The Wealth and Poverty of

Nations• Chapter 4: The

Invention of Invention

Adam Smith: 1776

• Technological Innovation encouraged by:– Division of Labor– Widening Market

• Both were already happening during Middle Ages

Important Middle Ages Technologies

• Water Wheel

• Eyeglasses

• Mechanical Clock

• Printing

• Gunpowder

Water Wheel

• Revived in 10th century• By 1086 England had 5,600 water

mills• Improved by dams and ponds• Cranks and toothed gears made

possible– Change direction– Power at a distance– Rotary and reciprocal motion

                                   

Water Wheel

• Applications:– Grinding grain

– Hammering metal

– Rolling and drawing sheet metal and wire

– Mashing hops for beer

– Pulping rags for paper

– Fulling (pounding) cloth • Transformed the woolen

industry

Water Wheel• “ Paper, which was manufactured by hand and foot

for a thousand years or so following its invention by the Chinese and adoption by the Arabs, was manufactured mechanically as soon as it reached medieval Europe in the thirteenth century…Paper had traveled nearly halfway around the world, but no culture or civilization on its route had tried to mechanize its manufacture”

• Europe was a power-based civilization

Eyeglasses

• By age 40, get farsightedness occurs

• Eyeglasses added 20 years to the working life of skilled craftsmen:– Scribes and readers– Instrument and toolmakers– Close weavers– Metal workers

Eyeglasses

• Invented in Pisa 13th century• By 15th century Italy making thousands spectacles• Eyeglasses encouraged invention of fine

instruments– Gauges– Micrometers– Fine wheel cutters– Precision tools

Eyeglasses

• Knowledge of lenses produced other inventions– Telescope– Microscope

• Europe had monopoly

on corrective lenses

for 300-400 years

Mechanical Clock

• Before its invention: sundials and water clocks– both unreliable

• Reliable time important– Church seven daily prayer offices

– Organize time in cities

• Time to wake, sleep

• Time to work, go home

• Time to put out fires (covre-feu became curfew)

Mechanical Clock

• Invented in Italy and/or England 13th century

• Early clocks inaccurate

• Relentless pressure to improve technique an design

• Clockmakers lead the way in accuracy and precision– Miniaturization

– Correcting errors

– Searching for new and better

16th century clock

Mechanical Clock

• Undermined Church authority– equal hours for day and night a new

concept– Resisted by the church for a century

• Every town wanted one – Public clocks installed in towers

• Conquerors seized as spoils of war• Symbol of secular authority• Allowed individual autonomy• Work now measured by time

– increased productivity

Bern, Switzerland

Mechanical Clock

• European monopoly on clocks for 300 years

• No one else could make them to European standards

Swiss watch mechanism

Mechanical Clock

• Chinese treated time as confidential aspect of sovereignty, not to be shared with the people

• Chinese reluctant to acknowledge European technological superiority

• Moslems did not establish public clocks because it would undermine religious authority

Chinese water clock

Printing

• Invented in China in 9th century

• Chinese language not well suited for movable type– not widely used

• Chinese discouraged dissent and new ideas

Chinese movable type

Printing

• Europe already interested in written word– Government paper work

written in common language: not Latin

– Scribes could not keep up with demand

• Gutenberg Bible printed in 1452

• By 1501, millions of books published inEurope

Gutenberg Bible

Printing

• Moslems did not accept printing– Printed Koran unacceptable

• India also did not accept printing – first printing press in 19th

century

• Europe: Church tried to stop common language printing of Bible

• But political authority too fragmented to stop it

Gunpowder

• Invented by Chinese in 11th century

• Used as incendiary in fireworks, war– Tubed flame lances

– Bombards

– Arrow launchers

– Fire thunder

• Chinese fought nomads

• Not siege warfare

Gunpowder

• Europeans improved gunpowder

• Europeans focused on range and weight of projectiles: siege warfare

• With improved metal casting, made world’s best cannon

• Thus military supremacy

Why did Europe get Ahead?

Islam

• Islam from 750 to 1100 A.D. far surpassed Europe in science and technology– Islam was Europe’s teacher

• Then Islamic science was denounced as heresy by religious zealots

• Islam does not separate religious from secular (as does Christianity)

• New ideas dried up under theological pressure

China

• Chinese inventions: – Wheel barrow

– Stirrup and rigid horse collar

– Compass

– Paper

– Printing

– Gunpowder

– PorcelainChinese paper

China

• Water driven machine for spinning hemp in 12th century – 500 years before Industrial

Revolution in England

• Blast furnaces for smelting iron: 125,000 tons pig iron in 11th century – Amount reached by Britain

700 years later

• But both technologies fell into disuse

Reasons for Chinese Stagnation

• Absence of a free market and property rights

• Chinese state always interfering with private enterprise– Taking over or prohibiting lucrative

activities– Manipulating prices– Exacting bribes– Curtailing private enrichment

• Government strangled initiative – increased costs of transactions, – diverted talent from commerce and

industryQing Dynasty Emperor

Ming Dynasty

• Ming dynasty in 15th century first promoted maritime trade, then prohibited it

• China became isolated• Before Europeans arrived

Chinese fleet huge, advanced

• By the time Europeans arrived, Chinese fleet not a threat

Chinese fleet, Ming Dynasty

Reasons for Chinese Stagnation

• Confinement of women to the home made it impossible to exploit them in textile factories

• Chinese society totalitarian: State monopolies on– Salt– Iron– Tea– Alcohol– Foreign Trade– Education– Written material

Reasons for Chinese Stagnation

• Regulations on • Clothing

– Construction of houses– Colors worn– Music– Festivals

• Rules from birth to death• Endless paperwork and

harassment of people• Result: no one tried. Why

try?

Europe

• Much less interference• Innovation, emulation

challenged forces of conservatism

• Sense of progress replaced reverence for authority

• Freedom in all domains

Copernicus

Why Europe?

• Judeo-Christian Beliefs– respect for manual labor

– subordination of nature to man

– sense of linear time (not cyclical): progress

• Market, free enterprise– Innovation worked and

paid

– Rulers limited in ability to prevent innovation