Iron, How Did They Make It? Part I, Mining(acoup.blog)
acoup.blog
Iron, How Did They Make It? Part I, Mining
https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-mining/
69 comments
Bronze is not that bad. Several reproduction efforts have used bronze axes, at first like you they assume that you need to worry, but by the end they realize bronze isn't that delicate and works just fine. Don't get me wrong, iron is better in every way, but bronze isn't as bad as people think.
funny enough, minecraft simplified this kinds of things to an extreme
Not if you install the right modpacks!
While the author talks about how iron production is commonly (but mistakenly) represented in popular conceptions of the past, I appreciate the focus on mining in this article. It's yet another activity, essential to the historical economy, that I had never really thought about. It's interesting to get some insight on how these systems worked.
A great many of his posts are like that! I recommend all of them.
This was a really good introduction. Subscribed.
This is the 3rd article on this blog I've read recently from beginning to end, and thoroughly enjoyed.
I also just subscribed to his Patreon - it's worth supporting this quality of work.
I also just subscribed to his Patreon - it's worth supporting this quality of work.
It is also worth reading earlier ones - I especially liked series about Sparta and earlier one about siege of Minas Tirith (yes, it makes sense).
'All of these can occur in big rock deposits, but may also occur as ‘bog iron‘ where oxidation occurs in acidic environments (in swamps and blogs)'
Did anyone else catch this? Dunno if the faux pas pseudo pun was intended but it made me lol.
Did anyone else catch this? Dunno if the faux pas pseudo pun was intended but it made me lol.
Recently caught a similar one from Alec (Mr. Connectify) of https://www.youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections who described a mechanical component as "circular, like most arguments on the internet".
It is now corrected.
I have had a dislike for history my whole life. I just now realized that I don't dislike history, but the way it is taught, as a list of important people doing important things on important dates. This post on the other hand was probably the most interesting thing I've read in a long time.
You'll probably enjoy the rest of the author's blog then. He really does his best to focus on systems, modes of production, and modes of organization. This is has been the standard for modern historians for quite a long time, but most pop history is still stuck in a "Great people, great ideas, great battles" framing. The author of this blog complains about this too at some point (I think somewhere in his Sparta series).
I think the traditional way of understanding daily life in a given time is reading fiction set in the time.
He often does blog posts where he looks at a fictional work and explains what it got right and what it got wrong. So fiction is useful to learn history, and then fiction+diff is even more useful.
This is true for most topics. The way that math is taught, the way that history is taught- all separate the vast and deeply interconnected miracles of human ingenuity and achievement and discretize them into asynchronous packets of information to be tested on. How could you learn about Arabic numerals and Roman numerals without learning about how they slowly spread across Europe and revolutionized business? One without the other is boring. Every human invention is connected.
Some suggested things to look up, caveat that you may already know about a few of these-
- John Taylor Gatto and his myriad essays about the state and education (especially "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher" as a Gatto primer)
- Buckminster Fuller's "Everything I Know" lecture series (transcripts are up somewhere)
- Anything Richard Feynman wrote
Some suggested things to look up, caveat that you may already know about a few of these-
- John Taylor Gatto and his myriad essays about the state and education (especially "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher" as a Gatto primer)
- Buckminster Fuller's "Everything I Know" lecture series (transcripts are up somewhere)
- Anything Richard Feynman wrote
Reminds me of A Mathematician's Lament. https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/Lockharts...
University-level history is much more like this, at least these days, than "important people doing important things," perhaps partly thanks to the influential Annales school [1], although that probably varies by country. Lots of economic and social structures, plus lots of documents, mostly court documents, that tell the lives of ordinary people. I took a class just on the everyday "things" of people in early-modern Europe -- what they ate and how, what they wore etc.
What ultimately killed it for me was that after a few short years, when you get to the research level, the work becomes so hyper-focused, like shipbuilding in 17th century Spain or weddings in late-medieval Germany, that you don't have the chance to look at the bigger picture until you're an established professor and I didn't have the patience for it.
But I was happy to put the skills I had learned into a personal project a few years ago, and composed an anthology of primary sources on the history of logic, algebra and computation, that I published -- in a rather crudely edited form -- as a series of blog posts: https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra (although intellectual history is often about "important people").
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_school
What ultimately killed it for me was that after a few short years, when you get to the research level, the work becomes so hyper-focused, like shipbuilding in 17th century Spain or weddings in late-medieval Germany, that you don't have the chance to look at the bigger picture until you're an established professor and I didn't have the patience for it.
But I was happy to put the skills I had learned into a personal project a few years ago, and composed an anthology of primary sources on the history of logic, algebra and computation, that I published -- in a rather crudely edited form -- as a series of blog posts: https://pron.github.io/computation-logic-algebra (although intellectual history is often about "important people").
