At 9:10, I could see the agger and ditch before the diagram appeared. I'm not very good at spotting things, so you mist have done a really good job with the camera there! :) Building anticipation for it also helped. Edit: and you showed the one at 11:25 well too.
I believe the main reason for why the Romans didn't industrialize was slavery, the cost of labour was so low that there was no economic incentive to mechanize, this can also be seen today in low wage countries and areas. Also many believe that modern devellopment in Europe began with the Black death and the following lack of a labour force. Finally could be mentined the Germanic and protestant emphasis and appreciation of manual labour which didn't exist in Rome or really any other culture
The romans had 3 things working against them to create an industrial revolution: 1) It was a slave labour society, this meant that labour was extremely cheap. Getting more use out of your muscle was one thing, investing in a means to avoid using muscle as the main power source was another. 2) A lack of cheap fuel. Rome had no coal economy and the UK had a cheap coal economy due to having a demand for coal (cold winters) and a canal and river network to move that coal to the coast and onto the cities. Even then it was touch and go for the early stationary engines on how well they paid back the cost to run with the benefits against other power sources. It worked in the southwest as horse feed was really expensive down there (a generally poor farmland area). 3) No limited liability company structure. In the UK you could (and still can) get a load of people to invest together in a way that does not bankrupt everybody if the company fails. In Rome you could have a partnership, but the partners were still liable for all debts when the project fails. This is a major limitation into high risk commercial endeavours and was one of the key drivers into allowing the British Empire to overtake the French Empire on a global scale. Britain basically outsourced its expansion to private companies which allowed for a lot more investment in that area. If you are a Roman inventor, you need to find a very wealthy patron and most of them have their fortunes tied up in the status quo of the society, there is no means by which to gather potential investment from a large group of interested people.
Very well put analysis of the often forgotten relationship between technology and economics, including the unexpected but entirely correct insight into how something as seemingly disconnected, the nature of laws involving innovation and liabilities, effected the advances of science and, particularly, engineering.
Simpler than that, you need high and consistent temperatures to produce large sheets of steel or iron that will not contain flaws, important if you wish to build a steam engin of any practicable size, for that you need coke, and coke wasn't invented (discovered?) until the eighteenth century AD.
@@matsv201 In a round-about way there was... it was called Guns of Icarus. One of the factions in the game is a revived roman-esque empire. Of course all of the games' world is in a steampunk theme.
This is very odd, I am a retired heli pilot, I was booked by the American ‘History Channel’ with the question had I heard of Hadrians Wall? Something I filmed maybe 20 times over 40 years. With them on board the director sat next to me as we followed the wall. On one stretch out in front was the Newcastle to Carlisle railway line. Dead straight, off into the setting sun. I said ‘as you see there below is the first ‘Roman Railway Line’ being dead straight like the military road below. The director was stunned the Romans built railways! I could not believe he did not get the joke. A bit gullible or what ?
Heron invented a simple steam engine, the aeopile, and a piston pump. Imagine if he had thought of combining these two inventions. What could the world have gained from it!
Honestly, probably not much. Steel production was relatively primitive in the Roman era, bloomeries remained quite simple well after the Romans became the Byzantines. This is of course to say nothing of blast furnaces. The greatest stumbling blocks for early locomotives was the material sciences of the day. The Romans could have built steam engines, yes, but I'd wager they would more closely resemble very early low pressure steam engines the size of buildings and used for plumbing rather than the small high pressure steam engines used in locomotives.
@@epikmanthe3rd I remember reading that the early steam cars and locomotives were easily explosive and some of the locomotives were mostly made of wood. The development boosted because there was a need to develop safer and more reliable devices.
Newcomen engines used steam to displace air from the cylinder which was cooled to create a vacuum which moved the piston. They operated at a very low pressure. James Watt moved the steam condenser away from the engine. He got a continuous vacuum to pull the piston. He needed valves to put steam into the engine but could run higher pressure steam. Fuel efficiency was 10x better.
Heron and Vitruvius actually reference a much earlier inventors work on compressed air a lot, so some people attribute the aeolipile to Ctesibius in 285-222 BC
At 4:30, you can see the remains of tank traps in the bed of the accommodation bridge over the Kennet and Avon, in anticipation of a German invasion during ww2. History on top of history.
Wondered what they were , I was thinking wagonway sets but now I know what they really were tank traps thanks to your comment 👍, in reality the Germans would just pile soil over them making them easy for tanks to drive over
@@mickd6942 Yes but piling soil in holes isnt necessarily easy to do when being shot at. Anti tank obstacles arent meant to completely stop an attack, just slow it down and force the attacker to concentrate their forces into a specific point that the defenders can then focus on.
@@mickd6942 Yes but filling in holes isnt necessarily easy to do when being shot at. Anti tank obstacles arent meant to completely stop an attack, just slow it down and force the attacker to concentrate their forces into a specific point that the defenders can then focus on.
Isaac Newton spent more time studying ancient writings than he did on his own experiements. From what I've read, this was _de rigeur_ for anyone who wanted to advance their knowledge, all the way into the 20th century. I'm sure the writings of Vitruvius and Heron, and perhaps others, influenced and helped inspire the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution. The Romans themselves might have got some of their ideas from civilisations which were ancient to them, though certainly many more from civilisations which had much more recently past. Pistons! I had no idea the Romans had pistons!
Let's not forget the mathematics of Archimedes that almost advanced to calculus at some point and contributed greatly to our understanding of geometry and arithmetics
Luckily he realised it was almost all a complete useless bullshit. Roman law of friction: a body stops because it is tired - can you count anything from this idiotic formula? Without Newton laws, you can't build a railway. Romans were as far from it as we are from the FTL spaceships (no, we haven't any idea how to build them, Alcubiere drive and artificial warm holes are thought experiments, we don't have the slightest idea how to implement them in a working machine).
@@hydrolito Yes, knowledge is iterative and collaborative. Much Roman knowledge was preserved through Arabian scholars in the middle ages before being picked up again by Europe in the Renaissance.
@@Dziki_z_Lasu Maybe we are seeing stuff wrong, maybe we should not focus on making ships that go faster than light, but on making light go slower than ships.
I remember reading about a partially sawn block of Roman marble with multiple cut lines, found, I think in Jordan. This confirms that the Romans had water powered gang saws for cutting marble sheets, first suggested by a poetic reference to the singing sound that they made.
Britain's railways were built to overcome transportation bottlenecks. Stockton to Darlington connected a coal field with the ports. In other places, the ports moved cotton to the mills, and the finished product back. The Stockton to Darlington line started off bring horse-drawn, with a stationary steam engine to help pull the carts of coal up the steepest hill. The Romans has a similar bottleneck between Rome and Ostia.
@@jelleschelfthout3636yeah , the mediterranean was kind of half the roman transport infrastructure : ships are still the most efficient transport system weight wise , And even if you whent for the carbon nautral system everyone could get a sailship , trains may be a bit more rare
The guy with the bushy sideburns from time team, he was a young archaeologist, and did the dig on that roman town. They took the coins to the local police station and had them locked in the cells for safety when they found them, before going to the pub to celebrate.
@richardharrold9736 Yes, it doesnt automatically mean you industrialise if youre using some but its certain you can't industrialise without it. There does seem to be evidence that the Romans were using some surface mined coal in Britain.
@@Withnail1969 : The first known industrialization was the use of the fast clay-spinning wheel during the Sumerian age (or perhaps even earlier, the invention of field farming instead of the even older seasonally-nomadic farming that preceded it). Coal was relevant to the steam engine, but not a universal requirement. In fact, the Industrial Age had actually _started_ with water mills instead of steam engines, and could have continued spreading with the addition of wind-powered water pumps and retaining ponds to allow water mills to be used in more places.
What a great walk that was, really enjoyed the subject as well. There are some cracking comments about this so far. I think its fair to say that to make something like a steam engine then you need a combination of technological advances in materials and manufacturing to make it happen. In the industrial revolution this happened over a very long time. Great video have a great week!!
Would you be interested in documenting the 1860's Victorian tramway in Horsted Valley, Chatham, Kent? They built a number of forts on both sides of the River Medway to stop a French Invasion that never happened. They used a steam winch on a navy gunboat to power an aerial runway from the river to Fort Borstal to bring concrete mix from barges to the fort (the Victorian world's biggest concrete works was a little way up river), then they built a convict powered tramway from Fort Borstal to Fort Horsted and then on to Fort Luton. There is still a ditch in the woods right where the older 2.5" OS map says the tramway should be. We also have a canal tunnel that is now used by high speed Javelin trains in nearby Strood.
By this logic, they (almost) had steam ships. A water wheel is a paddle wheel, near enough. If you have an engine to turn it, you have a boat which can move independent of wind, tide, or oarsmen. Useful for trade, of course, but also for the Roman Navy.
They did have a few experiments, but with the paddle wheels powered by livestock (they had a steam engine, but it wasn't used for large constructs). Their basic assessment apparently was that it technically worked, but not well enough to be worth the bother.
