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Response to Comments: /Econ_Articles/Reviews/landes.html

from lawrence boyd (boyd@Serv1.arthum.Hawaii.Edu)
Ken Pomeranz writes: >By contrast, virtually all >of China's coal was hundreds of land-locked miles from the markets and >artisanal talents of the Lower Yangzi, Lingnan, and Southeast Coast. >Moreover, the problem in these mines was not water that needed to be >pumped out, but, on the contrary, such severe aridity that explosions were >happening all the time.

Actually coal mine explosians were also common in England and this illustrates the steady stream of innovations that characterized the industrial revolution. Coal mine explosions are caused by methane gas, sparks, and coal dust. Mines in England had all three. In the late 1700's and early 1800's they recognized that some combination of these was causing the explosions. The miners words for these were "firedamp" for methane concentrations high enough to be ignited by a spark and "blackdamp" for methane concentrations so high the drove out oxygen and miners suffocated. An early (19th century development?) was the miners lamp. It had a small screen that prevented the flame from igniting the methane and the flame could be "read" so that they could measure the amount of concentration of methane. The miners lamp continues to be used today. And of course there were the canaries...

I find Ken's work to be extremely interesting and want to know more. Yet I also think the point is that there was a whole stream of innovations that were introduced in addition to the pump which lead to an increase in coal mine productivity. I find Landes argument about time pieces and their widespread use convincing. A series of small technical innovations widely applied, increased use of measurement, and the reinforcement of one innovation by another that led to small gains in profits and productivity make for larger societal differences. I do not necessarily think the point is that China and England had the same standard of living, or that invention and ideas did not develop independently (or were stolen) in China and England but that innovation allowed England to develop an alternative fuel which meant trees could be used for ships rather than fuel and those ships could be used for carrying bullion, products, slaves, and piracy and so on.

The most recent Scientific American has another interesting example that relates to this discussion. During Japan's long period of isolation matehmatics continued to evolve, simple and extremely complex problems involving mathematical proofs and diagrams were hung in Japanese temples. They contained the problem and the solution and challenged visitors to duplicate the proof. Some of these proofs involved a type integral and differential calculus that seems to have been discovered independently in Japan at about the same time as Newton and Liebniz. What I found interesting is that in Japan they were hung in temples and do not appear to have found wider use while in Europe these inventions began to find wide use in science and engineering almost immediately.

(posted 8728 days ago)

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