in
| most regions even if there was.
|
| During a civil war local elites had to pick sides. Often
| those choices happened above their heads.
|
| > People tolerated Roman rule for centuries, during good
| times and bad, because they recognized that quality of
| life was better under the Romans.
|
| Very questionable. Quality of life has little do with it.
| People for the most part didn't have much say in it,
| rather the elites. Their standard of life might get
| better because they get imperial titles, trade monopolies
| and things like that.
|
| Maybe your point is true for the late imperial period
| around the med, but its certainty not generally true.
|
| > However in late antiquity Rome stagnated,
| infrastructure projects weren't being built anymore and
| various tribes were no longer being effectively
| assimilated into the empire.
|
| Yes, but what matters is the integration not the
| infrastructure. In fact, if you really track this, the
| falling apart of infrastructure does not at all correlate
| with the Fall of the Western Empire. Much of the
| infrastructure had already been having issues since the
| 3rd century.
|
| > Rome's military was still very large, and the elites
| were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell because
| those elites and armies were no worse off setting
| themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms.
|
| The elites with actual power (not just money) were no
| longer centralized or unified. If you actually look at
| trade pattern and urbanization they don't actually
| decline until much later. For the most part the Fall of
| the formal empire is a non-event.
|
| The collapse of the Roman Med economy and the de-
| urbanization of Italy mostly happens later.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| As we're seeing with infrastructure now in the US, civil
| engineering isn't a "do once" kind of job. Infrastructure
| (roads, bridges, irrigation etc) takes consistent upkeep,
| resources, and redesign as the fixtures degrade and usage
| patterns change. Engineers still need resources, manpower and
| direction, so as the empire's control area and wealth
| centralization receded, so did the impetus/capacity to
| maintain infrastructure.
| sgift wrote:
| > IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil
| engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run.
|
| An interesting aspect of this is that the legions _were_ civil
| engineers. Every legion had craftsman as part of their
| workforce. The craftsman didn 't build only their forts, but
| also streets, bridges, mills ... I think this combination may
| have been Romes greatest advantage. Not only were they able to
| conquer regions, but also to build them out pretty fast after
| the fact.
| OJFord wrote:
| Is that so different from the (British Army's) Royal
| Engineers and similar units in modern armies really?
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Military engineers focus on battlefield-relevant
| construction and demolition techniques and aren't routinely
| deployed on civilian engineering tasks during their
| readiness cycle. One exception would be military assistance
| in emergency situations, such as quickly erecting a bridge
| to replace a flood-damaged one. For the average soldier,
| their trade-specific training would be measured in months,
| so the only opportunities to pick up deep domain knowledge
| are limited. Career engineers might get deeper knowledge
| but I suspect they would still focus on battlefield-
| specific competencies.
| rjsw wrote:
| A Royal Engineer friend of mine is an expert on runways,
| both making and breaking them.
| nwatson wrote:
| In the USA the US Army Corp of Engineers is heavily
| involved in public/civilian infrastructure. For example,
| see this article on their involvement and attendant
| controversy in Hurricane Katrina (2000s New Orleans): htt
| ps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers
| ...
| OJFord wrote:
| I won't comment on training because I suspect that varies
| too much internationally to be worthwhile - but of course
| they focus on battlefield-relevant tasks; are you saying
| that wasn't also true of the Romans? I don't know, I just
| assumed (and asked if) they were pretty similar.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| The difference is that Roman soldiers could build roads
| and fortified camps as part of their day job using skills
| similar to civilian Roman construction. Today, however,
| building a modern motorway, or a high rise building,
| would be way different to battlefield engineering.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The advantage the Romans had was, that military
| engineering and civil engineering were much closer back
| then.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Caesar's bridges over the Rhine absolutely blew my mind. It's
| an incredible example of military engineering yielding a
| tremendous advantage. The military handbooks from throughout
| the full history of the empire also speak maybe less to
| engineering specifically, but to the advantages of a literate
| culture in war. The Romans faced many types of opponents over
| the centuries, many of which they did not have a natural
| advantage against, in terms of armament. But they did have
| tremendous amounts of research and strategy, applicable to
| all sorts of conditions and opponents. And also impressive
| skills in logistics.
