Re:Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punish...
by vkou on Monday April 16, 2018 @03:29PM
(#16851948)
Because people have been trying to invent ways to mechanically augment human power since someone had the bright idea to make a lever.
Why the steam engine did not succeed because Watt, was because the same reason that tri-deck galleons and gunpowder did not exist in the bronze age. Non-trivial practical inventions require a massive pyramid of other non-trivial practical inventions, each of which requires a pyramid of other non-trivial inventions, all of which have to solve a contemporary problem - cheaply then their alternatives.
If liberal markets were necessary for the invention of the steam engine, why was it invented in England, and not in Renaissance Italy? It had liberal markets, access to capital, and was a center of technological and cultural progress for hundreds of years.
There's no particularly satisfying answer to that, other then 'happenstance.'
http://www.his.com/~pshapiro/steam.engines.html
Why was there a coal mine? Why not use wood or charcoal? Why didn't the Romans go down this path? They invented a toy steam engine.
These things have many causes. Obviously watson's invention was a big inflection point.
But, as for the question "were liberal markets necessary?" my suspicion is yes. But, I don't actually know. I think the answer begins before James Watt.