prime mover quotes
There's a neat book I'm reading.
Here are some excerpts:
"Many (but not all) subsequent historians have endorsed Lynn White's point that the Middle Ages was a period of major technological advance, both indigenous and imported, rather than the dark period of pre-Renaissance stagnation presumed by people looking at artistic and literary output. Pipe organs, mechanical clocks, trousers, felt making, skis, soap, wooden barrels, alcohol distillation, the magnetic compass, gunpowder, printing, wheelbarrows, improved mining and metalworking methods -- the list gets lengthy! In the West, at least, technological change in the five hundred years after 800 C.E. dwafed change in the thousand years preceding it. Never mind political fragmentation, artistic rustication, or religious homogenization. Or the schoolbook Dark Ages as nothing but knight time."
-- Steven Vogel, Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle, 2001, p. 244.
"War chariots abound as motifs on Greek vases, so we know how horses drew them. A one-horse chariot had a pole that extended upward from the front of its platform and across the back of the horse. But two- and four-horse versions appear more often. In a four-horse chariot, shown Figure 11.2, the pole went forward between the pairs of horses, so it looks less ungainly. But it shared the same peculiarity, a high front end connected to yoke and throat straps. There's no lack of evidence, historical and experimental, that a horse cannot pull effectively when hitched this way. The classic evidence comes from measurements by a retired French cavalry officer, Rechard Lefebvre des Noëttes, in 1931. He found that hitched with such a yoke and strap, a horse could pull only about a quarter to a third as hard as a horse with a modern harness. Keeping the chariot light provided a partial solution, even if to our eyes the use of four horses for such minimal vehicles looks silly -- like using a huge engine in a car and then omitting all but the low gears. Traversing big bumps took large wheels, which the chariots had, but their wheels were so lightly constructed that flat spots developed if the wheels were left mounted. Athena needed a special subgoddess to remove and hang up the wheels from her chariot at night. According to late Roman law, a two-horse or two-mule vehicle wasn't supposed to convey more than two people, each with about the carry-on baggage we now take on airplanes -- about 400 pounds or 180 kilograms all together."
-- Steven Vogel, Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle, 2001, pp. 236-237.
Here are some excerpts:
"Many (but not all) subsequent historians have endorsed Lynn White's point that the Middle Ages was a period of major technological advance, both indigenous and imported, rather than the dark period of pre-Renaissance stagnation presumed by people looking at artistic and literary output. Pipe organs, mechanical clocks, trousers, felt making, skis, soap, wooden barrels, alcohol distillation, the magnetic compass, gunpowder, printing, wheelbarrows, improved mining and metalworking methods -- the list gets lengthy! In the West, at least, technological change in the five hundred years after 800 C.E. dwafed change in the thousand years preceding it. Never mind political fragmentation, artistic rustication, or religious homogenization. Or the schoolbook Dark Ages as nothing but knight time."
-- Steven Vogel, Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle, 2001, p. 244.
"War chariots abound as motifs on Greek vases, so we know how horses drew them. A one-horse chariot had a pole that extended upward from the front of its platform and across the back of the horse. But two- and four-horse versions appear more often. In a four-horse chariot, shown Figure 11.2, the pole went forward between the pairs of horses, so it looks less ungainly. But it shared the same peculiarity, a high front end connected to yoke and throat straps. There's no lack of evidence, historical and experimental, that a horse cannot pull effectively when hitched this way. The classic evidence comes from measurements by a retired French cavalry officer, Rechard Lefebvre des Noëttes, in 1931. He found that hitched with such a yoke and strap, a horse could pull only about a quarter to a third as hard as a horse with a modern harness. Keeping the chariot light provided a partial solution, even if to our eyes the use of four horses for such minimal vehicles looks silly -- like using a huge engine in a car and then omitting all but the low gears. Traversing big bumps took large wheels, which the chariots had, but their wheels were so lightly constructed that flat spots developed if the wheels were left mounted. Athena needed a special subgoddess to remove and hang up the wheels from her chariot at night. According to late Roman law, a two-horse or two-mule vehicle wasn't supposed to convey more than two people, each with about the carry-on baggage we now take on airplanes -- about 400 pounds or 180 kilograms all together."
-- Steven Vogel, Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle, 2001, pp. 236-237.