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LifeSunDeath posted:
The question I always have when I see these massive steel shaping rigs which are also made of steel - is what did they use to make them in the first place?
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Sep 28, 2020 16:32
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A lot of men with small hammers.
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Sep 28, 2020 16:39
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A slightly smaller shaping rig, which was itself made with a slightly smaller rig, and so on until you get to something that can be made with hand tools, and so on until you get to something that can be made with found objects used as tools, in a lineage stretching back to the Stone Age.
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Sep 28, 2020 16:40
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if you wish to build a shaping rig from scratch, you must first invent the universe
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Sep 28, 2020 16:43
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Vakal posted:The question I always have when I see these massive steel shaping rigs which are also made of steel - is what did they use to make them in the first place? Very interesting question. Even more interesting when you understand the history of tools, and how it started with stone knives, and each following generation of tools is a subtle refinement, becomes more precise, and can therefore make another better tool. Once you get to iron it's interesting because we've only figured out how to liquify it like 150 years ago, before that it was extremely difficult to work with. Iron is a miracle because you make it into different steel blends which have different properties, and it can be hardened pretty easily for use as cutting tools or gears. So stuff like this is made because of generations of previous machine tools and smelting tools existing, there was a point where all that stuff was hand built crudely but eventually results in precision poo poo. Now we have ultra precise machining that exists where the tolerances are nearly airtight, and the process is automated AND parts are interchangeable (something that is relatively new). LifeSunDeath fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 16:43
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haveblue posted:A slightly smaller shaping rig, which was itself made with a slightly smaller rig, and so on until you get to something that can be made with hand tools, and so on until you get to something that can be made with found objects used as tools, in a lineage stretching back to the Stone Age. Foundations Of Mechanical Accuracy by Wayne R. Moore is the book you're looking for if you wish to bootstrap a metrology lab from first principles. TLDR it's absolutely possible, and was common practice in the early industrial era, to generate arbitrarily precise flat and square reference surfaces with hand tools shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 16:55
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how much would it suck to live way back when you had to punch trees so you could make wooden tools
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Sep 28, 2020 16:58
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Vakal posted:The question I always have when I see these massive steel shaping rigs which are also made of steel - is what did they use to make them in the first place? The steel forge does not necessarily have to be forged itself, you can cast a lot (all?) of it.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:04
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VectorSigma posted:how much would it suck to live way back when you had to punch trees so you could make wooden tools Yeah, trying to do a major project would have really sucked before the invention of torches
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Sep 28, 2020 17:05
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I've wondered about this, just as a thought exercise. What if all remnants of civilization were taken, and all that was left was nature and knowledge. How long would it take to produce electricity, forge steel, make a computer, etc., if we had no infrastructure, just vast untapped resources and the the knowledge of what to do?
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Sep 28, 2020 17:06
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Reminds me of the story of the PoWs who fashioned a lathe in their prison camp. http://www.lathes.co.uk/bradley-pow-lathe/
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Sep 28, 2020 17:15
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what i want to know is how the hell they figured out bog iron
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Sep 28, 2020 17:20
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Ryan North wrote a book about how to build anything starting from nothing except for the information in the book. https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/ The premise is that of a time traveler and, unfortunately, there isn't enough room in the book to include instructions on how to build a time machine. This talk reminds me of the guy who built a toaster from scratch: https://gizmodo.com/one-mans-nearly-impossible-quest-to-make-a-toaster-from-5794368 The amount of effort needed to make plastic or refine metal into wire is insane and absolutely not worth it to char a piece of bread, which made me realize that most of what we make is possible only from the remnants of more important things. No society would align itself for the purpose of making toasters, but since we are already making all the components for other, more important things, we may as well makes toasters, too.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:21
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:I've wondered about this, just as a thought exercise. What if all remnants of civilization were taken, and all that was left was nature and knowledge. How long would it take to produce electricity, forge steel, make a computer, etc., if we had no infrastructure, just vast untapped resources and the the knowledge of what to do? It would depend on how many experts were left and how well they could communicate. There's a ton of cyberpunk senarios right now where people make lo-fi versions of modern tech pretty well from refuse and hand crafting. Being able to smelt soft metals with basic tools/kilns isn't so tough, but getting to the point of industrialized steel takes a ton of infrastructure and trade. After that computing will come back rapidly. I'd say it could be done in 100 years, just looking at how technology has exploded in the last 300 years but required a ton of research and breakthroughs along the way. Trade would be your biggest bottleneck I think, ships can be made by hand as they were for forever, but everything would be slow as hell.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:21
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:I've wondered about this, just as a thought exercise. What if all remnants of civilization were taken, and all that was left was nature and knowledge. How long would it take to produce electricity, forge steel, make a computer, etc., if we had no infrastructure, just vast untapped resources and the the knowledge of what to do? If a big enough coronal mass ejection hits earth dead on we will have the distinct displeasure of possibly finding out the answer.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:23
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`Nemesis posted:If a big enough coronal mass ejection hits earth dead on we will have the distinct displeasure of possibly finding out the answer. This has actually happened but fortunately at a time before civilization was dependent on widespread electrification. It did gently caress up telegraph wires all over the planet and pushed aurora displays almost to the equator.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:27
