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Working with lime is dangerous, and finding good volcanic ash for the mix could be difficult, but for those who like learning about more durable products and better technology, I found this article thought provoking.
The Romans invented a rotary steam engine called an aeolipile. It was more of a proof of concept device but it's concept inspired later inventors who developed more advanced steam engines during the Industrial Revolution.
Phrased another way, the Romans nearly had a device that could have catapulted them into an industrial revolution 1,800 years before it happened. To put that into perspective, we're less than 200 years into the industrial revolution. The Romans had the metalworking abilities to create the engine, and they had figured out the science behind it, what they didn't have was the metalworkers and the steam guys in the same room at the same time. If there had been a little bit of serendipity 2,000 years ago we very well could have left the solar system a thousand years ago. Perhaps if they had an industrial revolution Rome would have never fell, and the 500 years that represent The Dark Ages would have been a period of enlightenment and incredible discoveries and achievements could have happened.
Not surprising that their concrete lasts 2,000+ years and ours lasts about 40.
Last edited by terracore; 05-14-2024 at 06:27 PM..
Working with lime is dangerous, and finding good volcanic ash for the mix could be difficult, but for those who like learning about more durable products and better technology, I found this article thought provoking.
heh heh, if could be that the SHTF event actually supplies all the ash you will ever need ;-)
Perhaps if they had an industrial revolution Rome would have never fell, and the 500 years that represent The Dark Ages would have been a period of enlightenment and incredible discoveries and achievements could have happened.
I've wondered about this, because while the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern Roman Empire continued on for another 1000 years. It seems like the Eastern Empire had the same knowledge and capability, and yet no significant technological advancement during those 1000 years.
I've wondered about this, because while the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern Roman Empire continued on for another 1000 years. It seems like the Eastern Empire had the same knowledge and capability, and yet no significant technological advancement during those 1000 years.
The Eastern Rome Empire fell too.
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In 48 BC, during Caesar's Civil War, Julius Caesar was besieged at Alexandria. His soldiers set fire to some of the Egyptian ships docked in the Alexandrian port while trying to clear the wharves to block the fleet belonging to Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy XIV. This fire purportedly spread to the parts of the city nearest to the docks, causing considerable devastation. The first-century AD Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger quotes Livy's Ab Urbe Condita Libri, which was written between 63 and 14 BC, as saying that the fire started by Caesar destroyed 40,000 scrolls from the Library of Alexandria.
Basically, Caesar destroyed one of its warehouses. It was the Muslims who did the real damage.
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On a sunny morning in 642 C.E., armies of Muslim Arabs, in the process of conquering Egypt, destroyed the ancient library at Alexandria, which for a thousand years had been the western world’s most important center of learning.
The library held a million volumes, including an extensive collection of Greek and Roman literature, as well as works of science, philosophy, religion and law. The Alexandria Library was nothing less than the summit of ancient scholarship. Its archives and museum were filled with the intellectual riches of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and its research center was visited by many generations of scholars seeking to stimulate their minds and keep alive memories of the past.
Following the library’s destruction, literary scholarship and scientific inquiry suffered greatly in the West. Indeed, nearly a millennium would pass before Western thinking returned to the level of sophistication achieved at the Alexandria Library in its heyday. A single building, that is to say, was crucial to the advancement of an entire civilization.
Byzantine Empire, Empire, southeastern and southern Europe and western Asia. It began as the city of Byzantium, which had grown from an ancient Greek colony founded on the European side of the Bosporus.
The fall of Rome in 476 ended the western half of the Roman Empire, and the eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as its capital. The eastern realm differed from the west in many respects: heir to the civilization of the Hellenistic era.
Its greatest emperor, Justinian (r. 527–565), reconquered some of western Europe, built the Hagia Sophia, and issued the basic codification of Roman law. After his death the empire weakened.
During the controversy, Arabs and Seljuq Turks increased their power in the area.
Eastern Empire (Byzantine Empire) and the Ottoman Empire into a semi-permanent warzone for hundreds of years. Golden Horde, the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan and his heirs attacked the Eastern Empire until 1700's. If it wasn't for the Battle of Vienna, where the Poles defeated the Ottomans, the Ottoman Turks could have marched into Austria and France. It was a 250 year old struggle with Islamic forces until EU immigration.
Also war from western Europe:
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The sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusader armies captured, looted, and destroyed parts of Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
The sack of Constantinople divided the Church of Rome with the Byzantine Church. There was Napleon and the French invasion of Russia and the Thirty Years War as well.
