On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:55:19 UTC, giveitawhril2008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> > New technologies are introduced either by demand-pull or
> > technology-push. ˙The examples you mention would have been
> > technology-push if they were developed as you suggest.
> > Demand-pull is always much more rapid and more effective.
> > Steam power was finally used in practical ways when there
> > was a need to be filled.
> >
>
> Well, it seems to me that if they merely thought of what steam power
> could do for ****ps, that the thought alone would have created its own
> demand. But, for one, I know if something performs poorly when first
> demonstrated, that provides negative feedback, which may lead to it
> being dropped. Like the French military officer who invented a steam-
> powered automobile shortly before the American Revolution (1769,
> maybe?). It moved very slowly and crashed into a house, and his
> superiors told him to drop this research.
>...
An interesting story, but I wonder about it. Namely, what sort of steam
power might it have used?
James Watt did his revolutionary work from approximately 1765-1775 (using
Wikipedia here, which is unscholarly practice, but these numbers are
likely to be good enough); and the result was a line of huge stationary
engines, which you can go and admire on the ground floor of the science
museum in South Kensingon, London. (Including an instance of the first
device ever put into production with a feedback mechanism.) Shrinking that
enough to try to make a railroad engine was a project that people started
pretty soon, but not something that would have had even a qualified
success before 1776.
And we can definitely forget a Newcomen engine. Does anyone know what the
Frenchman tried?
--
Dan Drake
dd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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