Non-weapons of war, weapons of war

We know that Safehold does have printed fiction books. Both Duke Trian's and Narhmanh's libraries contained such works. And both were fairly large. If fiction is being printed, there is a market for it. If there is a market, more will be written. Along with newspapers, broadsheets and religious works, it seems to me that there is already a large demand for cheaper paper. Also, if there is that much printing being done, I would imagine that someone has already come up with a (leg) muscle powered printing press, much like a sewing machine.

SWM wrote:Yes, libraries (and even library catalogs) go back almost as long as writing, to Babylonian times. There exists at least one cuneiform clay tablet which is an index for locating other tablets in a Babylonian government library. For official use only, of course.

The Archangels apparently gave to Safehold a printing press design which is somewhat more advanced than the Gutenberg press, but we don't have many details. However, the design is far too slow and laborious to produce enough books for large local libraries around the world. The existing libraries of Safehold are most likely on the order of dozens of books, with no lending, limited access, and primarily focused on the specific purpose of the library (such as guild libraries, government reference libraries, Church libraries) or privately owned by wealthy families. One exception is that there are probably widespread collections of the writings of the Archangels and of the Adams and Eves, since that was an important part of Langhorne's plan.

You are probably right generally. But there were some exceptions. Think about the abbot's library in his office at the St. Zherneau's. What Merlin describes as he is ushered in is a room with pretty tall walls stacked with books. So once you have the printing press the way to large collections of books is open, although probably not as large as we would be thinking by modern standards.

But still, even prior to the printing press, monasteries commonly reprinted manuscripts for library use. IIRC the way it was done would be to gather a dozen or so brothers in a room where someone would read off the manuscripts while each of the others would take dictation. Eventually you can get at least some quantity of manuscripts that way.

In my first parish as a pastor, I was more or less chief cook and bottle washer and I would do bulletins, newsletters, etc. I had this wonderful phenomenon known as a hand cranked spirit life duplicator. Once I had my stencil it didn't take long to run off 50-75 copies...say about 5 minutes unless I managed to jam up the works. Later they got me a AB Dick 525 that run on power. That would really run off stuff. I forget how fast, but my 100 copies couldn't have taken more than a couple of minutes to run off.

My point is that libraries with considerable quantity were not only possible, but increasingly common after Guttenberg. At first they were kept in churches and universities. But then as time went on, libraries would be endowed by nobles in their communities, perhaps not on a check out a book basis the way we understand it, but certainly available to be borrowed and read, even if only on the premises of the library itself.

To speculate about Safehold, I suspect that Father Zhon wasn't all that uncommon. The COGA was providing five years of education to everyone which implies very basic literacy. Also, the impulse to educate its clergy would have inevitably led to collections of books any place a seminary was endowed. Then, given human nature, it is not unreasonable to assume that a certain percentage of nobles would have been collecting books.

By modern standards it would look lean, but I would be very surprised were they not as far along as early 16th century Europe.

Don

You could ask those individuals with large personal libraries like Duke Tirain to donate extra copies or damaged books to make public libaries

n7axw wrote:But still, even prior to the printing press, monasteries commonly reprinted manuscripts for library use. IIRC the way it was done would be to gather a dozen or so brothers in a room where someone would read off the manuscripts while each of the others would take dictation. Eventually you can get at least some quantity of manuscripts that way.

No, not quite. Each brother in the scripting room would be have a copy of some text that he was copying from. Generally each one would be copying a different text. While they did that, another brother would usually be reading aloud from the Bible, turning the effort into a form of worship.

By modern standards it would look lean, but I would be very surprised were they not as far along as early 16th century Europe.

Actually, I quite agree with you--Safehold is probably comparable to the 16th century or even later with regards to the quantity and distribution of books. But I think you overestimate how many books there were at that time.

SWM wrote:

n7axw wrote:But still, even prior to the printing press, monasteries commonly reprinted manuscripts for library use. IIRC the way it was done would be to gather a dozen or so brothers in a room where someone would read off the manuscripts while each of the others would take dictation. Eventually you can get at least some quantity of manuscripts that way.

No, not quite. Each brother in the scripting room would be have a copy of some text that he was copying from. Generally each one would be copying a different text. While they did that, another brother would usually be reading aloud from the Bible, turning the effort into a form of worship.

By modern standards it would look lean, but I would be very surprised were they not as far along as early 16th century Europe.

Actually, I quite agree with you--Safehold is probably comparable to the 16th century or even later with regards to the quantity and distribution of books. But I think you overestimate how many books there were at that time.

A non lending technical library may be of some use too. Have Owl run off copies of a set twentieth century reference works (CRC Press publications spring to mind) and make them available in major centers, you can skip the copyright data, 1500 years should cover expiry. Starting with the earliest editions and then bleeding the later versions out to obscure the origins. Think of it as an outer circle, information available to people not cleared for detailed knowledge.