@absalomdraconis It appears that the Romans and the Chinese built many animal/human powered paddle wheel vessels for use as ferries on rivers and canals. Also, the Romans built horse powered tugs to tow ships in and out of port. Such vessels survived into the 20th century! Notably in North America where they were known as "Teamboats" I would highly recommend the very interesting book on this unusual maritime subject. 'When Horses Walked On Water : Horse- powered Ferries in Nineteenth-century America' by Kevin J. Crisman & Arthur B. Cohn Smithsonian 1998
In fact Paul the Romans knew about railway technology. As railways existed long before the Roman Empire (There is evidence to suggest that the railway actually pre dates the invention of the wheel. As guided systems using sledges linking Neolithic/Bronze age lake settlements with the shore along narrow causeways have been identified in a number of locations). The earliest railways using wheeled vehicles date back to Sumarian times. One of the problems with the very earliest wheeled vehicles was steering them. As they were rigid four wheeled vehicles. It appears that it was soon realised that some sort of guidance system was required. This was particularly true in urban areas and in places like mountain passes. As a consequence, stone (and wooden) rutways were developed. Over time they got quite sophisticated. With words for both single track and double track lines, passing loops, points and sidings etc etc being used in local languages. Both the Assyrians and the Persians built roads across their empires, which used stone and wooden track as it was understood that it was easier to build and maintain a guided system than a conventional road. They are many accounts of such things being built with Kings like Ashurbanipal and Sennacherib in Assyrian and Darius I in Persia describing them in their inscriptions. Sennacherib, in particular, appears to have taken a personal interest in technology (Stephanie Dalley describes this in considerable detail in her exceptional book, 'The Mystery of The Hanging Gardens of Babylon') Probably the place with the most surviving evidence for ancient railways are the islands of Malta and Gozo. On both islands they are a large number of rutways running from the coast inland. Whilst there is some debate on the actual age of these rutways. It is quite clear that they were constructed to guide wheeled vehicles rather than being the product of wear and tear It should be noted that the major export of the islands in ancient times was limestone When the stone was extracted in underground workings, it had the consistency of hard cheese being easily worked using stone (with blades of flint mounted in a wooden beam) and copper saws. However, once the cut stone was brought to the surface, it rapidly "matured" becoming quite hard and resilient as it dried out and was exposed to the air. Once the stone had suitably "matured" it would be loaded on a cart/wagon and taken to the coast to be exported across the Mediterranean and beyond. The rutways actually carried traffic in both directions. As until humans arrived in the Maltese islands, they were virtually devoid of soil. A trade developed whereby ships would load soil as ballast on mainlands of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Then they would take the soil to Malta where it was urgently required, and on the return voyages, the ships would carry the stone blocks back. This trade endured for millennia. I remember an archaeologist friend of mine showing me a map of the rutways at "Clapham Junction". He asked two questions. 1) Where do you think that this is? 2) How old do you think this system is? Well, as I knew nothing about the Maltese rutways at the time, I replied with the following answers. 1) It is obviously a mining/coalfield system? But it didn't recognise it from the map. 2) Mid to late 19th century. I was, of course, correct only in guessing that mining had led to the creation of the system. But I had no idea of the location. As for the dating, I was only wrong by around three to four thousand years! Over time, the concept spread firstly to the Greek and then the Roman world. Probably the most famous and remarkable line in Greece was the Dioklos. This was a double track stone railway across the highly inconvenient Isthmus of Corinith Apparently, it was built around 600BCE and lasted until at least 900 AD! So, by any reckoning, it had the longest working life of any guided transport system in history. Originally, it was used to transfer relatively light warships across the Isthmus, but it was soon realised that it was very useful for carrying cargo and passengers. Recent research indicates that in operation, it ran like a modern railway. Unfortunately, when the spectacular Corinth Canal was built in the 1890s, large sections of the Dioklos were destroyed. Thankfully, in recent years, what survives has been restored and reconstructed. In the Roman world, railways were used mainly in mining operations. But stone railways were built for other purposes. At the beginning of the 20th century the remains of such a system was uncovered at Peterchurch in Herefordshire. Stone and wooden railways continued to be built up to quite recent times. Probably the last railway to use stone track would have been the Haytor Granite Tramway. This 10 mile /16km long line ran from the granite quarries at Haytor down to the Stover Canal. The gauge was around 4' 3"/1295mm . It operated from 1820 to 1858. As the track had no scrap value (and the individual rails were actually very heavy!) It survives virtually in its entirety (Now Paul, this is something else that you really should investigate!). Wooden rails survived rather longer. In the USA, it was often cheaper to use wood (often with a thin strip of wrought iron or steel nailed on the top of the rails) than iron or steel rails. This was particularly true on the lines that served the lumber industry. I have seen photos of timber rails in use in New Zealand in the 1970's! Earlier this year I visited the OGEG collection at Ampflwang in Austria and there is a children's miniature mining railway using wooden rails! In some places, wooden rails have survived insitu here in Britain. Whilst there are several locations where wooden rails survive underground. There are/were wooden rails in the Dee Valley at Glyndyfwdy on a slate quarry tramway system. They remained in use well into the 20th century.
This is one of the key factors, for me. When you have a large reservoir of ultra-cheap workers (still have to feed and house your slaves), there is much less need for labour-saving devices.
This is a common misconception. The Romans used slaves for many things, but some of the best feats of engineering were done by the army legions. Road construction being an example. Also, most manual labour was still performed by everyday farmers, which were 90 percent of the population. And they had animals for the really strenuous labour. Look at the Roman water mills if you want to see how much they valued utilising surplus mechanical energy from their environment.
The topic was why the Romans didn't have an industrial revolution. In the UK, the industrial revolution is generally held to have taken place between 1760 and 1840. In this period, slavery became economically unnecessary.@@alanclarke4646
A problem in the early days of steam was the difficulty of maintaining the seal between piston and cylinder. I guess Roman engineering wouldn’t have come close. Thought provoking video, presented with trademark enthusiasm.
Well, it completely neglects the complexity of a steam engine and how many developments had to happen already just to build a stationary steam engine with, from a nowadays perspective, an abysmal efficiency of just 3%. The technology was there, but the need to develop wasn't. Thus, the main showstopper was probably the neutron bomb of the black death, which kicked off so many new developments not just in technology, but especially society. Millennia old principles were suddenly questioned and overcome. An even bigger surprise is that the empire of the middle had stopped its development of the pre-industrial age and returned back into an ancient / middle age society. 🤔😉
The main reason why the Romans didn't build a steam engine was that ... they literally had no reason! The steam engine in England had two reasons to exist: 1. cheap fuel in the form of coal 2. The dire need to extract huge amounts of water in the mines of that very fuel. Without those two things the steam engine wouldn't have been invented just as it wasn't invented in any other society. The England of the 18th century was literally the first place in the very first time in history to have deep coal mines. Before any invention can take off there has to be an economic reason to build it and to improve on it.
That's a good point. It's quite often that some technology could almost be developed, but some important part is missing. Think of early concepts of computers that were held back by, well, electronic components not being invented yet.
@@NeovanGoth _"That's a good point. It's quite often that some technology could almost be developed, but some important part is missing."_ Given that all steam engines for the first ~50 years of their existence only have simple ROPES as piston seals, I doubt this was the reason the Romas didn't "invent" them. The most likely reason is that the Romans simply had no reason to utilize them. Think about where and for what the first seam engines were actually build and used. They were used to pump water out of deep _coal mines._
A steam engine introduced to Roman Britain was behind one storyline for the 1970s British SciFi TV series for teens, "The Tomorrow People". A misbehaving time-traveller has decided to speed up History by setting up an early Newcomen steam engine in Londonium, AD77. Result: by AD1977, The Roman Empire now enslaves the World from London, which "now" resembles the interior of a giant space station, it's Roman citizens clad in silver togas and stainless-steel armour. Our young time-travelling heros and heroines are unimpressed and take brave steps to "correct" the timelines. This former teen enjoyed that "What if" story.
New sub here. There are not much high quality history channels on YT. This one if them but also very unique. Greetings from the old roman/germanian borderland
Outstanding video Whitewick’s , that’s the best story yet and I suspect there is a series you could do on the themes you have introduced us too here? Bloody well done.
Great video. To have an Industrial Revolution, you need a modern legal system - allowing Letters Patent; banking with letters of credit and loans; incorporation of limited liability companies; and a government which could pass Acts that enabled compulsory purchase of land but ensured compensation. The Romans were a very long way from that, and the Britons seem to have partible inheritance [Welsh: cyfran] which prevented accumulation of wealth. These are the main obstacles to Heron. He would have had to get multiple patrons to agree to finance his R & D. Big problem.
I wouldn't say corporations are necessary, though do increase the odds of it happening. There are many reasons it didn't happen. The industrial happened because of a culmination of many things.
Well put together Paul & Rebecca, a good educational watch on steam-power technology the Romans had that I knew nothing about. Regards sent from an old Roman Town on the Antonine Way.
Pliny tells us about a glass maker who invented an unbreakable glass. When he presented it to the Emperor Tiberius, the glass maker threw one his glass cups against the floor and it did not shatter. The Emperor asked the inventor if anybody else knew this method for making unbreakable glass. The glass maker said “no” and the Emperor had him executed. Tiberius believed unbreakable glass would eventually devalue gold. The story is apocryphal, but it is an ancient story attested in Satyricon as well. Maybe there’s some truth to the suspicion with which Romans viewed innovation.
Interesting point. Whether or not this particular story is apocryphal, there are many examples throughout history, especially since the industrial revolution, of technological breakthroughs being bought by vested interests and then buried so as not to destroy the current market for existing products. Two recent examples: 1) automatic gearboxes which were invented during the early days of automobile mass production but kept hidden from view for decades and 2) LED lamps, which despite being at least ten times more efficient that incandescent bulbs were priced out of the market for years. You could buy them online at least five years before supermarkets started selling them.
