Age of Invention: Lessons from the Rise of Coal

Anton Howes · 25 Oct 2023 · ageofinvention.xyz ↗

3 korrents from this piece

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
"Lots of anonymous people worked it out by trial and error" is never the real story of an invention: on closer investigation, identifiable people always turn out to be responsible.

Their words“lots of anonymous people just invented through trial and error and adaptation” just doesn’t cut it for me — I’ve never found such stories to be true upon closer investigation.

Interesting
Our reading
Lime is a blind spot in economic history: cheap coal made it widely available as a soil treatment and raised farm output, and the standard growth estimates barely mention it.

Their wordsYet lime is a huge blind spot for economic historians, despite it increasing the productivity of what was still by far the largest portion of the economy: agriculture.

Interesting
Our reading
The Dutch Golden Age did not end for want of energy: peat and grain were cheaper than ever while its industries were collapsing.

Their wordsThe Dutch Republic’s Golden Age did not fail because it lacked energy sources.

Interesting