The Romans invented a rotary steam engine called an aeolipile. It was more of a proof of concept device but it's concept inspired later inventors who developed more advanced steam engines during the Industrial Revolution.
Phrased another way, the Romans nearly had a device that could have catapulted them into an industrial revolution 1,800 years before it happened. To put that into perspective, we're less than 200 years into the industrial revolution. The Romans had the metalworking abilities to create the engine, and they had figured out the science behind it, what they didn't have was the metalworkers and the steam guys in the same room at the same time. If there had been a little bit of serendipity 2,000 years ago we very well could have left the solar system a thousand years ago. Perhaps if they had an industrial revolution Rome would have never fell, and the 500 years that represent The Dark Ages would have been a period of enlightenment and incredible discoveries and achievements could have happened.
Not surprising that their concrete lasts 2,000+ years and ours lasts about 40.
Well, actually, the aeolipile is a dead end. A reaction steam engine like that inherently has terrible efficiency and extremely limited torque. Modern steam engines from Watt on are either positive displacement engines or turbines. All you can really do with an aeolipile is to make it spin round and look cool. So, no, the Romans had NOT figured out the science.
In addition, the Romans actually did NOT have the skills to make moving seals for live steam of any quality, so most of the steam of the aeolipile would be lost at the joints. They certainly didn't have the skills to make either turbines or piston engines. (When the very first steam engines were being built, a really accurate fit of piston to cylinder was a clearance of 1/4". Today that would be more on the order of 0.002". And that was in the late 1700s, with heavy metal-cutting lathes with cast iron beds, high speed steel cutters, and a whole host of machine tools the Romans couldn't even dream of.)
The problem is that the Romans did not have the concepts of the scientific method and engineering. They basically over-built stuff and if it didn't fall down, they declared victory. This is not the same thing as using mathematics to model the behavior of mechanical (or electrical, or chemical) devices and systems and then applying those models through mathematics to other devices and systems.
As for concrete, there are plenty of modern concrete formulations of extreme durability. They're not used in buildings with an anticipated service life of 40 years. I'm not a civil engineer but I can assure you that modern high performance concrete, developed by using chemistry and physics, tested using modern test methods, will outperform anything the Romans had.
The problem is that the Romans did not have the concepts of the scientific method and engineering. They basically over-built stuff and if it didn't fall down, they declared victory. This is not the same thing as using mathematics to model the behavior of mechanical (or electrical, or chemical) devices and systems and then applying those models through mathematics to other devices and systems.
As for concrete, there are plenty of modern concrete formulations of extreme durability. They're not used in buildings with an anticipated service life of 40 years. I'm not a civil engineer but I can assure you that modern high performance concrete, developed by using chemistry and physics, tested using modern test methods, will outperform anything the Romans had.
Don't know about that -
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Here is a picture of the Roman aqueduct at Pont du Gard, crossing the Gard River in southern France. The aqueduct was used to supply water to the town on Nimes, which is about 30 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. Although the water ended up in the baths and homes in Nimes, it originated about 12 miles away in higher elevations to the north. The total length of the aqueduct was about 31 miles, though, considering its winding journey.
Although aqueducts use gravity to move water, the engineering feats of the Romans are shown in that the vertical drop from the highlands source to Nimes is only 56 feet. Yet, that was enough to move water over 30 miles. It is estimated that the aqueduct supplied the city with around 200,000,000 litres (44,000,000 imperial gallons) of water a day, and water took nearly 27 hours to flow from the source to the city.
The great and highly advanced Roman waterway system known as the aqueducts, are among the greatest engineering and architectural achievements in the ancient world.
The running water, indoor plumbing and sewer system carrying away disease from the population within the Empire wasn't surpassed in capability until very modern times. Some of these ancient structures are still in use today in various capacities.
When water reached a town or city, it flowed into enormous cisterns (castella), which were situated on the highest ground. These large reservoirs held the water supply for the city and were connected to a vast network of lead pipes. Everything from public fountains, baths and private villas could tap into the network, sometimes provided that a fee was paid.
The Romans had public water for baths, toilets, kitchens, town fountains, etc. The ancient Romans didn't have chemicals like today for water purification. Instead, they used settling basins and air exposure. The basins were a pool of water where the water would slow down. This slowing allowed impurities such as sand to drop out of the water as it moved.