Hero of Alexandria was a Roman Citizen but he was Greek. Greeks were mastering advanced precision mechanics as demonstrated by the Antikythira mechanism. An analogical computing machine. Greek had also large scale machinery. We have the the building of the pneumatic clock with complex automations in the Agora of Athens. We also found remains of watermill powered sawmill in Epirus (northern Greece). The Greeks has also a functional railway used to transport boats from the Aegean sea to the gulf of Corinth across the isthmus o Corinth. Greeks had also oil technology, used as a weapon : the Greek fire (sort of napalm thrower) The reason why the Greeks didn't spark an industrial revolution is much more interesting than asking the same about the Romans. The Greeks had the technology and the intellectual disposition to create steam powered engines but a brutal event ruined it : The Roman invasion. The real question therefore is : What if the Romans didn't invade the Greek world? As a Greek my answer is : No. See : Greece is not a land empire. We are people of the mountains and the sea. We don't expect abundance and therefore we are not considering mass production or large infrastructures. Our infrastructure is the sea. The main moral advice in ancient Greece was : ουκ εν τω πολλώ το ευ abundance doesn't carry happiness.
An interesting video Paul. It’s something that’s always interested me, just how close the romans got. They had waterways, roadways, innovation but never seemed to take the final step. Imagine a Roman Empire that industrialised, the world would be very different now without a thousand years or more of no progress due to religion
Spain during Arab rule was kind of the extension period with their mix of Roman and Middle Eastern technology, which lasted about 500 years before a combination of religion and economics led to some disastrous decisions that erased most of the technical progress made during that period...
The Romans invented a lot of things , but when they disappeared Nothing really was invented for centuries , Until the 17th century and that's when inventions seemed to take off to make way for what we have today 🇬🇧 .
I'm assuming you were referring to the Middle Ages. You may be surprised to learn that all three Abrahamic religions had quite a lot to do with furthering knowledge. The first European universities started out as and in part remained, religious schools.
Religion nourishing human and scientific progress? Come on! That is like pretending the Catholic Church top Hierarchy locked in Gallileo Gallilei in home-arrest to improve his health (such is their argument now 500 years later! ), and not for the real, obvious reason as to stop the spreading of a "heresy from the Theology official" Why did they steal the library of the Protestants (in Heidelberg, I think it was)? The Vatican is to a certain degree, in it's heart, an undercover extension of the Imperium Romanum.
This may be a little bit off-topic but as the son of a geotechnical engineer it was not hard for me to see where the Roman road was. But until you actually get out it's hard to understand but the ground will always tell you a story and it will tell you the real story not what's in the books.
Thank you today’s video. Always look forward to them during the week. Always historical to watch and learn by. Hello Rebecca for me, and enjoy the week ahead. Cheers Rebecca and Paul. ❤❤😊😊
Another wonderful video! I love your exploration of the ancient Roman ties to modern times, and I am fascinated by the ability to go and walk the ancient routes that crisscrossed your landscape. This video really does make you really wonder what an alternate world of advanced Roman industry would have created. And, on top of everything, I enjoyed the music you chose for the video here.
Heron exploited steam to power a coin-operated vending machine and open a door. But nobody else saw a point to this because those functions could be performed by slaves. The Romans did make use of hydraulic power for mills and forging metal.
Amazing, thank you for this! Also, thank you for putting so much effort into your ad - I've never seen anyone make HelloFresh look so appealing (and easy), nice work! They should definitely keep sponsoring your videos (if they're smart).
From the other comments it appears the Romans lacked at least 3 things: 1. A coal-mining industry. 2. Advanced metallurgical skills. 3. A private limited company structure. In Britain in the 18th century the initial impetus for steam power was the draining of mines (then came mills, steamships and the steam railway) which takes us back to point (1) and (2) - coal and metal ore mining.
I have wondered for many years if we would all be speaking Latin if the Romans had invented railways. Their are two points that I would like to raise from your excelent video. 1) A steam locomotive is not neded to run trains. The Romans were able to "power" galleys with loads of slaves, and so they could have created a human powered locomotive using slaves to pull levers in a similar way to pulling on oars to drive wheels. If a gearbox is introduced then it would be possible to switch between light loads at high speeds and heavy loads more slowly. With somewhat more thought it would be possible to change gear while in motion so that once the vehicle was moving then they could switch to a higher speed gearing arrangement. 2) Rails and flanged wheels. Using smooth flanged steel wheels on smooth steel rails is the most efficient way of running a railway, but it took a lot of experimentation to get to that stage. Such steps included "L" shaped rails with plain wheels (a Plateway), rails with double flanged wheels so that accurate gauge wasn't a vitalrequire ment, then single flanged wheels on rails which needs accurate/consistant measurements. The actual rails started off as wood, then wood with harder wearing and less friction-creating metal plates on the bearing surface (hence the name plateway), followed by conpletely metal rails. At first these were cast iron but wrought iron and then steel followed. The Romans had steel. What would they have done with railways? The strategic value for the Roman army of being able to move a body of men plus equipment at even 10mph without any of the fighting men having to put in any effort such as marching means that they would be able to travel maybe 100 miles a day changing slaves every hour or so, and arrivung fresh and ready to fight. It was the ability to move soldiers vast distances at speed that gave the British Empire the ability to control India. Uprisings could be put down before they had really got going in many cases. The roman roads were primarily there to allow efficient movement of troops. It would be the military who would take the lead on building the railways as a way to control the native populations, and to repel outside forces. Imagine a network of small local battalions able to hold out for two days spaced along the frontiers, with similar small forces able to move up and add support from, say, a day's journey away (50-100 miles?). Then large forces 150-250 miles away to really make their presence felt would mean that the borders would be very difficult indeed to breach. Britain would be different as there was only one well-defined border to control. So the network of small forts along the wall would have a railway to allow quick and easy movement of forces along its length, giving the ability to repel any attacks by getting many men there quickly with major numbers of forces at one or two big places, maybe each end of the wall. A couple of major lines down the country to a channel crossing point (Dover), would connect the wall to Rome. A line to Cornwall for the tin, and a branch from that along the south Wales coast to Fishguard. Plus a branch from the Westerly line to the wall going along the north Wales coast to Holyhead would be the most important routes covered. We know that the Romans had the civil engineering skills required to create such a system, the organisation to get the major road networks built, and the military need for fast and efficient travel. Therefore they could - and should - have developed a rail system as it might have prevented some of the things that caused the collapse of the Empire. Yes, you are correct, I *have* thought a lot about this over quite a long time. Posibly too much! Brian.
Railways did exist, they just weren't used for what you describe. The carts were mostly pulled by livestock (because there was no reason to use humans for that), and the railways themselves reliably travel over fixed routes that had some special significance to them: for example, from a mine to a nearby port. They never would have been used for more generalized purposes, because building a long-distance railway was too labor intensive for it to be done between even most of the local villages, thus preventing them from being generally useful.
03:39: Open gate. Cross tracks, open gate on other side. Recross tracks, close first gate. Recross tracks, exit rail right-of-way, close second gate. I believe I missed something.
Its well known the ancient Egyptians experimented with steam turbines on water craft, the Romans and Greeks also had pig drawn trams which were clay baked troughs set at a certain width that a cart could be driven at higher speeds and lashed several carts together to be drawn by animals making them the first real "trains" per se. There were even passenger versions if memory serves me right.
In the 1830 an American Named Avery came up with a high pressure, 50 psi, Aerophile that ran saw mills using rope drive. An experiment was tried operating a locomotive with a 7 foot diameter version. The Loco ran but apparently faster than the brakes could handle and it ended in the ditch. See US Patent 6766 Foster and Avery Turbine.
Keep in mind the initial use to which early steam engines were put to, pumping water out of coal mines which meant there was no need to transport the fuel used. So long as wood remained plentiful as a fuel, coal was little used as it was cheaper. (Yes, there were Roman coal mines, but they used coal as a supplement to wood and charcoal rather than as their fuel of choice.) They also had sufficient water power for their industrial needs. It isn't until a society reaches the limits of both wood and water resources that trying to find alternatives becomes desirable.
Nice bit of history. 👍 When i was in Dartmouth, 30 odd years ago, my uncle showed me some stone rails that he said were used for mining and the wagon was pulled by horses. An early train line perhaps. Do you know of this?
The trap with hero's steam turbine is that it goes around but doesnt do work. In this sense it's not an engine. It is, a low pressure boiler. The mental trap for imagining a Roman steam engine is to see it as a high pressure onfustrial revolution era design. Building a high pressure boiler would be out of reach of Roman technology. This would end the story if design goal is a small powerful enough engine to go on a wagon and have enough energy to move itself and other wagons. Interesting speculation lies along the lines of Newcomen style engine which operates at low and negative pressures. Maybe along the lines of a large stationary engine moving wagons via ropes or chains...
I saw a tv programme once that reckoned the industrial revolution in general and steam engines in particular came about due to a particular combination of technologies coming together at the same time. These were A .cylinder boring skills adapted from gun boring adapted from bell turning technologies B. Metal casting skills vrom the same lineage starting with bells C. Boiler building technology skills adapted from brewery boilers and kettles ( as used in the original atmospheric static engines) plus plenty of coal and iron ore and plenty of water in the wrong places in mines, plus the economic system that allowed innovation. So essentially it required a Christian background country for the bells and possibly the industrial scale brewing. Of the monasteries. I saw a similar programme that reckoned the advances in science made by the west in a certain period versus the old Kingdom of China lay in the west's reliance on glass because we hadnt got fine quality china. China had porcelain so they didnt need glass, so they never bothered with it and thus never came to adapt it to all of the other uses that it has over and above being tableware or jars . The west couldnt produce fine china at the time so found that glass could substitute nicely and as skills improved started using the transparent properties for other uses such as windows or lenses. Something that they claimed that the Chinese had to purchase from the west eventually.