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Azathoth posted:Every time I read about Challenger, I'm reminded of the sinking of HMS Victoria in 1895 when a British admiral ordered two battleships to steam directly into each other, so they did, killing 358 people. A few weeks ago, while putting off doing an assignment (which I'm also doing right now), I read about a Swedish ship from the 1600s. The king of Sweden ordered it to be built and demanded it have a bunch of design features he wanted despite not knowing anything about engineering or ship building. The people building the ship told him the design was bad and that it wouldn't work, but he demanded they build it the way he wanted anyway. It ended up being too top heavy and was at risk of tipping over in a strong wind. They put a bunch of stones in it to make it sit lower in the water, but the water line was already nearly up to the gun ports and it was still too top heavy. They loaded it up with people and had it set sail where it immediately got tipped over by the wind and sunk.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:33
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The biggest problem for the more advanced stuff would likely be supply chains to move the necessary rare materials from various points around the world to where they need to be to facilitate manufacturing. We'd be burning coal generate electricity and be up to refining and smelting on an industrial scale pretty quick, but modern electronics rely on access to a wide range of materials that aren't found in nature together. We'd probably get back to a 20th century standard of living quicker than you'd think, but getting into the information age would be significantly harder.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:37
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If anyone wants a real lesson, play Factorio with an open mind about how it relates to actual technology. Knowledge is one issue, but most things come down to bottlenecks in supply chains, and the logistics of building things at scale (see the current state of advanced battery production).
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Sep 28, 2020 17:39
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if it happens too late then there wouldn't be enough coal left to restart an industrialized society
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Sep 28, 2020 17:40
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Azathoth posted:The biggest problem for the more advanced stuff would likely be supply chains to move the necessary rare materials from various points around the world to where they need to be to facilitate manufacturing. We can get a lot of that stuff out of landfills. Jabor posted:if it happens too late then there wouldn't be enough coal left to restart an industrialized society This seems like a much bigger problem. I guess slave labor might make a comeback.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:41
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Electric toasters were one of the earlier appliances, early enough that they came with lamp cords because the bladed socket had not yet been developed. Your mum’s vibrator predates the electric toaster by twenty‐six years, though. 
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Sep 28, 2020 17:41
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Jabor posted:if it happens too late then there wouldn't be enough coal left to restart an industrialized society lol The real world is not a tech tree
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Sep 28, 2020 17:41
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Cojawfee posted:A few weeks ago, while putting off doing an assignment (which I'm also doing right now), I read about a Swedish ship from the 1600s. The king of Sweden ordered it to be built and demanded it have a bunch of design features he wanted despite not knowing anything about engineering or ship building. The people building the ship told him the design was bad and that it wouldn't work, but he demanded they build it the way he wanted anyway. It ended up being too top heavy and was at risk of tipping over in a strong wind. They put a bunch of stones in it to make it sit lower in the water, but the water line was already nearly up to the gun ports and it was still too top heavy. They loaded it up with people and had it set sail where it immediately got tipped over by the wind and sunk. This is the Vasa, and it is extremely well‐preserved and on display in Stockholm.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:42
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Xakura posted:lol How do you propose to go from a pastoral society to an industrial one without any source of readily-accessible fuel? It's not something you can do by burning wood, and sort of oil or gas infrastructure requires you to have already industrialized to some extent. Once the carboniferous coal reserve is gone, that's it. No more high-density fuel that's accessible to a pre-industrial society.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:46
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Given a long enough time scale, we'll have coal again.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:51
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Jabor posted:How do you propose to go from a pastoral society to an industrial one without any source of readily-accessible fuel? It's not something you can do by burning wood, and sort of oil or gas infrastructure requires you to have already industrialized to some extent. Lol, you just need to build a bunch of furnaces from stone and then burn wood blocks to make charcoal, bing bong so simple
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Sep 28, 2020 17:51
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Yeah the existence of fossil fuels at or near the surface of the earth is a prerequisite for the industrial revolution. If it weren't for coal and oil, we might still have figured out how to make bessemer steel, but at the rapid expense of every forest on the planet.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:54
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Uthor posted:Given a long enough time scale, we'll have coal again. No. Coal got made during the carboniferous because there was literally nothing that could eat trees. Dead wood just kept piling up, most of it burned, but a lot of it also got buried in landslides, which is what eventually turned into coal. Once microbes figured out how to break down the complex molecules that trees built themselves out of, the carboniferous ended. Dead trees these days rot, instead of piling up to potentially be turned into coal.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:55
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Uthor posted:Given a long enough time scale, we'll have coal again. No we won't. Coal exists because woody plants evolved ~360 million years ago to use a polymer called lignin for the bulk of their structure. It took about 50-60 million years for fungi to evolve with the ability to digest lignin. Most of the coal we have now was laid down in that window, when there was nothing that could eat all the dead trees. efb
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Sep 28, 2020 17:56
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Jabor posted:No. Coal got made during the carboniferous because there was literally nothing that could eat trees. Dead wood just kept piling up, most of it burned, but a lot of it also got buried in landslides, which is what eventually turned into coal. Interesting! 
