My questions have been bombing recently, so I'm just going to repost them all here and hope somebody catches one:

How did Soviet administration of central Asia differ from Russian Imperial administration?

Was it possible for an individual to go on Crusade?

Was the brutality of the Northern Crusades due to ethnic tension?

What relationship did the Normans of Normandy (and England) have with the Normans of the Mediterranean?

Was Sumerian hyperurbanism "real" or just a result of research interests? (This one actually got an answer but I would love to see another perspective)

Hero's Engine

Summary- it would have had to run too fast, at too high a pressure, for Greeks to make one that did some work.

Most of this was in response to a question that was pulled. First, apologies for those who expect metric units- old steam engines were described in Imperial, I didn’t bother to convert. psi= pounds per square inch, rpm= revolutions per minute, hp=horsepower.

I have heard it before, the proposition that the Greeks never bothered to do anything with their steam engine because they had slaves. It would be tidy. Point at a picture of an easily-understood device, draw a satisfying moral ( WARNING TO CIVILIZATIONS: SLAVERY IS BAD FOR YOU) and there’s Another Fine Day Out into the history of technology. Hero ( or Heron, if you like) created what is now called the first steam engine circa 100 AD. Here’s a translation and a picture. It does not seem to have done anything other than spin around. Slaves or no, it still would have been hard for them to make one that could do something heavy, like drain one of their awful mines.

Hero’s Engine was a turbine, a reaction device like a rocket or jet. The physics for a reaction device people often learn in grade school as Newton’s Third Law. When I learned it there was an accompanying picture of children in a little red wagon throwing bricks out the back to make it go. The mass times the speed of the bricks going backwards created an equal reaction of mass times speed of wagon & kids going forwards. It taught us all that throwing bricks might be fun. Bricks are heavy, steam is light. 3 pounds of brick tossed at twenty feet per second will have a noticeable effect on the wagon’s velocity, but it’s hard to bundle up and throw 3 pounds of steam at that speed to get the same effect - you’d need a very big bag to hold it, for one thing, and it would immediately begin cooling and shrinking. So, since the weight of the steam is low, you increase the velocity. And this is what rockets and jets do- they generate a light gas, but it comes out at a very high velocity. This is using a smaller force over a greater distance, like using a longer lever to shift something. And longer leverage is what Richard Trevithick was likely thinking when he built his version of Hero’s Engine in 1815, his Whirling engine because he made it 15 feet in diameter. He put 100 psi steam into it, and got it up to 250 rpm, which must have been fun to see. He discovered, though, that the arms needed to go much faster ( likely bearing and seal friction played a part, but there would also be significant air resistance and vibration at that size). And this is indeed a feature of steam turbines- they need significant steam pressure, and they need to spin very fast to use it. At 100 psi, Trevithick’s engine needed to run at half its steam velocity of 2,700 feet per second , or about 1,700 rpm- which would have been even more fun to both see AND hear.

Charles A Parsons, who first really created practical steam turbines, would also make a version of Hero’s Engine sometime around 1900. He put 100 psi steam into it but also enclosed it in a “cast-iron case” so he could add a condenser, by which he created a vacuum that gave it another 13 psi effective steam pressure and removed all air resistance as well. His engine got 20 hp, used 40 lbs of steam/hr, and ran at 5,000 rpm. He did not say how big the rotor was, but “cast-iron case” and 5,000 rpm and 40 lbs/hr sound like something closer to the size of a volleyball than 15 ft, maybe a bit bigger than the usual picture of Hero’s. His comment: “The great barrier to the introduction of Hero’s Engine was undoubtedly the excessive speed of revolution necessary to attain economical results, and with the crude state of mechanical engineering at that time, it would have been a matter of some difficulty to construct the turbine engine with a sufficient accuracy of workmanship for satisfactory results, to say nothing of the necessary gearing for applying the power to useful purposes. Scientific Papers and Addresses of the Hon Sir Charles A Parsons, ed. G.A. Parsons,1911