More thoughts: Are we looking at Mathusian pressures? The growth of the population in the late 1700s would have been unsustainable unless there was a major technological developmental steps. This just didn't happen during the Roman period when the population was remarkably stable ( plagues of Cyprian and Galen didn't help either!) so there was no necessity to move away from cheap labour ( slaves ) to mechanical.
I knew once you mentioned the crank slider was pioneered in the 3rd century I knew why the Roman’s couldn’t pull it together. After the crisis of the third century there was a degradation of Roman society and an increasing breakdown in the trade network that fed Rome’s metropolitan population. The focus on Military spending and subsequent depopulation probably strangled the possibility of a Roman Industrial Revolution before it got off the ground
It's an intriguing question as to why the Roman's did not advance beyond water and wind power, and harness steam power to locomotion, given their undoubted engineering skills. The 'Industral Revolution' initially made use of water, both as a means of transportation (rivers and canals) and as a power source (waterwheels to drive machinery). As the scale of production increased there developed a need for more rapid and efficient means of transportation and more reliable and powerful sources of power. This stimulated many experiments and much trial-and-error innovation - and eventually the development of coal-fired steam engines, which could meet the multiple needs of industrialization. Apart from perhaps military applications, it is difficult to imagine that the agrarian society of Ancient Rome with plentiful supplies of slave labour and rudimentary, small-scale production, would develop the kind of technology required for a rapidly growing industrial society, based on wage labour and large-scale machine production. There are many other factors to consider, but, it's an intriguing question nonetheless, and well-worth exploring in your excellent video. Thank you.
Of course, the aeolipile was a toy and not a tool. Basically, it is a reaction turbine and thus limited to the same design laws. The velocity of steam leaving a nozzle is very high and the optimum turbine tip speed would be about half that spouting velocity, as your tip velocity drifts from that speed your efficiency will start to drop. The Romans certainly didn't have precision balance machines, high strength alloys or high quality bearings and thus they weren't going to get anywhere near the velocities needed to get useable power out of an aeolipile. Unsurprisingly, reciprocating steam engines work quite nicely at lower speeds -- and start to lose power due to friction as rpm passes some point. To make a reciprocating steam engine, you are going to need some kind of boring machine and a lathe -- as a bare minimum. The boring machine will give you a relatively straight and even cylinder bore and the lathe will give you similar matching pistons. The boring machine came into its own with the development of cannon, which didn't exist in the Roman era. They did have lathes, but these were for cutting wood and not iron, that technology was more than a millenium in the future.
It is a hypothesis of mine, that very little “extra” was present in Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution that wasn’t present in Italy in the 1st Century AD. Absences were: the printing press with dissemination of information; a rising middle class; an emerging demand for representative democracy. All of that wasn’t present in Roman Italy, present in the Po valley were coal mines, huge industrial concerns making weapons, large pool of labour, educated class. Absent was inexpensive steel which opened the doors of the Industrial Revolution. SO the true hero’s of the tale were the British Iron Masters who empowered the steam age, because without cheap consistent quality steel, no Steam Engines and no viable railway and no cheap easily constructed steel bridges.
Don't forget that the Romans didn't have the cam or eccentric, thus no means to operate the steam valves. They also didn't have mass production of steel, when Roman crude steel production peaked in the 1st century A.D. a year's output would be enough to build only a few dozen miles of track.
The Industrial Revolution was different from the inventions of the Romans for several reasons. First, their mathematics was inadequate to the task. They needed the concept of zero, Indian/Arabic numerals, algebra and calculus. They also lacked a rigorous scientific method. With the proper mathematical tools and science, it was possible in the Industrial Revolution to derive a theory of thermodynamics which was essential in developing the steam engine. The Romans just didn't have those tools to work with.
I did not know about the water powered sawmill with its crank and gear linkages. Wow they were so very close! I see two key missing elements: One technical, the other legal. The missing technical element was mass production of steel. The missing legal element was capital markets and share ownership, which allowed aggregation of capital from many people into one organization to fund large innovative projects, that is what we call nowadays venture capital.
Years ago at Uni, I was consulting a map of North Devon and I saw thereon printed 'Roman Station'. The first north Devon line. They probably would have had electric trams ...in time.
What have the romans ever give to us in return? - the aqueduct - the sanitation - and the roads - irrigation - medicine - education - and the wine - public baths - and (almost) the steam engine
One thing that was essential to the industrial revolution was steel. Steel may have been known of in the Roman empire, but mass production wasn't possibly yet. If they had tried to build railways with iron, they wouldn't have lasted long. On the other hand, if they had gone down the road of industrialisation, it seems possible that steel production techniques would have been discovered.
They probably wouldn't have developed steel production, as it was during the Roman Age that iron technology finally produced metal comparable in quality to bronze- the Iron Age had actually replaced the Bronze Age despite using inferior quality metal. Still, it's interesting to think about.
I will never cease to be astounded and fascinated by the Roman Empire. When we historians start to believe we've seen it all from the Romans, we make a new discover about them that absolutely boggles the mind.
Actually, i think of the Aeolipile as the first jet engine, rather than a steam engine...just think..we could have had a "Concordius" flying from Rome to all parts of the Empire nearly 2000 years earlier!
Bypass the piston, and the crank and rod aspect, and go straight to a steam turbine. Worked for dreadnought battleships, and still works in power stations.
@LMB222 They're probably talking about the metal lathe, which came much later than the woodworking ones. However it does seem like they would be able to use iron tools to turn brass or softer bronzes. There may have even been such machines in existence but extremely rare, as demand drives production. As for whether they could make one, I think so. I watched a youtuber, Clickspring, make a hand powered wood and brass cutting lathe from scratch using old techniques.
@@brianhowe201 : Yeah, the OP is probably making the ancient mistake of assuming "a simple thing didn't exist" is the reason, while the actual reason is completely different. I wouldn't be surprised if metal lathes did exist, and just weren't common due to lack of purpose.
At the core we still have the same mindset and Roman culture. As such it's actually logical that we push forward in the same direction, but under completely different circumstances.
They were as far from a railway as we are from the faster than light travel (Alcubiere drive is a thought experiment, we don't have the slightest idea how to construct it). They didn't even have a scientific methodology, mathematics (calculus) and no Newtown laws. Their metallurgy and manufacturing processes also were very primitive, so such an engine would be damn expensive.
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At 9:10, I could see the agger and ditch before the diagram appeared. I'm not very good at spotting things, so you mist have done a really good job with the camera there! :) Building anticipation for it also helped. Edit: and you showed the one at 11:25 well too.
They need to do slightly bigger and single portion meals.
They had the rails, they are what the carriage for the stone saw blade ran on.
I believe the main reason for why the Romans didn't industrialize was slavery, the cost of labour was so low that there was no economic incentive to mechanize, this can also be seen today in low wage countries and areas. Also many believe that modern devellopment in Europe began with the Black death and the following lack of a labour force. Finally could be mentined the Germanic and protestant emphasis and appreciation of manual labour which didn't exist in Rome or really any other culture
The romans had 3 things working against them to create an industrial revolution:
1) It was a slave labour society, this meant that labour was extremely cheap. Getting more use out of your muscle was one thing, investing in a means to avoid using muscle as the main power source was another.
2) A lack of cheap fuel. Rome had no coal economy and the UK had a cheap coal economy due to having a demand for coal (cold winters) and a canal and river network to move that coal to the coast and onto the cities. Even then it was touch and go for the early stationary engines on how well they paid back the cost to run with the benefits against other power sources. It worked in the southwest as horse feed was really expensive down there (a generally poor farmland area).
3) No limited liability company structure. In the UK you could (and still can) get a load of people to invest together in a way that does not bankrupt everybody if the company fails. In Rome you could have a partnership, but the partners were still liable for all debts when the project fails. This is a major limitation into high risk commercial endeavours and was one of the key drivers into allowing the British Empire to overtake the French Empire on a global scale. Britain basically outsourced its expansion to private companies which allowed for a lot more investment in that area. If you are a Roman inventor, you need to find a very wealthy patron and most of them have their fortunes tied up in the status quo of the society, there is no means by which to gather potential investment from a large group of interested people.
.... in a nutshell....😅
Very well put analysis of the often forgotten relationship between technology and economics, including the unexpected but entirely correct insight into how something as seemingly disconnected, the nature of laws involving innovation and liabilities, effected the advances of science and, particularly, engineering.
Necessity is truly the mother of invention. Without the need for bulk freight or human transport there's no incentive to develop the technology.
Simpler than that, you need high and consistent temperatures to produce large sheets of steel or iron that will not contain flaws, important if you wish to build a steam engin of any practicable size, for that you need coke, and coke wasn't invented (discovered?) until the eighteenth century AD.
That was great thanks. Please take care
Steampunk romans is now an idea I visually love. 😅
There just got to be a video game based on that concept..
if not...well.. someone have to do it
@@matsv201 In a round-about way there was... it was called Guns of Icarus. One of the factions in the game is a revived roman-esque empire. Of course all of the games' world is in a steampunk theme.
@@KitsuneRogue Nice.
I wounder if the holy roman emprire count.. because they where sort of steam punk.. well almost
Same
I believe Harry Turtledove has written novels about this, unless I am mistaking another sci fi author for him.
The word "almost" is carrying the most heavy lifting I've ever seen
Concur
This is very odd, I am a retired heli pilot, I was booked by the American ‘History Channel’ with the question had I heard of Hadrians Wall? Something I filmed maybe 20 times over 40 years. With them on board the director sat next to me as we followed the wall. On one stretch out in front was the Newcastle to Carlisle railway line. Dead straight, off into the setting sun. I said ‘as you see there below is the first ‘Roman Railway Line’ being dead straight like the military road below. The director was stunned the Romans built railways! I could not believe he did not get the joke. A bit gullible or what ?