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Sep 28, 2020 17:57
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Jabor posted:How do you propose to go from a pastoral society to an industrial one without any source of readily-accessible fuel? It's not something you can do by burning wood, and sort of oil or gas infrastructure requires you to have already industrialized to some extent. The aforementioned charcoal from wood sources. You could also ferment and distill alcohol from various plant sources to get your liquid fuel. Both are readily available to us now, we just have much cheaper sources of fuel in coal and oil and use those because they are easier to extract.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:58
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just riding the wood gas bus to get my insect protein burgers
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Sep 28, 2020 17:59
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If all of our technology disappeared, hundreds of millions of people would die when cubic kilometres of water suddenly ceased to be held back by our dams. They would be the lucky ones.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:00
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Platystemon posted:Electric toasters were one of the earlier appliances, early enough that they came with lamp cords because the bladed socket had not yet been developed. iirc the first mass-adoption electric appliance which was really popular were laundry irons, because heating an old school laundry iron on a stove suuuuucks
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Sep 28, 2020 18:00
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haveblue posted:A slightly smaller shaping rig, which was itself made with a slightly smaller rig, and so on until you get to something that can be made with hand tools, and so on until you get to something that can be made with found objects used as tools, in a lineage stretching back to the Stone Age. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djB9oK6pkbA
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Sep 28, 2020 18:01
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if all our technology disappeared most people would quickly die of exposure because they would have no houses or clothes.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:05
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:Having a ramp where drivers might miss the corner seems like a bad idea, in hindsight. Obviously its so they can clear the crowd Cojawfee posted:A few weeks ago, while putting off doing an assignment (which I'm also doing right now), I read about a Swedish ship from the 1600s. The king of Sweden ordered it to be built and demanded it have a bunch of design features he wanted despite not knowing anything about engineering or ship building. The people building the ship told him the design was bad and that it wouldn't work, but he demanded they build it the way he wanted anyway. It ended up being too top heavy and was at risk of tipping over in a strong wind. They put a bunch of stones in it to make it sit lower in the water, but the water line was already nearly up to the gun ports and it was still too top heavy. They loaded it up with people and had it set sail where it immediately got tipped over by the wind and sunk. The Vasa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship) CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 18:05
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The recent netflix documentary series on challenger was really quite good. It had all the principle players involved and presented things, in my mind at least, in a pretty evenhanded way. Seeing the anguish in the thiokol folks for not stepping up more forcefully, still acute 35 years later, was powerful.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:06
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Maxwells Demon posted:The aforementioned charcoal from wood sources. You could also ferment and distill alcohol from various plant sources to get your liquid fuel. So, the key point of industrialization is that you're burning fuel instead of using labour to perform work. The key thing that made the industrial revolution work was that the labour cost of digging coal out of the ground was much much cheaper than what could be accomplished by using it as fuel. That's not the case with wood - wood is very expensive to harvest, prepare, and store compared to its ability to do work, and adding another manual processing step to turn it into charcoal makes that even worse. Sure, you can do it, and smelt small amounts of iron for weapons and plowshares and horseshoes, but that's basic iron age poo poo, not industrialization. Remember that you're starting from a pastoral society that uses 90+% of its labour just to feed itself.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:07
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