[HN Gopher] Why didn't Rome have an industrial revolution?
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Why didn't Rome have an industrial revolution?
Author : shaftoe444
Score : 26 points
Date : 2024-07-19 21:57 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.maximum-progress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.maximum-progress.com)
| aurizon wrote:
| Basically, lack of IP protection = no patent or copyright. Now
| our patent length is OK, but copyright is far too long. In old
| Rome, if you made a new process, you locked up the shop and kept
| it secret. Anyone steal the secret and you could do nothing.
| There are stories of Roman senators killing inventors to maintain
| a controlled market. In addition, Rome had zero electronics, and
| no document tradition via printed books = all hand
| copies(printing in old China) There some relics that hint at
| plating cells for silver and perhaps gold, but no firm data
| widowlark wrote:
| on its face I don't know that patents alone drove the
| industrial revolution - I imagine that the modality of labor
| and capital also played a significant role
| Log_out_ wrote:
| So where do justice systems come from?
| Simplicitas wrote:
| This convo reminds me of .. "my contention is that prior to
| the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities--especially in
| the southern colonies--could most aptly be characterized as
| agrarian pre-capital --"
|
| https://genius.com/Good-will-hunting-good-will-hunting-
| bar-s...
|
| lol
| dannyobrien wrote:
| I would love to hear of those senator stories -- do you have a
| source?
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Probably extend that to structuring societies around legal
| frameworks and institutions as well. Things like labor
| contracts, stable interchangable currencies, standardized
| education, etc. Lots of parts undergirding the industrial
| revolution.
| arp242 wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Why wasn 't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32106467 - Jul 2022 (308
| comments)
|
| _Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part III_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33200864 - Oct 2022 (151
| comments)
| wmanley wrote:
| See also:
|
| acoup - Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?
|
| https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
| dboreham wrote:
| Obviously because they had no Scotsmen.
|
| Proving that people who build walls to keep immigrants out do not
| fare well.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is the No True People Who Build Walls To Keep Immigrants
| Out fallacy.
| rhelz wrote:
| I was studying how those mechanical calculators (like the one in
| "Hidden Figures") worked, and it struck me that Hero of
| Alexandria, or whoever made the Antikythra mechanism, could have
| easily made one. I thought long and hard about why Hero actually
| _didn 't_ make one of them.
|
| The only answer I could come with was this: Nobody asked him to
| make one.
|
| He had the tools, he had the skills, he had the workshop full of
| assistants. All he needed was a *purchase order* and we could
| have had mechanical calculators 2,000 years ago.
|
| If you have minions, ask yourself if you are asking them to work
| on the right things. If you don't have minions, well ask yourself
| the same question.
| baxtr wrote:
| The article highlights that Rome lacked the shift to coal energy,
| which was crucial for industrialization.
|
| So I wonder if it happened in Britain because it's colder there.
| paulpauper wrote:
| no concept of energy through combustion
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