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_school
This sentence was quite the meta-contradiction:
"Prominent leaders include co-founders Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), Henri Hauser (1866-1946) and Marc Bloch (1886–1944). The second generation was led by Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) and included Georges Duby (1919–1996), Pierre Goubert (1915–2012), Robert Mandrou (1921–1984), Pierre Chaunu (1923–2009), Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014), and Ernest Labrousse (1895–1988)." - in other words, the Annales school was made up of important people doing important things :)
I think there's a difference: the sentence is basically a reading list so you can get familiar with the school. You can't really read Napoleon or Caesar, because the first didn't write much, and the second only wrote PR fluff pieces.
Thinkers are influential to schools of thought in a way more concrete way than individuals are to the course of history. It's easy to imagine a modern world without Napoleon (the French army was already kicking ass before he turned up, even if he turned it up to 11). It's not easy to imagine modern philosophy turning out how it has without Kant.
Thinkers are influential to schools of thought in a way more concrete way than individuals are to the course of history. It's easy to imagine a modern world without Napoleon (the French army was already kicking ass before he turned up, even if he turned it up to 11). It's not easy to imagine modern philosophy turning out how it has without Kant.
I guess Annales is not a suitable genre for an encyclopaedia :) But it also doesn't focus on intellectual history, which it itself is part of.
This looks fantastic. I’ve always wanted to understand the history of mathematics better
I've long felt that the greatest exploration of history every created in entertainment form was the 20-year long show called Modern Marvels[0] on the History Channel. It was the History Channels very first show and since it's beginnings in 1995, Modern Marvels has treated us to 44 minute long explorations of the history of things (infrastructure, buildings, devices, earthworks, vehicles) with a format that avoids the boring and useless. All "5 Ws" are addressed each episode, but instead of focusing on "when" and "who" and "where", it focuses on:
- "What?" What is this thing? What is it's purpose? How does it do what it does? What can we learn from it?
- "Why?" Why was it built? Why did we drive to build something so important? Why should I care?
Only after we understand what it is and why it is, do we start to look at who built it, when they built it, etc (though they sneak in some who and when to contextualize the why quite often (which is great!)). Take for example this exploration of the United States Library of Congress:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZuXepy0DdY
What a sublime show. And it has such a fantastic narrator and opening theme as well!
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Marvels
- "What?" What is this thing? What is it's purpose? How does it do what it does? What can we learn from it?
- "Why?" Why was it built? Why did we drive to build something so important? Why should I care?
Only after we understand what it is and why it is, do we start to look at who built it, when they built it, etc (though they sneak in some who and when to contextualize the why quite often (which is great!)). Take for example this exploration of the United States Library of Congress:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZuXepy0DdY
What a sublime show. And it has such a fantastic narrator and opening theme as well!
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Marvels
Connections[0], The Day the Universe Changed [1], and Industrial Revelations [2] are other very good choices in this area. These series are very old (1978, 1985, and 2002 respectively) but their age gives them a level of quality that modern, dumbed-down, documentaries do not have.
They're probably more readily available through forms of through non-monetary cultural exchange rather than by paying streaming service danegeld, however.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revelations
They're probably more readily available through forms of through non-monetary cultural exchange rather than by paying streaming service danegeld, however.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revelations
>Modern Marvels
That show was sooo cool ! If you liked that, you will love
"Big Bigger Biggest" from/on NatGeo ? Also available now on YouTube
> I don't dislike history, but the way it is taught, as a list of important people doing important things on important dates.
You might find interest in recent Howard Zinn thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24510079
You might find interest in recent Howard Zinn thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24510079
As a huge history fan that is beyond sad to me. History has more crazy story then Game of Thrones, is insanely complex and multifaceted dominated by changing climate, invisible hand of markets, spontaneous mass movements, total accidents, insane coincidences, raging passions and people doing great or evil things.
[deleted]
Shared feeling. I once ran into a early 20th researcher that rebuild history through causal analysis rather than event listing. I failed to note his name or the name of his field.. but it felt exciting.
If Elon is serious about building a self sustaining colony on Mars, this stuff will be critical. Mining, refining, and manufacturing will all be critical, as will growing food and producing air and water. Finding a minimal technology tree for that is IMHO an extremely interesting problem.
Quick, what is the only machine tool that can copy itself?
Quick, what is the only machine tool that can copy itself?
I give up, what is it?
I think the answer is often "the lathe", but I also think it depends on what you call a machine tool and how persistent you're willing to be.
Technically, a lathe. However, it very much depends on how you define "can replicate itself". You probably need at least a foundry to melt metal as well to do it truly "from scratch" and I'm not sure you can make one completely with a lathe.
