Chapter 4: The Invention of Invention
Adam Smith: 1776

• Technological Innovation encouraged by:
• Division of Labor
• Widening Market
• Both were already happening during Middle Ages

• Water Wheel
• Eyeglasses
• Mechanical Clock
• Printing
• Gunpowder

• Power at a distance
• Change direction
• Rotary and reciprocal motion

• Grinding grain
• Fulling (pounding) cloth
• Transformed the woolen industry
• Hammering metal
• Rolling and drawing sheet metal and wire
• Mashing hops for beer
• Pulping rags for paper

Water Wheel
“ Paper, which was manufactured by hand and foot for a thousand years or so following its invention by the Chinese and adoption by the Arabs, was manufactured mechanically as soon as it reached medieval Europe in the thirteenth century…Paper had traveled nearly halfway around the world, but no culture or civilization on its route had tried to mechanize its manufacture”

Europe was a power-based civilization

Eyeglasses
Doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen:
Scribes and readers
Instrument and toolmakers
Close weavers
Metal workers

Eyeglasses
By age 40, get farsightedness occurs
Can’t focus on close objects
If can see, 20 more productive years of work for medieval skilled craftsman

 

Eyeglasses

Invented in Pisa 13th century
By 15th century Italy making thousands spectacles
Eyeglasses encouraged invention of fine instruments

• Gauges
• Micrometers
• Fine wheel cutters
• Precision tools
• Eyeglasses

• Telescope
• Microscope

Europe had monopoly  on corrective lenses  for 300-400 years

Mechanical Clock
Before its invention: sundials and water clocks: both unreliable
Reliable time important

• Church seven daily prayer offices
• Organize time in cities
• Time to wake, sleep
• Time to work, go home
• Time to put out fires (covre-feu became curfew)

Mechanical Clock
Invented in Italy and/or England 13th century
Early clocks inaccurate
Relentless pressure to improve technique an design
Clockmakers lead the way in accuracy and precision

• Miniaturization
• Correcting errors
• Searching for new and better

Mechanical Clock

• Undermined Church authority: equal hours for day and night a new concept
• Resisted by the church for a century
• Every town wanted one
• Public clocks installed  in towers
• Conquerors seized as spoils of war
• Symbol of secular authority
• Allowed individual autonomy
• Work now measured by time:  increased productivity

Mechanical Clock

• European monopoly on clocks for 300 years
• No one else could make them to European standards
• Chinese treated time as confidential aspect of sovereignty, not to be shared with the people
• Chinese reluctant to acknowledge European technological superiority
• Moslems did not establish public clocks because it would undermine religious authority

• Invented in China in 9th century
• Chinese language not well suited for movable type:  not widely used
• Chinese discouraged dissent and new ideas

• Europe already interested in written word
• Government paper work written in common language: not Latin
• Scribes could not keep up with demand
• Gutenberg Bible printed in 1452
• By 1501, millions of  books published in Europe

Printing

• Moslems did not accept printing: printed Koran unacceptable
• India also did not accept printing: first printing press in 19th century
• Europe: Church tried to stop common language printing of Bible
• But political authority too fragmented to stop it

• Tubed flame lances
• Bombards
• Arrow launchers
• Fire thunder
• Chinese fought nomads: not siege warfare

• Europeans improved gunpowder
• Europeans focused on range and weight of projectiles: siege warfare
• With improved metal casting, made world’s best cannon
• Thus military supremacy

Islam

• Islam from 750 to 1100 A.D. far surpassed Europe in science and technology: Islam was Europe’s teacher
• Then Islamic science was denounced as heresy by religious zealots
• Islam does not separate religious from secular (as does Christianity)
• New ideas dried up under theological pressure

• Wheel barrow
• Stirrup and rigid horse collar
• Compass
• Paper
• Printing
• Gunpowder
• Porcelain

• Water driven machine for spinning hemp in 12th century:  500 years before Industrial Revolution in England
• Blast furnaces for smelting iron: 125,000 tons pig iron in 11th century: Amount reached by Britain 700 years later
• But both technologies fell into disuse

Reasons for Chinese Stagnation
Absence of a free market and property rights
Chinese state always interfering with private enterprise

• Taking over or prohibiting lucrative activities
• Manipulating prices
• Exacting bribes
• Curtailing private enrichment
• Government strangled initiative
• increased costs of transactions
• diverted talent from commerce and industry

Chinese Navy: 15th century

Reasons for Chinese Stagnation
Confinement of women to the home made it impossible to exploit them in textile factories
Chinese society totalitarian: State monopolies on

• Salt
• Iron
• Tea
• Alcohol
• Foreign Trade
• Education
• Written material

• Clothing
• Construction of houses
• Colors worn
• Music
• Festivals

Europe

• Much less interference
• Innovation, emulation challenged forces of conservatism
• Sense of progress replaced reverence for authority
• Freedom in all domains

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