Well, yes. Running 70 to 100 psi steam pressure to make the rotor spin ( a bronze volleyball-sized rotor would have to be about 20 pounds) very fast will require decent rotating seals and bearings. There has to be something on the rotor that can turn, support the weight, and not leak steam. Even in 1815, Trevithick’s seals had to be some combination of fibers ( usually old rope), leather, and animal or vegetable grease. Steam at those pressures will reach 350 F . This is enough to shrivel leather, and while things like lard, beef tallow, and olive oil won’t quite evaporate, they won’t lubricate very well. Trevithick’s engine probably had a screw-down rope & grease packed seal that stopped steam but added more friction. He could bore, file and scrape a decent fit, make big screw threads, and even add a grease cup; the Greeks would have found it much, much harder to do all that. Parsons also mentions “necessary gearing”. This was an important difficulty with using a steam turbine in the 19th century- it spun too fast for simple gears to function. Parsons had to come up with special gears that could, before turbines could do useful things like turn propellers on boats.

There’s more. There’s the problem of making a big boiler to handle 100 psi: Hero mounts his engine on what seems like a pot-lid, so the pressure is almost nothing. A strong, big boiler that could actually produce enough steam for 1 Hp, is at the very very least a 30” sphere. Though cast bronze would be safer than hammered sheet, it’s still risky: Trevithick was one of very few people building steam engines in the 1700’s who wanted to tinker with high-pressure steam at all, the rest were justifiably frightened of boiler explosions. There’s dynamic balancing to be done- a heavy rotor that spins that fast needs to have evenly-distributed weight, or it will start thrashing like a badly-loaded washing machine, or worse. Somebody has to file off some bronze to balance it, but without making weak spots. We could go on, here…but underneath all the blather about lazy Greeks not bothering to make this engine useful, I think there’s a general misunderstanding about their possibilities of scale. Even in much of the 18th century, there could be precision in making small things ( like fusee watch movements) but it was harder to have precision in making big things. Likewise, although the Greeks could make the Antikythera Mechanism, it’d be very hard for them to do something precise in a big way for this engine.

Maybe they really did something precise in a small way. The text has of course come down through a number of hands, the illustration above is likely circa 1547 at the earliest. Perhaps Hero’s Engine really was much smaller than the drawing, could be carried in your hand quite easily, its boiler made from a drinking cup. Hero understood vacuum, too, you know, and an atmospheric engine like Newcomen’s requires far less precision and very little steam pressure. Perhaps the Greeks could have invented one of those, given time. But then, they had slaves.

Shameless plug, but I think it's allowed here (?). r/nonfictionbookclub just went live, and I'm sure we'll be reading lots of history books. If that sounds like something you're interested in come on by! We're just starting The Art of War, and we'd love to have a some experts/learners with a more historical perspective.

-Cheers

Many miscellaneous things, from someone who just had blood drawn (regular checkup) and is a little woozy:

Just put up a blog post about one of my favorite topics: DOOOOGS IN SPAAAAAACE. I also made some pretty bitchin' (see what I did there?) mugs featuring Laika.

I was a featured talking head on the National Geographic channel's American Genius show last week, the episode on Oppenheimer vs. Heisenberg. I haven't seen it yet (I don't get very many channels), but my friends say I am all over the episode and that as far as these kinds of popular historical shows go, it did OK. I recorded the interview a year ago and had completely forgotten about it, to tell you the truth.

My wife and I saw both parts of the adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies on Broadway last week and the week before. I thought the PBS adaptation did a little more justice to the original (fictional) source material, but it was still enjoyable. I thought Bring up the Bodies worked out better — more artistry on display, less racing through the plot to make sure everyone knew who Ann Boleyn was. I love Mantel's Cromwell (and identify with him just a little too much) and I do not care if he is historically accurate or not.

We spent our wedding anniversary visiting the Ancient Near East collection at the Met, which was pretty wonderful (though we had to put up with a number of big tour groups of Jehovah's Witnesses, getting what sounded like very improbable interpretations of the artifacts). I was really pleased that they have a tiny, golden pendant of a dog that they dated as being about 5,000-6,000 years old. Dogs have been adorable for millennia. We also saw the Jacob Lawrence exhibit at MoMA, which was pretty wonderful. It inspired me to purchase a bunch of Duke Ellington albums when I got home.