Required song after saying 'from scratch': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
The Gingery machine bootstrap is one of the coolest things which has ever been written.
It's relaxing, to know that there's a technological floor below which humanity can't fall, given literacy and a collection of seven books. And it's a pretty high level of technology.
It's relaxing, to know that there's a technological floor below which humanity can't fall, given literacy and a collection of seven books. And it's a pretty high level of technology.
I kinda love that while you can't make books with a lathe, you can make the tools (to make the tools) for a printing press with a lathe so it still mostly works.
This is an interesting little website showcasing this kind of "tech tree" idea :) - https://simplifier.neocities.org/
I'll bite at bending the meaning of 'machine'.
The Human / Operator; an advanced product of millions, or was it billions, of years of evolution which is self replicating (in the right pairs at least).
The Human / Operator; an advanced product of millions, or was it billions, of years of evolution which is self replicating (in the right pairs at least).
That would a lathe. The queen of machines.
More specifically a screw-cutting lathe .
Could add a link but you will have more fun digging your own rabbit hole.
An as a rule of thumb, if you fall into this hobby, you are allowed one per decade old you are before it it has a hording disorder smell.
Could add a link but you will have more fun digging your own rabbit hole.
An as a rule of thumb, if you fall into this hobby, you are allowed one per decade old you are before it it has a hording disorder smell.
the lathe is basically the one machine required to kickstart the industrial revolution. (and a way to drive it ofcourse).
Also, three surfaces that can be ground truely flat is also vital.
i can highly recommend the youtube series "machine thinking" if you have interest in this[0], aswell as the book "the perfectionist"
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062652559
Also, three surfaces that can be ground truely flat is also vital.
i can highly recommend the youtube series "machine thinking" if you have interest in this[0], aswell as the book "the perfectionist"
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062652559
Although truly flat surfaces can be easily generated (relative to building a screw cutting lathe from scratch). It just takes a lot of time and labor, but lapping two granite plates together would produce a good-enough surface plate; considering the accuracy likely to be achieved with a one-off homemade lathe.
Realistically, the absolute hardest part would be the castings. Cast iron is no simple feat, as I'm sure the future posts in this series will show.
Realistically, the absolute hardest part would be the castings. Cast iron is no simple feat, as I'm sure the future posts in this series will show.
Cast iron is much easier than steel. You won't get to the lathe without cast iron (and what will you lathe anyway?)
You can make a lathe from other materials. Most people building one in their garage these days use aluminum. Cast iron is better in a lot of ways, but the temperatures of aluminum are much easier to deal with, and today we can get good aluminum alloys to work with. You can also use bronze if you wanted. Granite is probably better than cast iron if you design for it. Concrete has been used commercially.
Lapping three surfaces together is the path to flats.
Lapping just two together is how we make concave/convex hemispherical pairs for telescope mirrors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatness_(manufacturing)
Lapping just two together is how we make concave/convex hemispherical pairs for telescope mirrors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatness_(manufacturing)
The Gingery books' path is via cast aluminium.
Here is a video series of someone building the Gingery Lathe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPGZg45dGXA
Aluminum is going to be much harder to manufacture on Mars than iron, at least initially, because it requires so much more energy to process.
Many people don't realize it but you can put a cutting tool into the chuck and use the lathe a (limited) horizontal mill.
Shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2cgoPpCmPc, note that on this video he's making yet another jig for the lathe.
Shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2cgoPpCmPc, note that on this video he's making yet another jig for the lathe.
For metal specifically this technology will be vital:
https://www.bostonmetal.com/
They figured out how to refine iron out of iron ore without all the usual steps.
We don't have coal on Mars. Everything need to be driven by electrochemistry.
Check out:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pYNzxorJs0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg5M5WjGx5M
https://www.bostonmetal.com/
They figured out how to refine iron out of iron ore without all the usual steps.
We don't have coal on Mars. Everything need to be driven by electrochemistry.
Check out:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pYNzxorJs0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg5M5WjGx5M
There was so much important stuff which in the past which is quite subtle. Recently I learned that the scythe was mainly used in Europe (and later America). Giving European farmer of the middle age and before a little productivity advantage. https://youtu.be/9Im_8sI0QFQ
I mean, as the person in the video says, 1-2 people doing the work of 10 from just using a scythe vs a sickle.
I had no idea how effective a scythe actually was, thank you for that!
I had no idea how effective a scythe actually was, thank you for that!
Living in the close to the Swiss alps, its actually still quite common. We have mountain farmers here, and to cut the gras on the hills, there is still nothing better.
It WAY faster and works with way taller grass then my parents lawnmower, that is for sure.
It WAY faster and works with way taller grass then my parents lawnmower, that is for sure.