How very odd indeed!!
Wait till you tell him Aliens buitl the pyramids! /s
americans will american
@@athena5573 Stupid Americans. Always showing up just in time to save the world. Can't stand them.
My personal fav from Hero of Alexandria is "The Fire-Engine", which to my eyes is pretty much a prototype piston engine.
Heron invented a simple steam engine, the aeopile, and a piston pump. Imagine if he had thought of combining these two inventions. What could the world have gained from it!
Honestly, probably not much. Steel production was relatively primitive in the Roman era, bloomeries remained quite simple well after the Romans became the Byzantines. This is of course to say nothing of blast furnaces. The greatest stumbling blocks for early locomotives was the material sciences of the day. The Romans could have built steam engines, yes, but I'd wager they would more closely resemble very early low pressure steam engines the size of buildings and used for plumbing rather than the small high pressure steam engines used in locomotives.
@@epikmanthe3rd I remember reading that the early steam cars and locomotives were easily explosive and some of the locomotives were mostly made of wood. The development boosted because there was a need to develop safer and more reliable devices.
Newcomen engines used steam to displace air from the cylinder which was cooled to create a vacuum which moved the piston. They operated at a very low pressure. James Watt moved the steam condenser away from the engine. He got a continuous vacuum to pull the piston. He needed valves to put steam into the engine but could run higher pressure steam. Fuel efficiency was 10x better.
Indeed so! The Life of Brian "What did the Romans ever do for us" sketch would need to be completely rewritten! LOL
Heron and Vitruvius actually reference a much earlier inventors work on compressed air a lot, so some people attribute the aeolipile to Ctesibius in 285-222 BC
At 4:30, you can see the remains of tank traps in the bed of the accommodation bridge over the Kennet and Avon, in anticipation of a German invasion during ww2. History on top of history.
Well spotted, I had to go back and have a look.
Wondered what they were , I was thinking wagonway sets but now I know what they really were tank traps thanks to your comment 👍, in reality the Germans would just pile soil over them making them easy for tanks to drive over
I came here to make the same comment - they look like vertical rail sockets - I think they're a bit too small to be mine sockets
@@mickd6942 Yes but piling soil in holes isnt necessarily easy to do when being shot at. Anti tank obstacles arent meant to completely stop an attack, just slow it down and force the attacker to concentrate their forces into a specific point that the defenders can then focus on.
@@mickd6942 Yes but filling in holes isnt necessarily easy to do when being shot at. Anti tank obstacles arent meant to completely stop an attack, just slow it down and force the attacker to concentrate their forces into a specific point that the defenders can then focus on.
Isaac Newton spent more time studying ancient writings than he did on his own experiements. From what I've read, this was _de rigeur_ for anyone who wanted to advance their knowledge, all the way into the 20th century. I'm sure the writings of Vitruvius and Heron, and perhaps others, influenced and helped inspire the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution. The Romans themselves might have got some of their ideas from civilisations which were ancient to them, though certainly many more from civilisations which had much more recently past.
Pistons! I had no idea the Romans had pistons!
Let's not forget the mathematics of Archimedes that almost advanced to calculus at some point and contributed greatly to our understanding of geometry and arithmetics
Romans got knowledge from Greeks, Egyptians, Carthage and others.
Luckily he realised it was almost all a complete useless bullshit. Roman law of friction: a body stops because it is tired - can you count anything from this idiotic formula?
Without Newton laws, you can't build a railway. Romans were as far from it as we are from the FTL spaceships (no, we haven't any idea how to build them, Alcubiere drive and artificial warm holes are thought experiments, we don't have the slightest idea how to implement them in a working machine).
@@hydrolito
Yes, knowledge is iterative and collaborative. Much Roman knowledge was preserved through Arabian scholars in the middle ages before being picked up again by Europe in the Renaissance.
@@Dziki_z_Lasu Maybe we are seeing stuff wrong, maybe we should not focus on making ships that go faster than light, but on making light go slower than ships.
I remember reading about a partially sawn block of Roman marble with multiple cut lines, found, I think in Jordan. This confirms that the Romans had water powered gang saws for cutting marble sheets, first suggested by a poetic reference to the singing sound that they made.
Gang saws... For cutting marble into planks maybe.... 🤭
This sort of video always makes me so sad at everything we've lost over time.
Britain's railways were built to overcome transportation bottlenecks. Stockton to Darlington connected a coal field with the ports. In other places, the ports moved cotton to the mills, and the finished product back. The Stockton to Darlington line started off bring horse-drawn, with a stationary steam engine to help pull the carts of coal up the steepest hill. The Romans has a similar bottleneck between Rome and Ostia.
Not really. It is perfectly possible to transport goods from Rome to Ostia and vice versa via boat, which they most certainly did.
@@jelleschelfthout3636yeah , the mediterranean was kind of half the roman transport infrastructure : ships are still the most efficient transport system weight wise ,
And even if you whent for the carbon nautral system everyone could get a sailship , trains may be a bit more rare
honestly this is better than some documentaries
The guy with the bushy sideburns from time team, he was a young archaeologist, and did the dig on that roman town. They took the coins to the local police station and had them locked in the cells for safety when they found them, before going to the pub to celebrate.
"The guy with the bushy sideburns from time team" = Phil Harding?
Do you mean the esteemed Phil Harding.
Surely the guy with the bushy sideburns is Paul Whitewick!
Noddy Holder ?
Santa Claus?
Enjoyed that. Had the Romans become highly industrialised one wonders what things would be like nowadays!
impossible to industrialise without coal.
@richardharrold9736 Yes, it doesnt automatically mean you industrialise if youre using some but its certain you can't industrialise without it. There does seem to be evidence that the Romans were using some surface mined coal in Britain.
@@Withnail1969 : The first known industrialization was the use of the fast clay-spinning wheel during the Sumerian age (or perhaps even earlier, the invention of field farming instead of the even older seasonally-nomadic farming that preceded it). Coal was relevant to the steam engine, but not a universal requirement. In fact, the Industrial Age had actually _started_ with water mills instead of steam engines, and could have continued spreading with the addition of wind-powered water pumps and retaining ponds to allow water mills to be used in more places.
@@absalomdraconis Industrialisation as its usually understood bergan in the 18th century with the first use of the coal powered steam engine.
Somebody please write a dystopian history of the Roman Empire with steam ships and trains, but also still their murderous decadence and slavery!
What a great walk that was, really enjoyed the subject as well.
There are some cracking comments about this so far. I think its fair to say that to make something like a steam engine then you need a combination of technological advances in materials and manufacturing to make it happen. In the industrial revolution this happened over a very long time.
Great video have a great week!!
Would you be interested in documenting the 1860's Victorian tramway in Horsted Valley, Chatham, Kent?
They built a number of forts on both sides of the River Medway to stop a French Invasion that never happened.
They used a steam winch on a navy gunboat to power an aerial runway from the river to Fort Borstal to bring concrete mix from barges to the fort (the Victorian world's biggest concrete works was a little way up river), then they built a convict powered tramway from Fort Borstal to Fort Horsted and then on to Fort Luton. There is still a ditch in the woods right where the older 2.5" OS map says the tramway should be.
We also have a canal tunnel that is now used by high speed Javelin trains in nearby Strood.
By this logic, they (almost) had steam ships. A water wheel is a paddle wheel, near enough. If you have an engine to turn it, you have a boat which can move independent of wind, tide, or oarsmen. Useful for trade, of course, but also for the Roman Navy.
They did have a few experiments, but with the paddle wheels powered by livestock (they had a steam engine, but it wasn't used for large constructs). Their basic assessment apparently was that it technically worked, but not well enough to be worth the bother.
@absalomdraconis It appears that the Romans and the Chinese built many animal/human powered paddle wheel vessels for use as ferries on rivers and canals. Also, the Romans built horse powered tugs to tow ships in and out of port. Such vessels survived into the 20th century! Notably in North America where they were known as "Teamboats"
I would highly recommend the very interesting book on this unusual maritime subject.
'When Horses Walked On Water : Horse- powered Ferries in Nineteenth-century America'
by Kevin J. Crisman & Arthur B. Cohn
Smithsonian 1998
Different video Romans learned how to build better ships from Carthage.
Danke! Great story, I liked a lot how you put the things together and set them into context. Well done!
Thanks Thomas.
The Romans didn't invent the steam engine, Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century AD did.
In fact Paul the Romans knew about railway technology. As railways existed long before the Roman Empire (There is evidence to suggest that the railway actually pre dates the invention of the wheel. As guided systems using sledges linking Neolithic/Bronze age lake settlements with the shore along narrow causeways have been identified in a number of locations).
The earliest railways using wheeled vehicles date back to Sumarian times.
One of the problems with the very earliest wheeled vehicles was steering them. As they were rigid four wheeled vehicles.
It appears that it was soon realised that some sort of guidance system was required.
This was particularly true in urban areas and in places like mountain passes.
As a consequence, stone (and wooden) rutways were developed. Over time they got quite sophisticated. With words for both single track and double track lines, passing loops, points and sidings etc etc being used in local languages.
Both the Assyrians and the Persians built roads across their empires, which used stone and wooden track as it was understood that it was easier to build and maintain a guided system than a conventional road.
They are many accounts of such things being built with Kings like Ashurbanipal and Sennacherib in Assyrian and Darius I in Persia describing them in their inscriptions.