It has been announced that I will be a speaker at the State Department's Generation Prague conference in July, talking about the history of nuclear weapons (per usual). I am excited about having a formal invitation letter from the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs in my tenure file.

I am in the middle of an incredibly daunting task — writing a short article for a popular website that has very high fact-checking standards, far higher than academia, and it requires a LOT better citation practices than I am used to doing. It's a good problem to have, but man, having to chase down a citation for practically every fact I offer up is tough work. I am a pretty footnote-heavy scholar, but still, I'm used to only citing the things I think people would find questionable or unusual, not everything. The fruits of this labor should be posted in mid-July.

/r/history:

• 65 years ago today, North Korea invaded South Korea. +72, 98 votes total
• 139 Years Ago Today, General Custer Was Defeated at the Battle of Little Big Horn by the Souix +2701, 3293 votes total

Even considering the /r/all effect, it's a bit amusing to see the dichotomy between the two, probably caused by the demographics of Reddit.

Spent this afternoon clearing out my grandmother's flat. In amongst all the normal household junk, I found a prayer book belonging to my great-grandmother, signed and dated August 1939, along with a '53-'54 ration book. Half the pages of the ration book are missing but it's still pretty interesting to flick through; I'd be interested in looking at a full one. Probably going to spend the rest of my day reading up on WW2 rationing now.

This week I also got the results of my degree and my dissertation back! Queue lots of late-night anxiety about what I'm going to do in the future. Still debating whether or not I want to go and do postgrad... decisions, decisions.

Hey all! I haven't been on Reddit all that much since I've been out of the country working on an archaeological excavation. It's a fantastic time. We're about halfway through our excavation season, and we are coming up with some fantastic answers to our research questions. In one of our excavation areas we have a 10 meter wide mudbrick wall from the earliest occupation of the site. In another area we had one of our only original Islamic period buildings (Islamic period is roughly 600 AD through the Crusades) that we have excavated ever, which we were very excited about. In our biggest area we are removing the Persian period (around 500-300 BC) domestic houses and revealing the Iron Age destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar II in 604 BC. It's getting really very exciting over here. It's a lot of work, but it's really great to see what we are learning about this ancient city.

If you are interested in learning more about our site, we run a blog which updates every day, and usually has pictures and some information about what we are working on. The link is:

http://http://digashkelon.com/blog

If anyone has any questions about the site or the process of archaeology in general, please feel free to reply and ask away. I will be sure to answer when I have some free time.

Better Know An Historian continues! And this week we sit down with /u/coree to talk about the French Revolution (and a little bit about that other French Revolution) and hear about the spooky occurrence of finding a letter in the archives addressed directly to you...

I'm teaching California history this summer. It's a fun class, and a topic near and dear to my heart, but I'm used to teaching classes that deal with much larger geographic and temporal frames--world history, Western Civ, global environmental history are my bread and butter. It's a really different task to approach a narrower topic, in particular because there are all these theoretical issues of social and cultural history that I can explore in depth and as part of a longer historical narrative in my usual classes, but they don't fit nearly as well in this class.

For example, in my global environment class, I can spend a week on human evolution and the creation of gender, looking at human ancestors, archaeology, and contemporary anthropology. That fits in perfectly well for a global environment class in which I also spend time outlining the geological history of earth, forager lifeways, and similar topics--it's tougher to do in California. I managed it by just narrowing the geographic scope of things, but it felt odd. I think dealing with the history of race will be much more difficult, because I usually approach it my Western Civ classes through the lens of the Atlantic World and the creation of the plantation economy in the Americas. But, can I make such a huge detour geographically for a California history course? I might do it anyway, but I'm afraid I won't get the depth of inquiry that I usually manage.