|
| When it comes to the a Rhine, it's a mistake to think that
| the Romans were simply more civilized than the Germanic
| people. That may have been true at one point in time, but
| over time, the societies on the borders of the empire gained
| quite a bit of sophistication. The borders were also porous,
| and the "barbarians" spent years of their lives in the Roman
| world. This is a big reason the power vacuum created by the
| collapse of Roman authority was readily filled by "barbarian"
| kings. The Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Arabs, and Vikings didn't
| come out of nowhere.
|
| What was lost in the west was institutional complexity.
| Although it's interesting that the Arabs founded empires that
| did match Rome in this regard. At least until the Mongols
| came smashing in.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Rhine_bridges
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The Egyptian army was also used in construction projects. I
| believe the general thinking is that the state wanted to have
| a military force available, but didn't want it to be idle.
| That reasoning would predict that every standing military
| would see similar uses.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| The legions could reportedly throw up a fort in 2 hours, so I'm
| sure there was some overlap ;)
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _"What it shows is that, also in antiquity, people were
| creative. They had a problem, and they had to find a creative
| solution."_
|
| "Creativity" isn't a modern invention. "I have a problem to solve
| and will use engineering!" isn't a modern invention.
|
| They've existed since the beginning of humans, and it remains
| quite irritating to see people who are shocked and amazed that
| ancient people were able to solve problems - often in ways we
| don't fully understand. How long was Roman cement a mystery?
|
| Human nature doesn't change with time, and while the things that
| people groups care about tends to change, it baffles me that
| someone studying ancient Roman ruins of what's pretty clearly an
| industrial facility sounds surprised that they did something less
| than the most obvious solution - especially when it worked
| better.
|
| Wasn't like you had Twitter to distract you - engineering
| solutions to problems is very clearly something the Romans were
| good at, given how much of their infrastructure rather outlasted
| the nation.
|
| Modern civilization isn't what it is because we're somehow
| smarter or more creative than people were 1500 or 2000 years ago
| - it is what it is because, about 300 years ago, we finally
| figured out how to make fossil fuels do something mechanically
| useful for us.
|
| If the Romans had figured out a steam engine, and had cared to
| continue developing it (a technology without an application is
| just a curiosity, and history is littered with those), they
| certainly could have accomplished plenty of what we consider
| modern today.
| juliangamble wrote:
| I accept your broader point. I have a minor quibble on
| invention of the steam engine:
|
| _First rudimentary steam engine was the Aeolipile produced in
| the first century in Roman Egypt. In this light one can also
| say China had the steam engine during the Song
| Dynasty(960-1279)._
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2012/did-the-chi...
|
| The point is that for steam engine technology to take off,
| there had to be an economic problem it solved. In a nation with
| prevalent slavery or abundant human labour, an early steam
| engine is superfluous.
| XorNot wrote:
| Slavery isn't what kept the steam engine down, it was
| metallurgy.
|
| The Romans had a curiousity in the form of the steam engine
| but it could do no useful work because they couldn't
| manufacture a shaft or bearings it could turn without
| breaking.
| phreeza wrote:
| Did these steam engines really have that much torque? I
| know the Romans used waterwheels with gears and shafts, I
| would be surprised if these proto-steam engines were more
| powerful than those.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's more a comment on why the steam engine didn't
| revolutionize anything for them: they lacked the pre-
| requisite technologies to make it viable. You don't just
| go "steam engine done" - you need metallurgy to make
| shafts, boilers, pressure containers (specifically, you
| need steel - Romans had a word for something like steel,
| but their metallurgy is generally considered to be poor).
| You need _clear glass_ to make gauges and other
| management equipment, and to do the chemistry to develop
| a reproducible metallurgy.
|
| The Romans skirted around a lot of these things, but they
| couldn't have _known_ these were the things they needed:
| the best steel they ever produced probably wasn 't very
| good, compared to working with bronze, and unless you
| knew it could get better, there was no reason to think it
| was revolutionary at the time - i.e. because you could
| make it a lot better and then get the steam engine and
| mechanical motion out of it.
