Garrett Ryan, Ph.D as toldinstone: This is the first part of a two-video series exploring why an industrial revolution never took place in the Roman Empire.
0:00 Introduction
2:29 Three Fables about the Roman economy
4:27 Surfshark
5:43 Mass production
7:37 Mining
8:30 Water power
9:06 Steam powerWere the Romans close to an Industrial Revolution? (Part 1) | 10:34
toldinstone | 505K subscribers | 1,114,548 views | February 25, 2022
Garrett Ryan, Ph.D as toldinstone: This second half of my two-part series explores the social and economic barriers that precluded a Roman Industrial Revolution.
0:00 Compelling introduction
0:52 Lack of research funding
2:00 Elite disdain
2:48 Caution toward innovation
3:30 Poor communications
3:59 A hidebound education system
4:23 No economic incentive
5:09 No true mass production
6:10 No entrepreneurial class
6:46 No elite financing
7:29 No industrial revolution
8:06 Stirring conclusionWere the Romans close to an Industrial Revolution? (Part 2) | 9:07
toldinstone | 505K subscribers | 309,867 views | March 4, 2022
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is four feet, eight and a half inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the U.S. railroads.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the prerailroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used. Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long-distance roads, because that’s the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long-distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of its legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman war chariots made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, the standard U.S. railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches derives from the specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s a** came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses.