socialdemocrat

I knew about that but didn't think to include it has it wasn't widely used and lacked many important components. Not just the ink. A key advantage of Gutenberg's alloy was that it neither shrunk not expanded. That is what gave quick accurate duplication of types.

Wood cuts and bronze types were worth mentioning as they were widely used in China and Korea.

Author here, they are conflated for good reason. The printing press is really an advancement of the movable type system developed in Asia. What Gutenberg did wasn't really about the screw press as I elaborate on here:

https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-the-printing-pre...

The screw press already existed in Europe and was widely used. Reducing Gutenbergs invention to just being about using a screw press does not do justice to what he did. It was really about combining several techniques to advance printing. Better alloys for types. Better system for duplicating types. Better ink. A lot of the advancement could have been made even without the printing press itself. And the printing press without these advancement would have made very little improvement.

Author here, sorry about the paywall, I am trying to experiment with different ways of growing my readership and subscribers. You can get past the paywall by signing up for a 7-day free trial. It can be canceled at any time. If this really rubs you the way then I am making this draft link of the whole article available for a limited time: https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/bc1449ba-7e0d-43b6-8d53-...

Some of the questions popping up here regarding significance of different components of the Gutenberg invention is addressed in a linked article:

https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-the-printing-pre...

This discusses technologies existing in Europe at the time but not in China, which Gutenberg could leverage to create his printing system.

To clarify the point here isn't to suggest a civilization or society is superior to another. It is a discussion about printing systems, not people or languages.

That wasn't a constant thing though, and China despite being unified had far more bloody civil wars with more people dead.

But sure Europe being fragmented did lead to more wars, which is bad. On the other hand those wars mean European military technology advanced quicker, and the existence of multiple political units meant that different ideas about religion, science and society was far more difficult to suppress than in a unified China.

The price China paid for its unity was a far more oppressive regime. To keep such a huge empire from falling apart a lot more state power had to be exercised. At the time of the 30 years war the average Europe was generally a lot freer.

One could say there was a tradeoff. Europe "accepted" more violence for more freedom. China "accepted" more peace for less freedom. What you prefer depends on your values and ideological beliefs.

It is a bit of a stereotype that nothing happened in medieval Europe and Greeks and Romans did everything. That is nonsense. Medieval Europe saw a massive increase in the use of mills and machinery, that never occurred in the Roman Empire or China: https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/the-european-mill-revolu...

The development of advanced plate armor, gunpowder weapons, mechanical clocks, medieval cathedrals, innovation within glass making, lenses, spectacles etc suggest medieval society was plenty capable on innovation. Both earlier Greek city states and later medieval Italian city states demonstrated a large amount of innovation.

I would rather say that large monopolies outcompete smaller competing units in the short term but loose in the long term. We can see that in markets as well as in comparison between China and Europe. Fragmented Europe was at a disadvantage for several hundred years until that fragmentation started paying off.

Not really usable in Europe due to the climate. Chinese style paper really made a big difference.

The Song dynasty was not anywhere near an industrial age. China never went through a machine revolution with great proliferation of the usage of machines as in things like windmills, water wheels, clocks, trip hammers, screw presses etc: https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/the-missing-chinese-mach...

China had machines, but they were used at a much smaller scale and had no way to expand in usage thanks to unsuitable geography and climate in China.

The point of the article is to describe the printing press as an advancement of the technology of movable type. It is also important to point out that the press was really just one of many components that made the Gutenberg approach superior to the techniques that existed in Asia at the time.

The press was not that big of a novelty. Described more in detail here: https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-the-printing-pre...

You can read the rest of the article by signing up for a 7-day free trial. You don't have to be a paid member.

The article isn't suggesting one language is superior to another, but that one printing technique was a superior to another at some point in time. If one cannot recognize that then we are getting a bit too touchy when discussing history of technology.

The point here is to understand why the printing press had such an impact Europe, while existence of movable type in China and Korea did not have the same impact. It is about understanding historical developments.

The simple workaround is sign up for a free 7-day free trial. You don't have to be a paid subscriber.

It does get into discussing alphabets at the end.

It was because, Gutenberg did not invent movable type. That was already in use in Europe. A high chance that technology came from Asia. Hence Gutenberg took an exiting technology and improved it. Gutenberg did not invent the screw press. Almost identical presses were already used in paper making. This was about combining a variety of technologies into one better system.

The story is about how medieval Europe which was in many ways regarded as technological backwards could develop mechanical clocks in the 1300s while China, a far more advanced civilization, did not.

They point out it was not chattel slavery though. But labour costs certainly must have played a role. Adam Smith remarked in his book the Wealth of Nations that Chinese workers seems to have much lower pay despite China being no less developed economically.