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One of the most important Roman contributions to building technology was the invention of concrete. Concrete allowed for the construction of impressive buildings such as the Pantheon and impacted bridge and harbor construction.
Rome underwent a period called a “Concrete Revolution”, which saw rapid represented advances in the composition of concrete. Romans also mastered underwater concrete by the middle of the first century CE, which allowed for the construction of harbors such as the one in the city of Caesarea.
Recent research by U.S. and Italian scientists has shown that Roman concrete was vastly superior. By analyzing Roman harbors in the Mediterranean, they discovered that Roman concrete remained intact after 2,000 years of constant pounding by the sea.
"Following the library’s destruction, literary scholarship and scientific inquiry suffered greatly in the West. "
Here's an interesting article. Thousands of scrolls discovered at a library that were burned and buried when Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii are being read for the first time using new technology including AI. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of such scrolls could still be buried and waiting to be discovered, and eventually read:
"Excavations in the 18th century recovered more than 1,000 whole or partial scrolls from the mansion, thought to be owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, but the black ink was unreadable on the carbonised papyri and the scrolls crumbled to pieces when researchers tried to open them...Papyrologists who have studied the text recovered from the blackened scroll were stunned at the feat. “This is a complete gamechanger,” said Robert Fowler, emeritus professor of Greek at Bristol University and chair of the Herculaneum Society. “There are hundreds of these scrolls waiting to be read.”
Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, added: “This is the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general. It is the only library to come to us from ancient Roman times.”
'i wonder what information, technology and invention was lost in the fire at the Library of Alexandria '.
Just like now, things of old either get improved, and thus forgotten, or because it/they is/are deemed to expensive, or deemed impractical they go away. Or it takes to long and takes to much time and money to figure out how it can be of use.
Look at the progression of electricity we all rely on nowadays. From the "discovery" to our modern electrical outlets.
Well, actually, the aeolipile is a dead end. A reaction steam engine like that inherently has terrible efficiency and extremely limited torque. Modern steam engines from Watt on are either positive displacement engines or turbines. All you can really do with an aeolipile is to make it spin round and look cool. So, no, the Romans had NOT figured out the science.
In addition, the Romans actually did NOT have the skills to make moving seals for live steam of any quality, so most of the steam of the aeolipile would be lost at the joints. They certainly didn't have the skills to make either turbines or piston engines. (When the very first steam engines were being built, a really accurate fit of piston to cylinder was a clearance of 1/4". Today that would be more on the order of 0.002". And that was in the late 1700s, with heavy metal-cutting lathes with cast iron beds, high speed steel cutters, and a whole host of machine tools the Romans couldn't even dream of.)
The problem is that the Romans did not have the concepts of the scientific method and engineering. They basically over-built stuff and if it didn't fall down, they declared victory. This is not the same thing as using mathematics to model the behavior of mechanical (or electrical, or chemical) devices and systems and then applying those models through mathematics to other devices and systems.
As for concrete, there are plenty of modern concrete formulations of extreme durability. They're not used in buildings with an anticipated service life of 40 years. I'm not a civil engineer but I can assure you that modern high performance concrete, developed by using chemistry and physics, tested using modern test methods, will outperform anything the Romans had.
I think the missed key here is that once you have 'a device', improvements on THAT device fall rather quickly. Roman bridge building was adopted heavily and used by the PRR until its demise in 1968. And one of them killed johnstown PA, it was so 'good'
The first steam loco mathematically/scientifically designed was the K4 Pacific. look how much time elapsed until we got to that point. (and look at the natural follow-ons of the mountain type and decapod...)
and sure they had seal material. ever hear of 'rope seals'? we called them that and used "them" up until 1985ish. *in new products*
a length of jute rope, formed and slathered in blubber will work just fine. it will be a high maint replacement option sure, but it WOULD have worked.
side bar: there is or were service manuals written for older machinery taken from the shipped technical manuals for all machinery, say 1910 into the 60s, put together by an entity called 'ITT'. If you work on or restore old cars (or most likely old TRACTORS), and you get into one as it will be the only place that contains info on how to set up a rear end for an 8n etc, you would be shocked at how how elegant their knowledge was in a time, that we would most likely dismiss.
(which is odd, cuz the average guy today has not 1/20th the know how of the average guy THEN. the today guy just has a cell phone and a keurig)
I had one for my 1964 MF65 dieselmatic and most of what was in there would befuddle a machine shop worker of today.
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