They have those bugs, simply have them access the libraries of the world and copy each book. OWL could then produce copies.
There could be a library in charis, chrishom, emerald and corisande, as each place has royalty in the know of their origin. THe full collection is dived amongst the different libraries. THen the libraries themselves get each book in their collection copied, so every library get their own copy of the book. It might take time, but that every library gets a full collection.
THE church could creat a library for all the books that come under their purview, and distribute them. The same for the schools.
THe public libraries would contain a great deal of the fiction books. At first none of the books can be removed from the building but eventually they can be loaned out.
I can see some of the more academic church orders, creating the library system, they have plenty of money available.

jgnfld wrote:Feasible? maybe. But I haven't read of anyone doing much with them. Of course OWL could build acceptable chronometers any time they were needed. Alternatively, David just may not be mentioning them as they don't concern him or the story line.

Doesn't Lat/Long navigation require significant computation?

Merlin had to introduce Arabic Numerals and decimal numbering/math as a prerequisite to many of his desire changes. It could be that Chronometers weren't widely used because the math required using Roman Numerals wasn't worth the effort?

Very astute point I should have thought of.

Answer re. calculations is: "Partially." And probably to the point that no one bothers as dead reckoning should work quite well on Safehold given the trade routes and their geography.

Determining latitude and longitude from a noon sight of the sun and an accurate chronometer doesn't require much math nor Arabic numerals for a gross answer correct to say less than +/-20 nautical miles E/W or even better--Safehold's eccentricity values are not published that I know! [NOTE: This ASSUMES there was a Ptolemy or Babylonian who had worked out Safehold's equation of time and that these tables were available, or that Hastings did this for them and published it somewhere.] It can be done, since Ptolemy did and published his calculations. But it's a lot of work over many decades and I'd think we would have heard about it and the operation behind it.

Celestial navigation would be orders of magnitude worse a problem. Lots more tables would be needed as well and this probably makes Arabic numerals a near necessity.

---
added: When I say dead reckoning, I mean keeping track of courses steered (compass) and speed (log + sandglass) and maybe even an astrolabe together with sightings of navigational features and other more subtle cues like swell, bottom material, birds, etc. Dead reckoning has as unwarranted bad reputation in our more quantitative age.

Weird Harold wrote:

jgnfld wrote:Feasible? maybe. But I haven't read of anyone doing much with them. Of course OWL could build acceptable chronometers any time they were needed. Alternatively, David just may not be mentioning them as they don't concern him or the story line.

Doesn't Lat/Long navigation require significant computation?

Merlin had to introduce Arabic Numerals and decimal numbering/math as a prerequisite to many of his desire changes. It could be that Chronometers weren't widely used because the math required using Roman Numerals wasn't worth the effort?

Weird Harold wrote:
Doesn't Lat/Long navigation require significant computation?

Not really.

Weird Harold wrote:Merlin had to introduce Arabic Numerals and decimal numbering/math as a prerequisite to many of his desire changes. It could be that Chronometers weren't widely used because the math required using Roman Numerals wasn't worth the effort?

Math with Roman numerals isn´t a problem, doing math FAST by hand with Roman numerals, now that´s where it gets tricky, because of how you may need to write up to 4 times as many numbers.

To calculate the longitude of a sailing ship using a chronometer you need to know three things.

1-When it is noon at your reference location. This is determine through the use of a chronometer. A chronometer is a very accurate and precise time keeping device. It needs to be able to keep time to with in minutes and seconds of the time at the reference location.(surprise this is one of the reason that long and latitude are broken up into degree.minute.second increments) To design a time keeping device accurate and precise enough to afford good sailing there are a number of additional things to consider.

A pendulum clock would not work on a sailing ship as the pendulum would be thrown off by the rocking of the ship. So a spring must be used. However not just any spring is acceptable. Materials will stretch and shrink based on their temperature. So a simple spring used at the cold pole would have a different tension then the same spring used at a equator. This can be corrected by using bimetallic element (two dissimilar elements "welded" together) to provide a type of feedback that moves a counter weight in or out from a fixed point to compensate for temperature change. Another point to take into account is that the tension in your spring lessens as the spring unwinds, it will therefore need some mechanism to compensate for this as well. And finally there needs to be some mechanism to provide "power" while the chronometer is being wound. A modern day mechanical chronometer may lose 0.1 second a day due to friction and other losses.

2-when it is Noon at your current location. Thankfully this is relatively easy. The use of a sextant will give you a reasonable indication when the sun is at its highest and therefor noon can be determined.

3- Geometry and trigonometry. The understanding that there are is a relationship between angles and location on a circle. With this if you know that the sun takes one day (26.516 hours Safehold time) to travel all the way around a circle of 360 degrees the. You can find the angle away from your reference point.

Taken all together if you know that the time in Telesberg is 0658 and it is 1200 at your current location then you are 5 hours and 2 minutes west (assume east to west rotation) of Telesberg. This means that you are 360 degrees/26.516 hours *5.03 hours = 68.29 degrees west of Telesberg. (I think my math is close) it is stated that using this method you can get within plus or minus 10 nautical miles of your actual location. If you know the location of a second astronomical body in relation to your sun you can get an accuracy of 1 nautical mile.