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Speed of Technological Development

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by SWM   » Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:39 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:
cralkhi wrote:And actually, now that I think of it, Safehold got to cannons and matchlock muskets in less than a century after the invention of gunpowder. It took significantly longer on Earth - IIRC guns proper are something like 300 years after gunpowder (fire-lances came earlier).

I wonder if this is related to another 'hidden' brotherhood...

Not necessarily. Again, Safehold's tech base doesn't correspond to anything of a particular time or place on Earth. They had metallurgy and industrial techniques that would have been appropriate - in some ways - to 19th century Europe when they got gunpowder. Given that, being able to get a whole lot of use of gunpowder in a short period of time isn't hard to believe: the only problems they needed to solve were gunpowder-specific.

Indeed, they undoubtedly could have improved their blackpowder weapons a lot faster if there wasn't such a bias against innovation. But now, in Charis, that bias has greatly weakened, so improvement comes at a breakneck pace.
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by lyonheart   » Mon Aug 03, 2015 4:49 pm

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Hi Imperatorzor,

Actually Perry brought a small scale railroad, on which the local Daimyo's sat on the engine cab as it sped around a circular track in part to demonstrate their courage.

As planned, after the treaties were signed, it was left in Japan for them to copy, along with other examples of then modern technology, as part of the American intention to treat Japan as an equal, not a dependent colony as Europe did.

Thus in less than 40 years the US Congress was passing laws restricting imports of Japanese machine made cloth.

One of the points of the series is how a nation forced to focus on survival can innovate quickly despite a near millennia old culture opposed to invention, perhaps you prefer a more sedentary set of stories, though who'd write such boring stuff?

Father Paityr has been approving patents for lots of other inventions we haven't seen, do you want RFC to waste limited writing space listing them all?

L


imperatorzor wrote:
n7axw wrote:Then, remember that Howsmyn's people did not have to fumble around with experimenting and blind alleys to come up with a workable design because that came courtesy of Owl. Instead the first steam engines are proof of concept rather than experimentation.

So was the case for the Japanese when they built their first steam engines and steamship. They saw western "black ships" off their coasts chugging along and how they performed in the Opium Wars and had bought some books on how they work, but relented on building one due to fears of crossing the line until the gates of japan were opened. The Japanese did not have to muck about with atmospheric engines and similar intermediate states.
cralkhi wrote:And actually, now that I think of it, Safehold got to cannons and matchlock muskets in less than a century after the invention of gunpowder. It took significantly longer on Earth - IIRC guns proper are something like 300 years after gunpowder (fire-lances came earlier).

I wonder if this is related to another 'hidden' brotherhood...

If you want to go with guns in the sense of the Lock, Stock and Barrel design, its more to the effect of 500 from the first Song Dynasty experiments with bamboo tubes filled with gunpowder and pebbles to proper matchlock muskets.

Zor
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by DDHvi   » Mon Aug 03, 2015 11:26 pm

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Larry wrote:Well of course Mr. Weber is accelerating the tech development at an unnatural pace. Keep repeating to yourself "Its a story, not a history book." As an author, our illustrious scribe needs to keep a certain pace to the books to hold our (the readers) interest. Things like the strategic situation, pacing of character and story development and how much time he has real world to get to certain plot points before the book goes to the publishers dictate when the mechanical and chemical developments have to occur. If the Safehold developments took place at anything close to real world time line delays, Charis would probably have been overrun and burning by now. Or if not that, then it would be ferrying the last ragtag survivors of Siddarmark into Charis to help bolster the Charisian manpower situation. The sword of Schueler would have rolled over them and Charis wouldn't have gotten there in time. Instead of bringing in supplies the Charisian fleet would have been busy evacuating as many people as it could get out while Charisian troops fought a desperate rearguard action with their first bolt action rifles. And Mr. Weber would have had to sketch out 20 more books to work through the recovery and return to the mainland. Instead he picked up the pace of the technology and the foothold in the mainland is secured and the storyline shortened to something reasonable. After all the real point is to write a captivating story that keeps us reading. That requires that the action proceed, the good guys progress, and the technology must march along. If it dragged at the real world pace it would bore us to tears. Fudging the tech and industrialization rate in order to keep a good story going is a good compromise, all things considered, or at least I think so.

Larry


I enjoyed many of John Campbell's (Astounding ed) space operas, but thought the pace of development was unrealistic. Ditto the Venus Equilateral series.

On the other hand, fantasy, by definition, does not connect to reality - it only resonates with parts of it.
Douglas Hvistendahl
Retired technical nerd
ddhviste@drtel.net

Dumb mistakes are very irritating.
Smart mistakes go on forever
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by cralkhi   » Wed Aug 05, 2015 11:29 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:
cralkhi wrote:And actually, now that I think of it, Safehold got to cannons and matchlock muskets in less than a century after the invention of gunpowder. It took significantly longer on Earth - IIRC guns proper are something like 300 years after gunpowder (fire-lances came earlier).

I wonder if this is related to another 'hidden' brotherhood...