Sennacherib, in particular, appears to have taken a personal interest in technology (Stephanie Dalley describes this in considerable detail in her exceptional book, 'The Mystery of The Hanging Gardens of Babylon')
Probably the place with the most surviving evidence for ancient railways are the islands of Malta and Gozo.
On both islands they are a large number of rutways running from the coast inland.
Whilst there is some debate on the actual age of these rutways. It is quite clear that they were constructed to guide wheeled vehicles rather than being the product of wear and tear
It should be noted that the major export of the islands in ancient times was limestone
When the stone was extracted in underground workings, it had the consistency of hard cheese being easily worked using stone (with blades of flint mounted in a wooden beam) and copper saws.
However, once the cut stone was brought to the surface, it rapidly "matured" becoming quite hard and resilient as it dried out and was exposed to the air. Once the stone had suitably "matured" it would be loaded on a cart/wagon and taken to the coast to be
exported across the Mediterranean and beyond. The rutways actually carried traffic in both directions. As until humans arrived in the Maltese islands, they were virtually devoid of soil. A trade developed whereby ships would load soil as ballast on mainlands of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Then they would take the soil to Malta where it was urgently required, and on the return voyages, the ships would carry the stone blocks back.
This trade endured for millennia.
I remember an archaeologist friend of mine showing me a map of the rutways at "Clapham Junction". He asked two questions.
1) Where do you think that this is?
2) How old do you think this system is?
Well, as I knew nothing about the Maltese rutways at the time, I replied with the following answers.
1) It is obviously a mining/coalfield system?
But it didn't recognise it from the map.
2) Mid to late 19th century.
I was, of course, correct only in guessing that mining had led to the creation of the system.
But I had no idea of the location.
As for the dating, I was only wrong by around three to four thousand years!
Over time, the concept spread firstly to the Greek and then the Roman world.
Probably the most famous and remarkable line in Greece was the Dioklos. This was a double track stone railway across the highly inconvenient Isthmus of Corinith
Apparently, it was built around 600BCE and lasted until at least 900 AD! So, by any reckoning, it had the longest working life of any guided transport system in history.
Originally, it was used to transfer relatively light warships across the Isthmus, but it was soon realised that it was very useful for carrying cargo and passengers.
Recent research indicates that in operation, it ran like a modern railway.
Unfortunately, when the spectacular Corinth Canal was built in the 1890s, large sections of the Dioklos were destroyed. Thankfully, in recent years, what survives has been restored and reconstructed.
In the Roman world, railways were used mainly in mining operations. But stone railways were built for other purposes.
At the beginning of the 20th century the remains of such a system was uncovered at Peterchurch in Herefordshire.
Stone and wooden railways continued to be built up to quite recent times.
Probably the last railway to use stone track would have been the Haytor Granite Tramway.
This 10 mile /16km long line ran from the granite quarries at Haytor down to the Stover Canal. The gauge was around 4' 3"/1295mm .
It operated from 1820 to 1858.
As the track had no scrap value (and the individual rails were actually very heavy!) It survives virtually in its entirety (Now Paul, this is something else that you really should investigate!).
Wooden rails survived rather longer.
In the USA, it was often cheaper to use wood (often with a thin strip of wrought iron or steel nailed on the top of the rails) than iron or steel rails. This was particularly true on the lines that served the lumber industry.
I have seen photos of timber rails in use in New Zealand in the 1970's!
Earlier this year I visited the OGEG collection at Ampflwang in Austria and there is a children's miniature mining railway using wooden rails!
In some places, wooden rails have survived insitu here in Britain. Whilst there are several locations where wooden rails survive underground.
There are/were wooden rails in the Dee Valley at Glyndyfwdy on a slate quarry tramway system. They remained in use well into the 20th century.
This the longest UA-cam comment I ever read. Achievement… unlocked!
@@VAULT-TEC_INC. Ho Hum! I hope that you weren't bored!
Very interesting info. thanks.
Interesting indeed. I knew about those ruts but I didn't realise proof had been found for their use.
Wish I could give this two thumbs up! Thanks for sharing!
Let's not forget that the Romans had slaves, so they didn't see the need for other sources of energy.
This is one of the key factors, for me. When you have a large reservoir of ultra-cheap workers (still have to feed and house your slaves), there is much less need for labour-saving devices.
There is always a need for more energy. The reason the empire collapsed was a lack of energy
This is a common misconception. The Romans used slaves for many things, but some of the best feats of engineering were done by the army legions. Road construction being an example. Also, most manual labour was still performed by everyday farmers, which were 90 percent of the population. And they had animals for the really strenuous labour.
Look at the Roman water mills if you want to see how much they valued utilising surplus mechanical energy from their environment.
So did Britain until 1834...
The topic was why the Romans didn't have an industrial revolution. In the UK, the industrial revolution is generally held to have taken place between 1760 and 1840. In this period, slavery became economically unnecessary.@@alanclarke4646
A problem in the early days of steam was the difficulty of maintaining the seal between piston and cylinder. I guess Roman engineering wouldn’t have come close. Thought provoking video, presented with trademark enthusiasm.
Well, it completely neglects the complexity of a steam engine and how many developments had to happen already just to build a stationary steam engine with, from a nowadays perspective, an abysmal efficiency of just 3%.
The technology was there, but the need to develop wasn't.
Thus, the main showstopper was probably the neutron bomb of the black death, which kicked off so many new developments not just in technology, but especially society.
Millennia old principles were suddenly questioned and overcome.
An even bigger surprise is that the empire of the middle had stopped its development of the pre-industrial age and returned back into an ancient / middle age society.
🤔😉
The main reason why the Romans didn't build a steam engine was that ... they literally had no reason!
The steam engine in England had two reasons to exist:
1. cheap fuel in the form of coal
2. The dire need to extract huge amounts of water in the mines of that very fuel.
Without those two things the steam engine wouldn't have been invented just as it wasn't invented in any other society.
The England of the 18th century was literally the first place in the very first time in history to have deep coal mines.
Before any invention can take off there has to be an economic reason to build it and to improve on it.
It was a blacksmith that invented the rings on the piston with no qualifications.
That's a good point. It's quite often that some technology could almost be developed, but some important part is missing. Think of early concepts of computers that were held back by, well, electronic components not being invented yet.
@@NeovanGoth
_"That's a good point. It's quite often that some technology could almost be developed, but some important part is missing."_
Given that all steam engines for the first ~50 years of their existence only have simple ROPES as piston seals, I doubt this was the reason the Romas didn't "invent" them.
The most likely reason is that the Romans simply had no reason to utilize them.
Think about where and for what the first seam engines were actually build and used.
They were used to pump water out of deep _coal mines._
A steam engine introduced to Roman Britain was behind one storyline for the 1970s British SciFi TV series for teens, "The Tomorrow People".
A misbehaving time-traveller has decided to speed up History by setting up an early Newcomen steam engine in Londonium, AD77.
Result: by AD1977, The Roman Empire now enslaves the World from London, which "now" resembles the interior of a giant space station, it's Roman citizens clad in silver togas and stainless-steel armour.
Our young time-travelling heros and heroines are unimpressed and take brave steps to "correct" the timelines.
This former teen enjoyed that "What if" story.
New sub here. There are not much high quality history channels on YT. This one if them but also very unique.
Greetings from the old roman/germanian borderland
Welcome aboard!
Outstanding video Whitewick’s , that’s the best story yet and I suspect there is a series you could do on the themes you have introduced us too here? Bloody well done.
nothing at uni made me interested in the romans, but you... you inspire it
Thank you. Very kind.
Fasinating take on Roman abilities, I wonder how history would have changed if they did indeed have a proper industrial revolution. Brilliant.
Great video. To have an Industrial Revolution, you need a modern legal system - allowing Letters Patent; banking with letters of credit and loans; incorporation of limited liability companies; and a government which could pass Acts that enabled compulsory purchase of land but ensured compensation. The Romans were a very long way from that, and the Britons seem to have partible inheritance [Welsh: cyfran] which prevented accumulation of wealth.
These are the main obstacles to Heron. He would have had to get multiple patrons to agree to finance his R & D. Big problem.
I wouldn't say corporations are necessary, though do increase the odds of it happening. There are many reasons it didn't happen. The industrial happened because of a culmination of many things.
Well put together Paul & Rebecca, a good educational watch on steam-power technology the Romans had that I knew nothing about.
Regards sent from an old Roman Town on the Antonine Way.
Pliny tells us about a glass maker who invented an unbreakable glass. When he presented it to the Emperor Tiberius, the glass maker threw one his glass cups against the floor and it did not shatter. The Emperor asked the inventor if anybody else knew this method for making unbreakable glass. The glass maker said “no” and the Emperor had him executed. Tiberius believed unbreakable glass would eventually devalue gold. The story is apocryphal, but it is an ancient story attested in Satyricon as well. Maybe there’s some truth to the suspicion with which Romans viewed innovation.
Interesting point. Whether or not this particular story is apocryphal, there are many examples throughout history, especially since the industrial revolution, of technological breakthroughs being bought by vested interests and then buried so as not to destroy the current market for existing products. Two recent examples: 1) automatic gearboxes which were invented during the early days of automobile mass production but kept hidden from view for decades and 2) LED lamps, which despite being at least ten times more efficient that incandescent bulbs were priced out of the market for years. You could buy them online at least five years before supermarkets started selling them.
Hero of Alexandria was a Roman Citizen but he was Greek. Greeks were mastering advanced precision mechanics as demonstrated by the Antikythira mechanism. An analogical computing machine. Greek had also large scale machinery. We have the the building of the pneumatic clock with complex automations in the Agora of Athens. We also found remains of watermill powered sawmill in Epirus (northern Greece).
