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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 21 2013 @ 01:38 PM EST |
The forge probably disappeared as you suggest by a combination
of factors, loss of draft horses, better quality tools from industrial
scale forges, and the advent of bottled acteylene.
All of these are incremental improvements, reminding me of the
arguments seen here often about the software industry.
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| Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Thursday, February 21 2013 @ 05:01 PM EST |
None of those events changed the landscape - literally - as much
as the tractor. It multiplied the amount of work a farmer could
do by a factor of a hundred or more, and allowed one farmer to
feed dozens of people, instead of one and a fraction. It freed
80% of our labor force to become teachers, engineers, chemists,
mechanics, electricians, steelworkers, physicists, etc.
Yeah, our ancestors knew how to deal with weeds - dig 'em out with
a hoe. And get 'em before they seed or you'll do ten times as much
digging next year. There are two ways to deal with weeds, and if
you don't use chemicals, you have to get physical. Which is time
and labor intensive, and thus not efficient.
The blast furnace put the forge out of business, except for some
specialty work. It took a blacksmith about a day's labor to smelt
a pound of iron; six men with a blast furnace can produce 60 tons
of steel in a day and a half, much more consistent in quality.
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Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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