What If They'd Been Invented Earlier

[marycatelli]

I was in the audience for this Arisia panel. . . .

What if stuff had been invented earlier than it was?

Part of the fun here is that, rather frequently, it has been invented earlier.  And we learn the importance of cultural settings.  Because the Greeks invented a steam engine and used it as a toy.  And many ancient civilizations had the waterwheel, but the medieval Europeans went berserk, thinking of all the ways they could use this wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing all over the place.  And for all the talk of the breakdown of the Roman Empire, it was where that breakdown was most total that we see them going crazy over the waterwheel.  The Byzantine empire didn't think much of it.

Guns, for instance.  That can be complicated.  Earlier guns were worse weapons than the crossbow.  But the soldiers could be drilled in them more easily.  The first use involved pikeman to protect the musketeers.  Which was inspired by certain Roman legion tactics, so perhaps it could have been used earlier.

Printing press would have been fun in China.  You had too many characters to make it practical.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I've had a book on the waterwheel requested through interlibrary loan for the longest time... I suspect my request has gone into limbo somewhere.

Interesting about the guns--was this something you knew going into the panel, or something you found out at the panel?

[marycatelli]

I knew some of it going in. The use of Roman legions as inspiration for tactics -- that I didn't know.

[jryson.livejournal.com]

A printing press using wood cut blocks might have worked for chinese characters. For that matter, if some alchemist had stumbled onto photoengraving, handwriting might have been reproduced directly. There may never have been movable type. So no typewriter and later on no keyboard. Somebody would finally figure out a way to get numerical data into a computer, but word processing would have to wait for fancy software analogous to voice-to-text. By now, we might be able to scan the oldest extant documents (church records, court papers, ship manifests from classical times, hieroglyphics, even cuneiform) into our computers by now.

Probably, publishers would have stables of calligraphers to smack the works of best-selling authors into shape, but to sell a first novel you'd need a legible and pretty hand.

A skilled writer would vary his or her hand slightly to convey mood, almost as the spoken voice is used in storytelling and drama.

[marycatelli]

Look at an old-time printing press with its slots that have the individual characters in them. Envision how large it would have to be to handle Chinese characters. Thousands upon thousands of them. Would you really be saving time by the time you hunted down all the characters you needed?

And the thing about photoengraving is the lack of flexibility. Hard to chip out the letters and replace them for typos.

Also, the printing press in medieval times would have hit on a problem: where do you get your cheap paper?

[jryson.livejournal.com]

... Would you really be saving time by the time you hunted down all the characters you needed?

No, Chinese movable type wouldn't work. They'd have to carve the whole page. The decision would have to be made: make X copies by hand, or spend much more time carving a block to make X copies with the press. Experience would give them a good idea of the Break-even value of X.

And the thing about photoengraving is the lack of flexibility. Hard to chip out the letters and replace them for typos.

No type=no typos. Misspellings and clerical errors of course, but they were good at catching those.

Also, the printing press in medieval times would have hit on a problem: where do you get your cheap paper?

Once you have the machine: the press, for grapes, olives, or whatever. you can build one to press anything. If you can press anything you can make paper. Turns out there was a paper mill in Baghdad in 794. Pulp + press >> paper.

[marycatelli]

Since we were using rags before pulp, I suspect a lack of pulp might be an issue.

[(Anonymous)]

But China did invent movable type. Clay. By 1047 AD. The Koreans invented metal movable type in 1230. And they certainly had rag paper.

And all those thousands of characters aren't all used all the time. There are common and rare ones. You can organize them, by sound or root, and you can store them like a Chinese pharmacist stores ingredients.

Other ways of making books were cheaper, that's all.

[marycatelli]

and one reason they were cheaper, for them, was the size of the character set.

It doesn't matter how you organize them, the scale of it gives you difficulties.