Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
That is what they used, but so much is needed that despite being easy to make it wasn't available in large enough quantity. You get it by the basket, what you need is train loads.
This guy is 100% correct. There's no way you will ever be able to start the "industrial revolution". There's not enough people mining coal or metal ores. There's not enough organization to do any of that.
These are the technical dreams of children. The world wasn't organized enough to even support feudalism. The average person was a subsistence farmer who made a little extra grain to turn into alcohol. They lived in family groups and barely knew what the emperor looked like.
You may already know more important ideas that you use in your everyday life. You probably: wash your hands, wash your clothes, bathe regularly in fresh water with soap and wash your hair, filter or boil water to clean it, use the restroom away from where you eat, know that alcohol kills germs, and most importantly know that you should stay away from someone who's sick. These things make you as knowledgeable as the best doctors in Rome.
If you payed attention in elementary school, you may have a better understanding of astronomy than the best Roman minds. You may know enough mathematics to chat with Archimedes himself. You already know a superior numbering system to what the Romans used. Literally anything you remember from school would be priceless.
If you bring anything, just make it a telescope and a book of Roman history. Give the telescope to the emperor.Tell everyone you're a messenger of Minerva or something. They'll put you in a temple where you can invent a sandwich one year and a toasted sandwich the next. Use the book to stay out of trouble.
You don't have to change a million peasants, just one aristocrat. Remember, they would import a boat load of wild animals from Africa for one show at the Circus. That kind of money could buy a lot of top workmen.
You don't need an entire railroad, just a few hundred Napoleonic rifles.
One watchmaker can train fifty more in a lifetime.
Take your example of the telescope. Imagine what one telescope would mean to an army of the time. You could send out scouts with signal flags that could be spotted a day's ride away.