[HN Gopher] Hierapolis Sawmill
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Hierapolis Sawmill
Author : benbreen
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-06-05 18:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| Symbiote wrote:
| The carving is photographed here:
| https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%...
|
| Via https://doi.org/10.1017/S1047759400005341
| 0x_rs wrote:
| I think one of the largest examples of water-based mechanical
| engineering from around that time is at Barbegal [0], _the
| greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient
| world_ and _The capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5
| tons of flour per day, enough to supply bread for as many as
| 10,000 of perhaps 30-40,000 inhabitants of Arelate at that time_.
| Spain mines also had very interesting (albeit slave-powered)
| solutions, with up to 16 wheels draining a mine over 30 vertical
| meters[1] (and possibly more in other sites), one of which was
| discovered "intact"! [2, 3] Pre-industrial era engineering in
| general can be very fascinating.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mills
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_overshot_water_wheel#E...
|
| 2.
| https://www.naturalhistorymag.com/sites/default/files/media/...
|
| 3.
| https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1889-0622-...
| Jun8 wrote:
| Relevant HN discussion on why Romans didn't achieve Industrial
| Revolution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32607187
| Spoiler: it wasn't because slaves were cheap.
| wil421 wrote:
| They didn't have the metallurgy to make a reliable steam engine.
| However I think they could've industrialized a lot of things
| using a bronze turbine or waterwheel and a ton of belt systems
| like old factories once did with line shafts.[1]
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_shaft
| qwytw wrote:
| > didn't have the metallurgy
|
| I wonder if in theory they could've made in bronze. It was
| still generally the superior metal compared to iron/steel in
| most ways till the middle ages (IIRC) and much easier to work.
| It's only downside was cost.
| tlb wrote:
| If you make both piston and cylinder out of bronze, they
| stick together and wear quickly. It's better to make one from
| bronze and one from iron.
| tomohawk wrote:
| And not much motive to develop it. Slaves were abundant and the
| practice was widely accepted in paganism. This skewed the
| economics to favor making use of them.
| bluGill wrote:
| Slaves were cheaper than the early steam engines. As such
| even if you built a steam engine (I think historians have
| documented primitive ones that did work - but they were
| small, very low power, and inefficient) it wasn't clear that
| the effort to develop it into something better is worth the
| cost.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The acoup blog went into detail on this topic [0]. Central
| idea was that early steam power was so inefficient the only
| way it was worthwhile was for use in coal mines where the
| fuel was basically free. It took years of improvements to
| make the technology cost effective in other domains.
|
| [0] https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-
| indus...
| Alupis wrote:
| Machines can work 24/7, don't get sick, don't get lazy,
| don't need training, don't need to be fed, etc.
|
| Even in a world where slave labor was cheaper, machines
| were obviously better. Fewer people could produce the same
| output no matter how you look at it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Machines break all the time. Particularly when you are
| faced with the metals available back then. They are a lot
| more reliable today, but we have had ~200 years of
| industrial revolution to learn how to make reliable
| machines. We also have a lot more population, and that
| means a lot more people thinking about how to make
| machines more reliable.
|
| Modern machines are clearly better than slave labor
| today. However 2000 years ago a lot of things were
| different.
| [deleted]
| charliea0 wrote:
| The machines need lots of fuel which either needs to be
| chopped from forests or dug out of coal mines. Both those
| tasks were labor-intensive and costly.
|
| Some water mills were cost effective though.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Slaves were abundant and the practice was widely accepted in
| paganism.
|
| Slavery in various forms was widely utilized across all of
| humanity until the last few centuries, and in some ways it
| still is utilized today. We just don't _call_ it slavery
| anymore.
|
| "Paganism" has nothing to do with it.
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