Age of Invention: The Coal Conquest

#history #coal #industry #industrialRevolution

under the pressures of a growing population, with people requiring ever more fuel both for industry and to heat their homes, England saw dramatic deforestation. With firewood in ever shorter supply, its price rose so high as to make coal a more attractive alternative, which despite its problems was at least cheap. This deforestation story is trotted out constantly in books, on museum displays, in conversation, on social media, and often even by experts on coal and iron. I must see or hear it at least once a week, if not more. And there is a mountain of testimonies from contemporaries to back the story up. Again and again, people in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries complained that the woods were disappearing, and that wood fuel prices were on the rise.

And yet the deforestation thesis simply does not work. In fact it makes no sense at all.

https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-the-coal-conquest

Age of Invention: The Coal Conquest

There was no shortage of trees

How Does a Sewing Machine Sew?

#techhacks #clothing #industrialrevolution #sewingmachine #hackaday
posted by pod_feeder_v2

How Does A Sewing Machine Sew?

Like all Hackaday readers, we pride ourselves on having at least a passing acquaintance with how most things work. But we suspect to a lot of people, things we take for granted — computers, a…

#industrialrevolution and growing populations warn the planet up https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/climate/iceberg-a68a-antarctica.html

An Extraordinary Iceberg Is Gone, but Not Forgotten

A chunk of Antarctic ice that was one of the biggest icebergs ever seen has met its end near the island of South Georgia. Scientists will be studying its effects on the ecosystem around the island for some time.

Nearly half of Britain’s #biodiversity has gone since #IndustrialRevolution | Biodiversity | The Guardian

Worst in the #G7.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/10/nearly-half-of-britains-biodiversity-has-gone-since-industrial-revolution

#UK #Environment #Ecoloty #Ecosystems #Industrialization #Urbanization #Wildlife #Conservation

The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone (Three-Toed Sloth, 2010)

Pretty much my own view but it's nice to see someone else say it. Cosma Rohilla Shalizi at Three-Toed Sloth[1] writes in "The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone" (November 28, 2010):

The Singularity has happened; we call it "the industrial revolution" or "the long nineteenth century". It was over by the close of 1918.

Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering long-term extrapolation impossible (even when attempted by geniuses)? Check....

Continued at the dreddit.

#singularity #industrialrevolution #progress #technology #JamesBurke #connections