I'm picking my books for next fall's Western Civ, all of time in 15 weeks. I think it's going to be Apuleius's The Golden Ass, Beowulf, Davis's The Return of Martin Geurre, Zola's Germinal, and then either Selvon's The Lonely Londoners or Orwell's 1984.

Anyone know good movies or television shows about early California? I could use anything dealing with Native Americans, Spanish missions, Mexican California, the Gold Rush, or early San Francisco or LA. I have material for the period after about 1870 or 1880, but I need to fill out the period before that.

In academic circles, is the Holy Roman Empire/Russian Empire considered the continuations of the Roman Empire? I always thought Rome fell in 1453 because that's when the Byzantines fell, but does the claim that Russia or the HRE are descendants of Rome hold any merit?

Minor question (I think?)

This should probably be in the Saturday Sources, but I've been re-reading William Cronon's Changes in the Land and I'm definitely getting different things out of it than I did than when I first read it years ago as an undergraduate. At the same time, I also realize that ecological history has probably moved on since Cronon first published back in 1983.

Has anyone else published similar ecological contact histories for other parts of the world?

Hey! I hope everyone's enjoying their friday evening! :) I've been looking into the whole "arts" culture of Weimar Germany recently & how that compares to 1920's America & other eras of Germany. From that I've been looking into the artwork of "Otto Dix" & according to Wikipedia, Dix is:

noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war.

Now I don't know about any of you, but when I think of Weimar Germany, I think decadence, extravagance & a society that's oblivious to what lies ahead of them (much like America in that era) So when I read this claim it intrigued me & I'm just wondered if anyone knows how true that statement is & how it holds up (if at all) in other areas of they're "Arts" culture like: Film, Music & Social Science e.g. Psychology or History. I've heard of Neue Sachlichkeit "New Objectivity" but this suggests that "it was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world—an all-business attitude" but isn't this the opposite of what Dix is trying to show? Where there much opposition to this movement during the Weimar era? (excluding the Nazi's), Wikipedia goes on to say: "The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis to power." Essentially isn't a definite claim, so Was there any attempt to continue this movement through Nazi Germany &/or Was there a revival of this movement after the fall of Hitler?

Did this movement have any effect on other European "arts" movements of the time? What Effect did this movement have on it's own people? Apparently there were two types of New Objective Artists: Verists & Classicists. The Verists were people like Dix, Grosz & Heartfield & The Classicists were people like Schrimpf, Kanoldt & Mense. Franz Roh coined the term "magic realism" to describe the work of the classicists:

an acceptance of magic in the rational world.

If this is true, isn't this statement a little contradictory to the aim of the classicists & more in line with the verists? Apparently the Classicists aim (along with magic realism) was a "return to order" (very similar to Warren Harding's "Return to Normalcy") & was influenced by Italy's "Novecento Italiano". How exactly were they influenced?

In Film, New Objectivity apparently had "a tendency to examine inanimate objects as a way to interpret characters and events, a lack of overt emotionalism, and social themes." How did directors like Georg Wilhelm Pabst attempt to achieve this when tackling themes like Abortion, Prostitution & Homosexuality?

Thank you to anyone that can answer my queries :)

Oh the joys of trying to conduct research as a lay person!

Right now, I'm looking into waulking, aka fulling, wool, an area of traditional women's work in Scotland and associated with a particular style of music in the Highlands specifically. It's pretty easy to find waulking songs, and even a couple modern-ish re-enactments of the process, but far more difficult to find descriptions of how things really worked. That sounds silly, because if you do any searchs, you'll find how things worked: all day process, stale urine to fix dyes, etc., gossip and jokes, songs...But what is available freely to me is quickly contradictory, and I found one mention of a particular ritual at the end, basically invoking the trinity. I'd like to know more about that, since it wasn't exactly a stellar site I found the mention on, but good luck on academic sources. Checking on Google scholar mostly hits documents that aren't available, are looking only at the songs, or are choral arrangements of songs about Jacobites. This is where I wish I had better searches available or the ability to just pop over to the local university whenever I want.

