Reading Lamps and Smoking Jackets

[DaleB]

I have just finished reading once again through a number of Sherlock Holmes stories. These were a selection in a file I had downloaded to my Kindle quite some time ago. It is by no means an exhaustive compendium, but it’s always good to spend some time near the fire in the Baker Street room with an ounce of shag and a cherrywood. I’ll leave Mr. Holmes’ morning pipe to him, though.

 

[deluxestogie]

The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages, by Jean Gimpel. (1977)

Table of Contents:

• Energy Resources of Europe and Their Development
• The Agricultural Revolution
• Mining and Mineral Wealth of Europe
• Environment and Pollution
• Labor Conditions in Three Medieval Industries
• Villard De Honnecourt: Arhitect and Engineer
• The Mechanical Clock: The Key Machine
• Reason, Mathematics, and Experimental Science
• The End of an Era
• Epilogue

This is an English translation of a French book. The author, Jean Gimpel, writing from France in the mid 1970s, laments in his preface that western civilization has run its course, with not much inventiveness to look forward to, and just limping through its inevitable decline. Two years later, I purchased my first personal computer. Boom! But I forgive his pessimism, since he was writing during a profound economic recession in Europe at the time.

One thing I found interesting in the first chapter is that there were extensive for-profit corporations in western Europe during the Middle Ages. They just happened to all be monasteries—many hundreds of them: Cistercians, Franciscans, etc. They subsidized new designs of water-powered machines of all sorts (grain mills, mineral ore mills, hammer forges, etc.), and brought in massive profits through their monopoly control.

Several hundred years of new technologies mostly constructed from wood, and processes requiring heat (e.g. smelting and forging) burning wood or charcoal, was all it took to erase the forests of western Europe. And it was during the dearth of wood that coal (mostly foul, low grade coal) came into use.
The trees were gone, the rivers were heavily polluted, and the air was fouled in every industrial center.

Around 1277 AD, church authorities began to feel threatened by science and technology, and proceeded to slam the door on education, new discovery and technical innovation. That is the "Dark Ages" that was later recalled by the scholars of the Renaissance.

While I found the first chapter a bit slow, most of the rest of the book is loaded with surprises. The author's Epilogue is an embarrassing example of what happens when a skilled historian of the distant past attempts to render his verdict on contemporary events.

Bob