As I learn about the story of human progress, I have come to think that an entire subject is missing from basic education.
The bicycle, as we know it today, was not invented until the late 1800s. Yet it was a simple mechanical invention. It would seem to require no brilliant inventive insight, and certainly no scientific background.
Why, then, wasn’t it invented much earlier?
Smallpox was one of the worst diseases in human history. It killed an estimated 300 million people or more in the 20th century alone; only tuberculosis and malaria have been more deadly. Its victims were often children, even infants.
I recently finished the book Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes, about the “War of the Electric Currents”—AC vs DC—that took place as the electricity industry was getting established in the late 1800s.
I recently finished The Alchemy of Air, by Thomas Hager. It’s the story of the Haber-Bosch process, the lives of the men who created it, and its consequences for world agriculture and for Germany during the World Wars.
From the time that humans began to leave their nomadic ways and live in settled societies about ten thousand years ago, we have needed to build structures: to shelter ourselves, to store our goods, to honor the gods.
Metalworking is one of the oldest crafts, going back far beyond recorded history. But until a few thousand years ago, one of the most abundant metals—iron—was virtually unknown.
Today is the 50th anniversary of one of mankind’s greatest achievements: the Apollo 11 Moon landing. In honor of this project, and to learn more about it, I’ve been listening to the podcast “13 Minutes to the Moon”.
Did the Industrial Revolution decrease costs or increase quality? Automation improves costs, but it improves quality too, and we should think of them together.
In researching the threshing machine, I ended up transcribing a 1636 patent granted by Charles I to Sir John Christopher Van Berg, knight of Moravia.
It is amazingly broad and vague, listing an incredible variety of machines for every conceivable purpose.
The threshing machine was a crucial advance in agricultural mechanization, but diffusion/adoption took many decades.
As with the bicycle, the flying shuttle, or the cotton gin, we have to ask: what took so long?
Understanding the history, nature, and causes of progress should be a focus for anyone who wants to defend philosophical liberalism. Here's why.