The Greeks has also a functional railway used to transport boats from the Aegean sea to the gulf of Corinth across the isthmus o Corinth.
Greeks had also oil technology, used as a weapon : the Greek fire (sort of napalm thrower)
The reason why the Greeks didn't spark an industrial revolution is much more interesting than asking the same about the Romans. The Greeks had the technology and the intellectual disposition to create steam powered engines but a brutal event ruined it : The Roman invasion.
The real question therefore is : What if the Romans didn't invade the Greek world?
As a Greek my answer is : No.
See : Greece is not a land empire. We are people of the mountains and the sea. We don't expect abundance and therefore we are not considering mass production or large infrastructures. Our infrastructure is the sea. The main moral advice in ancient Greece was : ουκ εν τω πολλώ το ευ abundance doesn't carry happiness.
Rotary motion to linear movement, the water wheel saw was a great invention.
Sounds like the roman super railway being built had the dame problem as HS2, still waiting for planning permission.
An interesting video Paul. It’s something that’s always interested me, just how close the romans got. They had waterways, roadways, innovation but never seemed to take the final step. Imagine a Roman Empire that industrialised, the world would be very different now without a thousand years or more of no progress due to religion
Spain during Arab rule was kind of the extension period with their mix of Roman and Middle Eastern technology, which lasted about 500 years before a combination of religion and economics led to some disastrous decisions that erased most of the technical progress made during that period...
The Romans invented a lot of things , but when they disappeared
Nothing really was invented for centuries ,
Until the 17th century
and that's when inventions seemed to take off
to make way for what we have today 🇬🇧 .
I'm assuming you were referring to the Middle Ages. You may be surprised to learn that all three Abrahamic religions had quite a lot to do with furthering knowledge. The first European universities started out as and in part remained, religious schools.
Religion nourishing human and scientific progress? Come on! That is like pretending the Catholic Church top Hierarchy locked in Gallileo Gallilei in home-arrest to improve his health (such is their argument now 500 years later! ), and not for the real, obvious reason as to stop the spreading of a "heresy from the Theology official" Why did they steal the library of the Protestants (in Heidelberg, I think it was)?
The Vatican is to a certain degree, in it's heart, an undercover extension of the Imperium Romanum.
How'd you escape from 2002?
A kind of universal world polytheism that incorported every "paganism" would have been awesome, though.
Another excellent video. Your work just keeps getting better.
This may be a little bit off-topic but as the son of a geotechnical engineer it was not hard for me to see where the Roman road was. But until you actually get out it's hard to understand but the ground will always tell you a story and it will tell you the real story not what's in the books.
Well, you've educated me on something new today!
Another informative video Paul and Rebecca . Thank you.
I want to see the Roman vending machine! 😂
Thank you today’s video. Always look forward to them during the week. Always historical to watch and learn by. Hello Rebecca for me, and enjoy the week ahead. Cheers Rebecca and Paul. ❤❤😊😊
Another wonderful video!
I love your exploration of the ancient Roman ties to modern times, and I am fascinated by the ability to go and walk the ancient routes that crisscrossed your landscape. This video really does make you really wonder what an alternate world of advanced Roman industry would have created. And, on top of everything, I enjoyed the music you chose for the video here.
Thank you, very kind
As he crosses the canal bridge he walked over remains of the road block from ww2 in the form of now filled in holes for metal posts.
Heron exploited steam to power a coin-operated vending machine and open a door. But nobody else saw a point to this because those functions could be performed by slaves. The Romans did make use of hydraulic power for mills and forging metal.
If you want to show the agger, you'd need to be there at dawn or before dusk, when you'll get the very lowest angle of attack of sunlight.
Amazing, thank you for this! Also, thank you for putting so much effort into your ad - I've never seen anyone make HelloFresh look so appealing (and easy), nice work! They should definitely keep sponsoring your videos (if they're smart).
From the other comments it appears the Romans lacked at least 3 things:
1. A coal-mining industry.
2. Advanced metallurgical skills.
3. A private limited company structure.
In Britain in the 18th century the initial impetus for steam power was the draining of mines (then came mills, steamships and the steam railway) which takes us back to point (1) and (2) - coal and metal ore mining.
OMG!!! Congrats on 100k!!!!!
Roman invented suspension for wagons and hand brake and odometer
hello Paul and Rebecca , nice video again , well done and thank you 😊😍
Cheers Davie
I have wondered for many years if we would all be speaking Latin if the Romans had invented railways.
Their are two points that I would like to raise from your excelent video.
1) A steam locomotive is not neded to run trains.
The Romans were able to "power" galleys with loads of slaves, and so they could have created a human powered locomotive using slaves to pull levers in a similar way to pulling on oars to drive wheels. If a gearbox is introduced then it would be possible to switch between light loads at high speeds and heavy loads more slowly. With somewhat more thought it would be possible to change gear while in motion so that once the vehicle was moving then they could switch to a higher speed gearing arrangement.
2) Rails and flanged wheels.
Using smooth flanged steel wheels on smooth steel rails is the most efficient way of running a railway, but it took a lot of experimentation to get to that stage. Such steps included "L" shaped rails with plain wheels (a Plateway), rails with double flanged wheels so that accurate gauge wasn't a vitalrequire ment, then single flanged wheels on rails which needs accurate/consistant measurements.
The actual rails started off as wood, then wood with harder wearing and less friction-creating metal plates on the bearing surface (hence the name plateway), followed by conpletely metal rails. At first these were cast iron but wrought iron and then steel followed. The Romans had steel.
What would they have done with railways?
The strategic value for the Roman army of being able to move a body of men plus equipment at even 10mph without any of the fighting men having to put in any effort such as marching means that they would be able to travel maybe 100 miles a day changing slaves every hour or so, and arrivung fresh and ready to fight. It was the ability to move soldiers vast distances at speed that gave the British Empire the ability to control India. Uprisings could be put down before they had really got going in many cases.
The roman roads were primarily there to allow efficient movement of troops. It would be the military who would take the lead on building the railways as a way to control the native populations, and to repel outside forces.
Imagine a network of small local battalions able to hold out for two days spaced along the frontiers, with similar small forces able to move up and add support from, say, a day's journey away (50-100 miles?). Then large forces 150-250 miles away to really make their presence felt would mean that the borders would be very difficult indeed to breach.
Britain would be different as there was only one well-defined border to control. So the network of small forts along the wall would have a railway to allow quick and easy movement of forces along its length, giving the ability to repel any attacks by getting many men there quickly with major numbers of forces at one or two big places, maybe each end of the wall. A couple of major lines down the country to a channel crossing point (Dover), would connect the wall to Rome. A line to Cornwall for the tin, and a branch from that along the south Wales coast to Fishguard. Plus a branch from the Westerly line to the wall going along the north Wales coast to Holyhead would be the most important routes covered.
We know that the Romans had the civil engineering skills required to create such a system, the organisation to get the major road networks built, and the military need for fast and efficient travel. Therefore they could - and should - have developed a rail system as it might have prevented some of the things that caused the collapse of the Empire.
Yes, you are correct, I *have* thought a lot about this over quite a long time. Posibly too much!
Brian.
Very thorough idea ...
Why wasn't this brought before the Senate ... ?
Railways did exist, they just weren't used for what you describe. The carts were mostly pulled by livestock (because there was no reason to use humans for that), and the railways themselves reliably travel over fixed routes that had some special significance to them: for example, from a mine to a nearby port. They never would have been used for more generalized purposes, because building a long-distance railway was too labor intensive for it to be done between even most of the local villages, thus preventing them from being generally useful.
Thought provoking... Nice one Paul, thanks.
Thank you
03:39: Open gate. Cross tracks, open gate on other side. Recross tracks, close first gate. Recross tracks, exit rail right-of-way, close second gate. I believe I missed something.
Its well known the ancient Egyptians experimented with steam turbines on water craft, the Romans and Greeks also had pig drawn trams which were clay baked troughs set at a certain width that a cart could be driven at higher speeds and lashed several carts together to be drawn by animals making them the first real "trains" per se. There were even passenger versions if memory serves me right.
You haven’t “been” Paul, you still are, and were at the time of signing off from this video. You ARE Paul! Interesting vid Paul.
In the 1830 an American Named Avery came up with a high pressure, 50 psi, Aerophile that ran saw mills using rope drive. An experiment was tried operating a locomotive with a 7 foot diameter version. The Loco ran but apparently faster than the brakes could handle and it ended in the ditch. See US Patent 6766 Foster and Avery Turbine.
Heron's works cover pretty much everything needed to develop a stationary steam engine, yet he never did so, even on 'paper'.
So good to unexpectedly bump into you both, on the steep path down to the river Allen last weekend. Love your stuff
Always interesting - thank you
2 minutes into your video and i already love your channel. Great job, Súper charming and entertaining content.
Keep in mind the initial use to which early steam engines were put to, pumping water out of coal mines which meant there was no need to transport the fuel used. So long as wood remained plentiful as a fuel, coal was little used as it was cheaper. (Yes, there were Roman coal mines, but they used coal as a supplement to wood and charcoal rather than as their fuel of choice.) They also had sufficient water power for their industrial needs. It isn't until a society reaches the limits of both wood and water resources that trying to find alternatives becomes desirable.
Nice bit of history. 👍
When i was in Dartmouth, 30 odd years ago, my uncle showed me some stone rails that he said were used for mining and the wagon was pulled by horses.
An early train line perhaps.
Do you know of this?
I suspect the biggest problem was the lack of the information exchange facilitated by the printing press.