This article was lovely to read, but I wish there was an RSS feed so I can catch the later installments.
You are in luck: https://acoup.blog/feed/
And, as a generalization, slapping /feed/ onto the back of a blog’s URL seems to be effective in many places. I just try it by default now if I don’t see an RSS button.
I’m not sure if that’s a default setting for Wordpress sites, but it does seem to be modestly widespread.
I’m not sure if that’s a default setting for Wordpress sites, but it does seem to be modestly widespread.
I wonder, was the Roman "ruina montium" technique used for iron mining? I didn't see it mentioned in the article, but it seems like something the author would be very familiar with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruina_montium
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruina_montium
I have pretty much the same reaction. Rolling my eyes every time I see another sword "forged" with a small trickle of red-hot something pouring into flat form.
I've recently started reading through the archives on the blog. His writing style took me a little getting used to (he's oddly fond of italics), but I think it's really an attempt at transcribing what might otherwise be a lecture into text, and once you get used to it, it's fine.
But the actual writing is amazing, and he's written on an oddly large number of topics that I find fascinating. I also appreciate how he's careful to give citations to source materials, and how he tries to mention, when relevant, that there's a controversy or dispute over some idea, or that the historical record simply doesn't let us know some detail.
I especially liked:
This Isn't Sparta: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
The Fremen Mirage: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
Practical Polytheism: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...
Why Don't We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
Order In Armor: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/03/collections-armor-in-order-par... and https://acoup.blog/2019/05/03/collections-armor-in-order-par...
I could go on. The series on Sparta was especially interesting, because I actually thought I knew a little bit about Sparta, but as it turns out, I really, really did not. Learning new things feels good, but unlearning mistaken beliefs is amazing. :)
If the above links don't seem interesting, try poking around the blog. He's written some fascinating analysis of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, spaceship design, bow range, and more.
But the actual writing is amazing, and he's written on an oddly large number of topics that I find fascinating. I also appreciate how he's careful to give citations to source materials, and how he tries to mention, when relevant, that there's a controversy or dispute over some idea, or that the historical record simply doesn't let us know some detail.
I especially liked:
This Isn't Sparta: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
The Fremen Mirage: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
Practical Polytheism: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...
Why Don't We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
Order In Armor: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/03/collections-armor-in-order-par... and https://acoup.blog/2019/05/03/collections-armor-in-order-par...
I could go on. The series on Sparta was especially interesting, because I actually thought I knew a little bit about Sparta, but as it turns out, I really, really did not. Learning new things feels good, but unlearning mistaken beliefs is amazing. :)
If the above links don't seem interesting, try poking around the blog. He's written some fascinating analysis of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, spaceship design, bow range, and more.
Great article and looking forward to the rest!
I enjoyed the economic tidbits that remain relevant today — rulers owning and controlling extraction of commodities, locating production based on cost of transporting inputs, and treatment of labor varying according to its scarcity.
I enjoyed the economic tidbits that remain relevant today — rulers owning and controlling extraction of commodities, locating production based on cost of transporting inputs, and treatment of labor varying according to its scarcity.
I have been following this blig for several months, it really is done of the best writing on the internet
>may also occur as ‘bog iron‘ where oxidation occurs in acidic environments (in swamps and bogs) leading to the formation of small clumps of iron-rich material
I've always been amazed at bog iron it seems like it shouldn't exist where it does and how it does. It must have been an amazingly valuable source rather than smashing rocks or spending time and effort searching for a rich vein of iron.
I've always been amazed at bog iron it seems like it shouldn't exist where it does and how it does. It must have been an amazingly valuable source rather than smashing rocks or spending time and effort searching for a rich vein of iron.
I "discovered" this blog a couple of month ago, and I absolutely love it. The recent posts about agriculture in pre-modern times[0] are particularly insightful and I enjoyed so much to read.
[0] Start of the series: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
[0] Start of the series: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
I'm kinda impressed there's not a whole slew of comments debunking every claim like everytime "guns, germs and steel" is brought up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
That's because unlike Jared Diamond, Bret Devereaux is a professional historian who understands what he is talking about, and is careful to note his sources and what areas we don't know much about.
As usual, if you like Bret's writing, please consider donating! He has emphasized that adjuncts (which he is) don't earn a lot (perhaps <30k/yr) and spend a huge amount of their time applying to jobs/grading papers. Donating would ideally offer him more time to work on his writing.
If you enjoyed this you may also enjoy the five part series on how bread is made by the same author. It was a long read (~2 hours for the whole series) but I learnt a lot from it: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
I honestly can't comprehend this line of thought. Why the hell would you care about stupid swords? If I was the first blacksmith on the planet I would try to replace bronze axes. Bronze is an extremely awful material choice for cutting down trees.