| phreeza wrote:
| I guess the two things are complementary, if you don't
| have slaves, it creates a greater incentive to search for
| technologies that amplify human labor. So in a sense both
| explanations might be true. If there hadn't been any
| slaves, the question of "how can we build more durable
| gears" would have been on more people's mind, which could
| have lead to better metallurgy earlier on, even without
| guns/gunpowder or whatever lead to the need for better
| metal in the enlightenment?
| rfrey wrote:
| The rest of the thread in your link is contradicting that one
| answer. And the fact that particular answer says the modern
| steam engine was invented by Watt doesn't give me a lot of
| confidence in the author.
|
| Hero's Aeolipile boiled water, but didn't resemble what we
| call a steam engine in any other way: it's just a jet. And in
| fact, it's very difficult to get it to work; you need modern
| bearings, extremely lightweight modern materials, and very
| large burners to give it enough power to spin itself. It's
| pretty unlikely it ever worked in antiquity, it was probably
| a concept sketch.
|
| Likewise, the illustrations of "steam engines" in China show
| no boilers, no pipes, no evidence of pressure vessels of any
| kind.
|
| A steam engine that produces useful power requires strong
| steel pipes and connections. It was technology gates being
| passed that led to the steam engine being invented and
| improved, not a change in economic condition. Agreed slavery
| can slow down technological adoption, but keeping slaves has
| its expenses too. It's easy to imagine there being an
| economic advantage to mechanical power even in a slave
| tolerating society.
| vkou wrote:
| In addition to this, I would also like to point out that
| the British Empire - the birthplace of the steam engine -
| was a society formally practicing slavery between 1562 and
| 1833. (And that in addition to practicing chattel slavery,
| it had no issue with forced labour, penal labour and
| colonies, the Enclosure acts, etc. In short, it had no
| shortage of manpower.)
|
| Were all of these institutions different from what was
| practiced in Ancient Greece and Rome? Somewhat. But they
| are more similar than we often think.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| The British Empire lacked one thing that was abundant in
| the Roman Empire - lumber - and Britain needed lumber,
| the heat source, more, both because Britain is colder
| (residential heating) but also because of high demand for
| charcoal needed to fire blast furnaces to smelt iron.
|
| It was for this reason that Britain began mining coal at
| scale (as well as harvesting peat), and found herself in
| need of an efficient way to de-water her mines.
|
| And when the prerequisites (metallurgy, abundant fuel,
| and economic necessity) converged, the steam engine
| emerged.
| barney54 wrote:
| The Nature article this is based on is helpful to read because of
| the pictures:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74900-5#Fig1
| geebee wrote:
| I have to admit I was eager to read this because of the phrase
| "Industrial Engineering." Still an interesting article, and there
| is some discussion of components working together as a system...
| but overall, I think we're still talking about a somewhat
| mechanical innovation in aqueducts. I think it's probably more
| accurate to classify this one under civil engineering.
| Interesting and fun to read, but consistent with what most people
| already know about the Romans - they had remarkable large scale
| civil engineering projects.
|
| I don't want to drag this discussion into the minutiae of what
| distinguishes civil from mechanical from industrial engineering,
| especially since there's so much overlap (I met a lot of civil
| engineers in my graduate industrial engineering classes,
| especially from transportation engineering). But what I'm reading
| here doesn't really strike me as something that would be notably
| "industrial engineering," which I see as more abstracted from
| impressive mechanical innovations in infrastructure projects like
| aqueducts.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I think you're kind of right in terms of the actual content of
| the article, but what it speaks to is a system capable of
| producing flour on an industrial scale. I was quite surprised
| to learn that there were many ways in which the Romans operated
| legitimate industries, in the sense of producing far more goods
| at single sites than the local demand. They had massive mining
| operations, pottery factories, and mill complexes.
| gos_abhi wrote:
| Building that break so easily..lol
| tiahura wrote:
| Can anyone suggest a resource to learn how to distinguish the
| various types of construction by civilization found around the
| Med? For example you come across the foundation of an ancient
| building in Greece. It could be Mycenaean, Classical,
| Hellenistic, or Roman, but to my eye they all look like stone and
| mortar.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-10 23:02 UTC)