Not necessarily. Again, Safehold's tech base doesn't correspond to anything of a particular time or place on Earth. They had metallurgy and industrial techniques that would have been appropriate - in some ways - to 19th century Europe when they got gunpowder. Given that, being able to get a whole lot of use of gunpowder in a short period of time isn't hard to believe: the only problems they needed to solve were gunpowder-specific.



They certainly had very good metallurgy/mechanics and would thus have been able to make much better guns in those aspects from the beginning.

But even the invention of gunpowder in the first place strikes me as highly suspicious - there doesn't seem to be a reason for Safehold to have an experimental-ish "alchemical" tradition in the first place, with the Writ's information.

Rifling (which is pre-Merlin) also seems suspicious.
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by imperatorzor   » Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:14 am

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About gunpowder: the way I figure it it had been around for longer than just 90 safeholdian years before Merlin. It did exist in Harchong for centuries before that, but it's use was limited to some minor roles like firecrackers or stageprops (a bang, a flash of light and a sudden blast of smoke to signify Langhorne's Rakurai falling down on Shan-Wei). The dispensation that the Harchongian bureaucrats pushed for was not this entirely new thing to be legalized but to give the OK for using it in various other and more practical roles. It did not show up in Harchong's history books before that because their view of history was about religious events, wars, the lives of great emperors and prominent nobles and other "Great Man" history. Who cares what common mummers were mucking about with in their day-to-day lives?

This is all wild speculation mind you.

Zor
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by SWM   » Thu Aug 06, 2015 1:38 pm

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cralkhi wrote:They certainly had very good metallurgy/mechanics and would thus have been able to make much better guns in those aspects from the beginning.

But even the invention of gunpowder in the first place strikes me as highly suspicious - there doesn't seem to be a reason for Safehold to have an experimental-ish "alchemical" tradition in the first place, with the Writ's information.

Rifling (which is pre-Merlin) also seems suspicious.

It is unlikely that gunpowder was invented just before it was approved by the Inquisition. It could have been invented anytime during the previous seven hundred years. For that matter, there could have been clues to it's existence in the Writ itself, without the Writ explicitly prohibiting it.

And rifling isn't that hard an idea to come up with. The fletching on arrows (even medieval arrows) are often attached with a slight spiral, so that the arrow spins for stabilization. Extending that to rifled barrels is not that hard. People on Safehold are not stupid, just repressed.
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by evilauthor   » Fri Aug 07, 2015 10:28 am

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SWM wrote:
cralkhi wrote:They certainly had very good metallurgy/mechanics and would thus have been able to make much better guns in those aspects from the beginning.

But even the invention of gunpowder in the first place strikes me as highly suspicious - there doesn't seem to be a reason for Safehold to have an experimental-ish "alchemical" tradition in the first place, with the Writ's information.

Rifling (which is pre-Merlin) also seems suspicious.

It is unlikely that gunpowder was invented just before it was approved by the Inquisition. It could have been invented anytime during the previous seven hundred years. For that matter, there could have been clues to it's existence in the Writ itself, without the Writ explicitly prohibiting it.

And rifling isn't that hard an idea to come up with. The fletching on arrows (even medieval arrows) are often attached with a slight spiral, so that the arrow spins for stabilization. Extending that to rifled barrels is not that hard. People on Safehold are not stupid, just repressed.


Rifling existed before Merlin as there's mention of hunting rifles being sport pieces. What Merlin introduced was the Minie ball which made rifles faster firing and practical for every soldier to have a rifle.
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by RequiteKitty158   » Sat Aug 08, 2015 11:13 am

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This is my first post here but have been a reader of RFC since 94. :geek:

I've wonder about the speed of Tech Development and the general competence level (IQ) of the inhabitance of Safehold for a while but I've always assumed that the mission planners who had the option to control the selection process for the colonist and specifically choose for the best of humanity (they choose the best STOCK for this using the best genetic science they had at the time) and based Off text in OAR marriages may also have been preselected. (predetermined and pre-analysized for best genetic tendencies) to sound like a cold uncaring breeder looking to enlarge my herd with the best stock possible.

hence, a far larger percentage of the humans on safehold every generation are Highly Intelligent Supergenies
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by n7axw   » Sat Aug 08, 2015 7:54 pm

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RequiteKitty158 wrote:This is my first post here but have been a reader of RFC since 94. :geek:

I've wonder about the speed of Tech Development and the general competence level (IQ) of the inhabitance of Safehold for a while but I've always assumed that the mission planners who had the option to control the selection process for the colonist and specifically choose for the best of humanity (they choose the best STOCK for this using the best genetic science they had at the time) and based Off text in OAR marriages may also have been preselected. (predetermined and pre-analysized for best genetic tendencies) to sound like a cold uncaring breeder looking to enlarge my herd with the best stock possible.

hence, a far larger percentage of the humans on safehold every generation are Highly Intelligent Supergenies


Ah, yes...Choose the best stock...and then put Langhorne in charge. What's wrong with this picture? :?

Don
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Re: Speed of Technological Development
Post by evilauthor   » Sun Aug 09, 2015 1:52 am

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n7axw wrote:Ah, yes...Choose the best stock...and then put Langhorne in charge. What's wrong with this picture? :?

Don


It's called politics. Can't escape the pernicious thing, even in the face of Armageddon.
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