Edit: I'm also aware I may be looking for the impossible. Information on pre-Culloden Gaelic culture in the highlands is already scarce; trying to find the women's experience there?

/u/alriclofgar /u/Ambarenya /u/ByzantineBasileus /u/DasImp /u/haimoofauxerre /u/HatMaster12 /u/labarge3 /u/Mediaevumed /u/shlin28 /u/caesar10022 /u/textandtrowel + any other Late Antiquists or Early Medievalists:

Have any of you read Chris Wickham? I feel like I base a lot of my research on his writings and use his neo-Marxist framework for interpreting primary sources. Do you guys like him? Do you disagree with him? Help me out--are there any better scholars that I should be reading?

Heya folks,

So I was wondering about the standards of moderation in Reddit's various history subs. How do the moderation standards on subs like /r/History, /r/Historicalwhatif, /r/Historyporn or /r/Badhistory compare to those of /r/Askhistorians? I only frequent BH and AH, and I tend to see a lot of familiar faces and moderators for both, so I assume BH runs a similar (if much more laid-back) ship to things here on AH.

As for the others? No clue. My main interaction with /r/History is seeing its mods vent about how many troublemakers they've had to ban because of X thread, so clearly there are some standards being upheld. And I really don't know a thing at all about /r/Historyporn.

It is so hot here. Well, probably not hot for most places but it was 28°C which made me feel like I was going to melt. I'm terrible with heat, I can't imagine some of you lot living in places like Arizona or Texas with the heat! Hopefully normal British weather will soon resume.

Oh, and I visited a village near me with an American flag hanging in it. Why? It was the Homeplace of an ancestor of the Bush family...in the 16th century, that is. The village has a small independence movement and celebrates Inauguration Day and there were mugs for sale with George W Bush' face plastered across them. Ah, Messing-cum-Inworth, never change.

I have got a new book about the Rainhill Trials. Never been interested in them or that general topic, but it's interesting me. The book is really good for someone who has no knowledge on the subject and a very short attention span! And a friend got me a book on the history of the name of Rapa Nui (read a cool casualiama by someone who lives there too, a nice coincidence) as she picked it up at a charity shop. I'm also waiting impatiently for the book I actually need (and want) to be available, I think I've posted this a while back, but it's about human exhibitions at Copenhagen Zoo and will be very useful. I've got a couple of primary sources relating to Copenhagen Zoo and books about the history of the zoo in general. but not much of a detailed history of human exhibitions there. Two days until it comes out.

I finished my first year of a History Ph. D. (relatively) unscathed, I think? Hurray, me!

But anyway, in way more important news, I also JUST finished the Tito Amato mystery series (thank you /u/caffarelli for the recommendation!) and my fond teenage nostalgia for knowing a lot more about castrati/the eighteenth century in general is back in full swing. I'm SO excited for all the non-dissertation-related research I'm about to do, even if I have no idea how I'm gonna do it.

To restart the artefact game, all of the ones I have posted have been guessed in about two minutes, so let's go a bit farther.

Well, today my month long internship in Philadelphia has ended and a wave of sadness washes over me as I go back to the humid swamp that is my home. On the plus side, my CV is beefy as hell and my writing sample was among the best presented, so that's a plus. If anyone besides /u/jasfss and /u/alotofreading desire to read about African-American emigration to Haiti or Liberia just shoot me a PM.

I'll be visiting Scotland next year (~9 days). Does anyone have have any advice regarding must-see history-related things to see? And/or what tourist traps to avoid? There's so much that I'd appreciate any guidance :)

We had a flash flood in Denver on Wednesday and my roommate's truck began floating/rolling away

sort of random but anyone know of good history blogs/websites, etc. with a "backstory radio" type (though hopefully a bit deeper) take on current events through a historical lens?

Since we all love WWII questions so much on this forum, has anyone considered organizing an "Occupation of Japan" AMA for sometime in August? I feel like we'll be getting a lot of questions on that once the media starts running the obligatory "70 years since the end of WWII" stories in a few weeks.

Or is that what the upcoming Manhattan Project AMA is supposed to cover?