Tag: history

Roman Industrial Revolution?

Historians have long argued that the ubiquity of the chattel slavery was an insurmountable barrier to the adoption of labor-saving technology. In response to this argument, Dale locates her Roman Industrial Revolution in the early and mid-2nd century BCE, before the large-scale influx of slaves from the conquests of Greece, Carthage, and Gaul. The Middle Republic provides a window in which, she argues, it is plausible to imagine a machine-based culture taking root. In the world Dale envisions, an industrialized Roman empire then follows a British-style path towards a constitutional monarchy (under Augustus).

PowerPoint History

In 1987, a company called Forethought, founded by 2 ex-Apple marketing managers, rolled out PowerPoint and business meetings have never been the same since. Over at IEEE Spectrum, David C. Brock tells the story: (Robert Gaskins) envisioned the user creating slides of text and graphics in a graphical, WYSIWYG environment, then outputting them to 35-mm slides, overhead transparencies, or video displays and projectors, and also sharing them electronically through networks and electronic mail. The presentation would spring directly from the mind of the business user, without having to first transit through the corporate art department. While Gaskins’s ultimate aim for this new product, called Presenter, was to get it onto IBM PCs and their clones, he and (Dennis) Austin soon realized that the Apple Macintosh was the more promising initial target. Designs for the first version of Presenter specified a program that would allow the user to print out slides on Apple’s newly released laser printer, the LaserWriter, and photocopy the printouts onto transparencies for use with an overhead projector… In April 1987, Forethought introduced its new presentation program to the market very much as it had been conceived, but with a different name. Presenter was now PowerPoint 1.0—there are conflicting accounts of the name change—and it was a proverbial overnight success with Macintosh users. In the first month, Forethought booked $1M in sales of PowerPoint, at a net profit of $400K, which was about what the company had spent developing it. And just over 3 months after PowerPoint’s introduction, Microsoft purchased Forethought outright for $14M in cash.

The Second World Wars

The subtitle is How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, and the author is Victor Davis Hanson. I loved this book, even though before I started I felt I didn’t want to read yet another tract on WWII. Most of the focus is on the logistics and management side:

By 1944, the US Navy was larger than the combined fleets of all the other major powers.

At the start of the War, the United States accounted for 60% of world oil output.

The US soldier was treated for psychiatric disorders at a rate 10x that of German troops. The average hospital stay for an American soldier was 117 days and 36% were not returned to the front. Supplies for a typical American soldier exceeded 36 kg per day.

The German army killed ~1.5 GIs for every German soldier lost.

The highest American fatality rate was in the Pacific, at 4%, still a remarkably low rate for the war as a whole. America did so well because of high gdp and remarkably efficient supply lines and equipment and air and naval support.

Barbed wire history

Barbed wire is one of the most important inventions of the past 150 years. It tamed the Wild West and solidified the concept of land ownership in America. Because of the expense of running dedicated telephone services over long distances, some farmers opted to run their telecommunications over the 100s of 1000s of km of barbed wire criss-crossing the land.

Hypercanes

This is one vision of what it might have been like to visit the world as it ended 250 ma BP during the end-Permian mass extinction—the worst moment in the planet’s entire history. There might have been turbocharged “hypercanes” of almost unbelievable intensity assaulting the supercontinent Pangaea—the result of runaway global warming. These mega-storms might have had 800 km/h winds, filled with poisonous hydrogen sulfide sucked out of a rotting ocean that topped 37 celsius.

Roman Empire subway map

Explore the Peutinger Map presents The Peutinger Map in different ways, including with overlays and lists of geographical features. But what’s The Peutinger Map? Also known as Tabula Peutingeriana, it is a Medieval copy of highly stylized 4th Century map of the Roman road network, extending to India. Jacob Ford explains why it is often compared to modern public transit maps and then redraws 1 section as a New York Metro map.

Size of China

I can think of many instructive explanations for China’s early size and unity that are nonetheless derivative. For instance perhaps a common language for writing played a key role, or perhaps the civil service and the exam system bound the country together. I can think of a few factors that might count as fundamental, and often they involve economies of scale:

  • There may be greater economies of scale in Chinese agriculture.
  • There may be economies of scale for fighting land battles with horses.
  • China had lower climate volatility than did Europe.
  • China has 2 main, navigable rivers running east to west.
  • China was formed when the prevailing technologies favored size and scale.
  • China did a better job absorbing the “barbarians” and thus persisted as a larger political unit.

Mapping NYC Changes

Here’s where New York City’s getting whiter (in green on the map). The red areas are the 25 sub-boroughs with declining white populations—none of which were in the gentrifying neighborhoods identified by the Furman Center. The population of white residents increased in every gentrifying neighborhood from 2000 to 2015. 8 gentrifying neighborhoods logged the biggest increases, topped by Bedford-Stuyvesant, at 1235%.