Very fascinating informative video great work just subbed
Welcome.
The trap with hero's steam turbine is that it goes around but doesnt do work. In this sense it's not an engine. It is, a low pressure boiler.
The mental trap for imagining a Roman steam engine is to see it as a high pressure onfustrial revolution era design.
Building a high pressure boiler would be out of reach of Roman technology. This would end the story if design goal is a small powerful enough engine to go on a wagon and have enough energy to move itself and other wagons.
Interesting speculation lies along the lines of Newcomen style engine which operates at low and negative pressures.
Maybe along the lines of a large stationary engine moving wagons via ropes or chains...
I saw a tv programme once that reckoned the industrial revolution in general and steam engines in particular came about due to a particular combination of technologies coming together at the same time.
These were A .cylinder boring skills adapted from gun boring adapted from bell turning technologies B. Metal casting skills vrom the same lineage starting with bells C. Boiler building technology skills adapted from brewery boilers and kettles ( as used in the original atmospheric static engines) plus plenty of coal and iron ore and plenty of water in the wrong places in mines, plus the economic system that allowed innovation.
So essentially it required a Christian background country for the bells and possibly the industrial scale brewing. Of the monasteries.
I saw a similar programme that reckoned the advances in science made by the west in a certain period versus the old Kingdom of China lay in the west's reliance on glass because we hadnt got fine quality china. China had porcelain so they didnt need glass, so they never bothered with it and thus never came to adapt it to all of the other uses that it has over and above being tableware or jars .
The west couldnt produce fine china at the time so found that glass could substitute nicely and as skills improved started using the transparent properties for other uses such as windows or lenses. Something that they claimed that the Chinese had to purchase from the west eventually.
More thoughts: Are we looking at Mathusian pressures? The growth of the population in the late 1700s would have been unsustainable unless there was a major technological developmental steps. This just didn't happen during the Roman period when the population was remarkably stable ( plagues of Cyprian and Galen didn't help either!) so there was no necessity to move away from cheap labour ( slaves ) to mechanical.
All adds up
I knew once you mentioned the crank slider was pioneered in the 3rd century I knew why the Roman’s couldn’t pull it together. After the crisis of the third century there was a degradation of Roman society and an increasing breakdown in the trade network that fed Rome’s metropolitan population. The focus on Military spending and subsequent depopulation probably strangled the possibility of a Roman Industrial Revolution before it got off the ground
Fabulous video, as always
It's an intriguing question as to why the Roman's did not advance beyond water and wind power, and harness steam power to locomotion, given their undoubted engineering skills. The 'Industral Revolution' initially made use of water, both as a means of transportation (rivers and canals) and as a power source (waterwheels to drive machinery). As the scale of production increased there developed a need for more rapid and efficient means of transportation and more reliable and powerful sources of power. This stimulated many experiments and much trial-and-error innovation - and eventually the development of coal-fired steam engines, which could meet the multiple needs of industrialization. Apart from perhaps military applications, it is difficult to imagine that the agrarian society of Ancient Rome with plentiful supplies of slave labour and rudimentary, small-scale production, would develop the kind of technology required for a rapidly growing industrial society, based on wage labour and large-scale machine production. There are many other factors to consider, but, it's an intriguing question nonetheless, and well-worth exploring in your excellent video. Thank you.
Of course, the aeolipile was a toy and not a tool. Basically, it is a reaction turbine and thus limited to the same design laws. The velocity of steam leaving a nozzle is very high and the optimum turbine tip speed would be about half that spouting velocity, as your tip velocity drifts from that speed your efficiency will start to drop. The Romans certainly didn't have precision balance machines, high strength alloys or high quality bearings and thus they weren't going to get anywhere near the velocities needed to get useable power out of an aeolipile. Unsurprisingly, reciprocating steam engines work quite nicely at lower speeds -- and start to lose power due to friction as rpm passes some point. To make a reciprocating steam engine, you are going to need some kind of boring machine and a lathe -- as a bare minimum. The boring machine will give you a relatively straight and even cylinder bore and the lathe will give you similar matching pistons. The boring machine came into its own with the development of cannon, which didn't exist in the Roman era. They did have lathes, but these were for cutting wood and not iron, that technology was more than a millenium in the future.
It is a hypothesis of mine, that very little “extra” was present in Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution that wasn’t present in Italy in the 1st Century AD. Absences were: the printing press with dissemination of information; a rising middle class; an emerging demand for representative democracy. All of that wasn’t present in Roman Italy, present in the Po valley were coal mines, huge industrial concerns making weapons, large pool of labour, educated class. Absent was inexpensive steel which opened the doors of the Industrial Revolution. SO the true hero’s of the tale were the British Iron Masters who empowered the steam age, because without cheap consistent quality steel, no Steam Engines and no viable railway and no cheap easily constructed steel bridges.
The roman's had a hydraulic cross bow too but it proved too unreliable and awkward apparently.
Is it true the Romans Invented Battered Saussages.
And do HelloFresh do a version of the Roman battered saussage?
Now there is a question!!
And battered kerbing for edging their roads?😂
Another fascinating video, what an info you have uncovered. Well done. Thank you.
"This road contained a tax haven of the Roman Empire"
Don't forget that the Romans didn't have the cam or eccentric, thus no means to operate the steam valves. They also didn't have mass production of steel, when Roman crude steel production peaked in the 1st century A.D. a year's output would be enough to build only a few dozen miles of track.
The Industrial Revolution was different from the inventions of the Romans for several reasons. First, their mathematics was inadequate to the task. They needed the concept of zero, Indian/Arabic numerals, algebra and calculus. They also lacked a rigorous scientific method. With the proper mathematical tools and science, it was possible in the Industrial Revolution to derive a theory of thermodynamics which was essential in developing the steam engine. The Romans just didn't have those tools to work with.
Very interesting. Enjoyed the video.
I did not know about the water powered sawmill with its crank and gear linkages. Wow they were so very close!
I see two key missing elements: One technical, the other legal. The missing technical element was mass production of steel. The missing legal element was capital markets and share ownership, which allowed aggregation of capital from many people into one organization to fund large innovative projects, that is what we call nowadays venture capital.
Excellent as usual! Cheers from New York!
Years ago at Uni, I was consulting a map of North Devon and I saw thereon printed 'Roman Station'. The first north Devon line. They probably would have had electric trams ...in time.
I could clearly see that you were on a raised ridge when you were standing upon the Roman Road.
Love Your videos! ❤
Kind regards from North West Poland ❤
What have the romans ever give to us in return?
- the aqueduct
- the sanitation
- and the roads
- irrigation
- medicine
- education
- and the wine
- public baths
- and (almost) the steam engine
One thing that was essential to the industrial revolution was steel. Steel may have been known of in the Roman empire, but mass production wasn't possibly yet. If they had tried to build railways with iron, they wouldn't have lasted long. On the other hand, if they had gone down the road of industrialisation, it seems possible that steel production techniques would have been discovered.
They probably wouldn't have developed steel production, as it was during the Roman Age that iron technology finally produced metal comparable in quality to bronze- the Iron Age had actually replaced the Bronze Age despite using inferior quality metal. Still, it's interesting to think about.
I will never cease to be astounded and fascinated by the Roman Empire. When we historians start to believe we've seen it all from the Romans, we make a new discover about them that absolutely boggles the mind.
“crank, arm and rod” - so they nearly invented the bicycle ?
Great, now I'm gonna think about the Roman Empire every time I see a train too.
Good evening everyone ☺️
Goooooood evening.
Yo
@@JackDanielThe7th yoooooo
Excellent vlog and great outfit on Rebecca and missing seeing her in actual videos
You should invest in drones to give you that overhead look.
Very informative video
Thanks for the upload 🇬🇧
Actually, i think of the Aeolipile as the first jet engine, rather than a steam engine...just think..we could have had a "Concordius" flying from Rome to all parts of the Empire nearly 2000 years earlier!
Haha... now that would be a sight
Bypass the piston, and the crank and rod aspect, and go straight to a steam turbine. Worked for dreadnought battleships, and still works in power stations.
Coal fired or wood burning? LOL
Amazing rundown!
For the agger use a hosepipe. you should pick up the curve when walking around with the camera!
Excellent really enjoyed watching this video about the Romans.
The crucial invention missing in roman times was the lathe, which is needed to make good cylinders, wheels and axils
Romans didn't have the lathe when there's evidence that Greeks had it around 1300 BC? I doubt it.
@LMB222 They're probably talking about the metal lathe, which came much later than the woodworking ones. However it does seem like they would be able to use iron tools to turn brass or softer bronzes. There may have even been such machines in existence but extremely rare, as demand drives production. As for whether they could make one, I think so. I watched a youtuber, Clickspring, make a hand powered wood and brass cutting lathe from scratch using old techniques.
@@brianhowe201 : Yeah, the OP is probably making the ancient mistake of assuming "a simple thing didn't exist" is the reason, while the actual reason is completely different. I wouldn't be surprised if metal lathes did exist, and just weren't common due to lack of purpose.
This makes it easier to see why the time after the fall of the empire is referred to as the dark ages.
Yuuup.
They where very close. We still use the ideas they had for our modern world. Which is very cool to think about.
At the core we still have the same mindset and Roman culture. As such it's actually logical that we push forward in the same direction, but under completely different circumstances.
They were as far from a railway as we are from the faster than light travel (Alcubiere drive is a thought experiment, we don't have the slightest idea how to construct it). They didn't even have a scientific methodology, mathematics (calculus) and no Newtown laws. Their metallurgy and manufacturing processes also were very primitive, so such an engine would be damn expensive.