China did have an agricultural revolution however in the the 1600 to 1700s which cause a very rapid population growth. And even before that Chinese agriculture was far more efficient than European agriculture: They could grow multiple times through the year, the had seed drills and better plows. In terms of agriculture they were far ahead.

What they lacked was the conditions and incentives to make large number of mills. Thus with fewer mills, one did not develop the same machine focus in China as in the West.

Removing the husk is not as labour demanding as grinding the grain though as far as I understand.

I spent only about half an hour with Swift UI to decide it was bot worth it. Looks sleek but the underlying technology is too complex IMHO.

They could not evolve manufacturing as they lacked the water situation to have waterwheel driven factories like England. They also lacked coal. Even if they had had financial capitalism it would have made no difference as they lacked the material conditions to industrialize.

Another problem was lack of protestantism which held back development of reading and writing.

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-england-industri...

I don’t believe slavery was ever as prevalent in China as in Europe. Complex rice farming discourage the use of slaves. Chinese farmers usually had a more independent position than in Europe. European peasants ran away to towns in medieval times for a reason.

Chinese rivers typically have too large variation in water flow which makes the river poorly suited for year round usage for transportation as well as for water wheels. Chines water management has through history been all about protecting against floods and for irrigation.

Europe with more even waterflow has been much better suited for mills. You can see this in Europe itself. Italy never got as large number of mills as Britain as the rivers flowing into Northern Italy have too large variation in water flow. That is part of the reason Romans could never utilize waterwheels to a great extent.

Author here, I didn't conveniently skip over England. In terms of the Industrial revolution I have written about why England industrialized first: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-england-industri...

But this story is not about the industrial revolution but about the fascination for machinery that spread around Europe in the 1500 and 1600s and which laid the foundation for the later industrial revolution in Britain. This story never gets to the industrial revolution as that isn't the topic I am covering.

Author there, that is something, I thought about covering but it is a larger topic that probably needs its own article. It is not merely about the advantage of the latin alphabet, but also about the screw press which was not known in China, which feeds into a much larger and quite interesting story. Another aspect is metallurgy. Gutenberg was a goldsmith. There is also an interesting story about gold smiths and metal working in general was not as prevalent in China despite the fact that China actually had large scale steel production before Europeans.

Metal working is an important part of the story of the printing press, because metal types was an important invention. Metal types existed in China to some degree but they did not get made in the revolutionary way Gutenberg made them.

I know Northern European farmland could not utilized well until the development of the heavy plow which better dealt with the wet heavy soil, but how is that relevant to the article?

Also the lentil and bean cultivation of medieval Europe is not something I have ever heard about. What is the significance of that? Do they give better yields than wheat somehow?

No, you can use a macro which makes your structs slower but changeable. There are several Julia packages offering this functionality.

You can use a macro for your structs to make them changeable while prototyping. I think it is called @prototype or soemthing. You need a package for it. Google it.

Puts the claims that the nuclear industry is over-regulated in a different light. Maybe it is, but this article clearly show why it had to evolve that way.

One unusual alternative you may not have thought about is using Godot Game Engine. Before dismissing it, consider this: Godot engine is shockingly small for what it does. The download is about 30-40 MB. The GUI designer tool is second to none, and you can make highly interactive advanced GUIs using a language that looks very much like Python called GDScript. It is very quick to learn.

It does make GUI which are native to the platform but you get a small native binary which renders OpenGL.

Is Making Advanced GUI Applications with Godot the Future? https://medium.com/swlh/what-makes-godot-engine-great-for-ad...

I write native GUIs in GTK using Julia at the moment. Julia is one of the most modern languages you can use today. Multiple-dispatch, very functional, modern package management and virtual environments, high performance, modern sophisticated REPL environment. GTK is quite nice as Glade is one of the nicer GUI designers.

Here is a simple Julia GTK project on GitHub: https://github.com/ordovician/RocketBuilder.jl

Some articles I wrote related to GTK programming with Julia and GTK in general:

- Understanding GTK Layouts: https://itnext.io/understanding-gtk-layouts-13e5a36256fa

- Hiccups Writing GTK3 GUI Code in Julia: https://towardsdev.com/hiccups-writing-gtk3-gui-code-in-juli...

If Julia is not your cup of tea then GTK can be used with Go and Swift as well.

Hydrogen makes sense for long haul, ships, trucks and possibly airlines. Ideally we just bring back hydrogen airships. Hindenburg was primarily caused by flammable paint, not hydrogen.

Because you don’t need them in other languages.

This is one of the more interesting reads I have done lately. The idea isn't really all that earth shattering or novel, but I liked how Nadia articulated the whole idea. While Trump isn't mentioned I cannot help but think of him.

He also seems to get away with one crime after the other by doing them brazenly in the open. It is almost as if the voters or his followers don't think it can be that bad because after all he is admitting it openly on camera.