.
This is an article from _Intellectual Digest_, now defunct, from January
1974.
The article is, _The Energy Crisis of 1593_, by Andrew Hardy from
Natural History.
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A wood shortage led to the Industrial Revolution. Today we may again be
on the brink of a new technology.
Many people fear that the disappearance of fossil fuels will doom
civilization. They envision tractors paralyzed in the fields, highways
choked with derelict cars and factores ground to a halt. They pity our
descendants who, they imagine, will face everlasting drudgery. But
history does not support such apocalyptic predictions. When "energy
crises" occurred in the past and the main sources of power dwindled,
society found alternative power sources.
The first "energy" shortage occurred during Paleolithic times, the
result of man's too heavy reliance on a hunting and gathering economy
that exploited resources without conserving or replacing them. Faced
with a shortage of animal food, man had to move on or die off or cange
the basis of his economy. Those who followed the last course developed
agriculture. Anthropologists believe tat the scarcity of food animals
precipitatd the Neolithic revolution.
During the 1600s, the price of firewood multiplied eight time.
High-quality wood went up even faster.
Thousands of years later, ancient Rome met an energy crisis--a mapower
shortage--by developing her waterpower. It was not because the Romans
were ignorant of other sources of energy that they had originally
depended so extensively on manpower. The mob on the grain dole was large
enough, reasoned the Romans, without adding to it workers displaced by
unorthodox technology. In the fourth century A.D. the population of the
empire plummeted, and, in time, waterpower came into general use.
Twelve hundred years later, a shortage of wood laid the foundation for
the Industrial Revolution. During the Renaissance, wood was employed to
an astonishing degree. Virtually everything was constructed of
wood--buildings, furniture, implements, ships, carts, industrial
machinery and weapons. Wood fueled every domestic and industrial fire.
Caulking, soap, charcoal, vinegar and alcohol were derived from it.
Prodigious quantities of wood were devoured: evaporating 1600 wagonloads
of salt from brine required 6,000 wagonloads of wood.
The preparation of a ton of bar iron from ore took 12 loads of charcoal,
or about eigh beech trees one square foot at he base.
The demands of a growing population for lumber and firewood, plus the
requirements of expandng commerce for trade goods and conveyances,
forced up the price of wood more rapidly than the price of any other
goods for which statistics are available. From the end of the sixteenth
to the middle of the seventeenth century, prices in general multiplied
three times; firewood went up eight times. High-quality wood for
industry increased in price even faster: in 1605 the dyers of London
were patinf six timesas much for dye wood as they had paid in 1550. The
desparate Scottish "have been constrained not only to cut down and
destroy their (parks) and planting, but also their movable timberwork,
to make fire of it...and in many places the trade of brewing and baking
for want of fire is neglected and cassen up (quashed)."
To meet the crisis, the government imposed conservation measures. An act
of 1593 compelld beer exporters either to return the original barrels or
to come back with foreign clapboard suitable for maing the same number
of barrels as had been exported. A royal proclamation of 1615, noting
the alarming scarcity of wood, declared that "it were the less evil to
redce the times unto the ancient manner of drinkng in Stone (stoneware)
and of (making) Lattice-windows, than to suffer the loss of such a
treasure." Unfortunately, this approach required more wood than ever.
More wood was used in baking the bricks for a building or in forging an
iron container than in constructing the building or container out of
wood itself. There was a much greater demand for firewood than for
timber. As a result, coal was substituted as a power source.
Coal was plentiful and cheap, qualities that recommended it to everyone
bedeviled by the costliness and scarcity of wood. Early in the
seventeenth century, coal replaced wood fuel in the home and in some
industries. In other industries, however, technical problems prevented
immediate conversion from wood and charcoal to coal. New manufacturing
techniques had to be invented before brickmakers, glassmakers, bakers,
malt dryers, led--, tin--, copper-- and ironsmelters could take
advantage of coal.
In the process of inventing new techniques, countless other discoveries
were made. When the use of coal was finally mastered by these
industries, the discoveries that had been made incidental to its
mastery--along with the superior thermal efficiency of the new
fule--enabled factories to produce their wares in greater quantity at
lower cost. Cheaper manufactured goods, particularly iron, could then be
used more extensively for construction of machinery. Iron machines are
not only stronger than wooden ones, but some machines, such as steam
engines, can only be made from iron.
As coal came into general use, demand for it rose. Yet production was
limited by high overhead costs. Prospecting was uncertain: several
shafts might have to be sunk before the vein was found; then water had
to be pumped from the mine. The water-- and horse-powered in use until
the eighteenth century had been designed or silver and copper mines and
were not economical for coal mines. Neither the cost of diverting
streams and rivers nor the cost of maintaining herds of horses was
justified by the low price of coal. For example, it cost the partners of
one colliery, who did not spend an extraordinary amount for drainage, an
average of 26 pounds per wek for their pump horses. They received 2 to 4
shillings per ton of coal. the cost of pumping out a mine and the
overhead of prospecting could not be absorbed by asking a higher price
for coal; unless coal remained significantly cheaper than wood, people
would not buy it. Wood was preferred; even after coal had become common,
it was considered grimy and abhorrent.
The consequent economic squeeze between the cost of pumping and the most
tolerable price for coal initiated a frenzied hunt for cheap pumping
devices.
From the reign of Elizabeth I through that of Charles I, one in seven
patents dealt with pumping water. Inventors thought of all sorts of
unlikely schemes. One group of experimenters sought to power pumping
machinery by a jet of water vapor. Experiments with this curious source
of power were unsuccessful throughout the seventeenth century until
1698, when Thomas Savery devised his steam-powered "miner's friend."
This was rapidly followed by Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine.
Although still crude and wasteful, these steam engines slashed the cost
of pumping. Accessible coal reserves were multiplied. Deep seams in he
north of England, which had been abandoned earlier because of flooding,
were mined again using steam engines. More coal meant cheaper coal,
which in turn made iron and thus steam engines cheaper. This brought
them within the means of more mines, so that more coal could be mined,
and so on.
In addition to the problems of mining coal, the problems of hauling coal
beleagured seventeenth-century colliers. To keep costs down. coal had to
shipped in loads of unprecedented sizes. Abominable roads forestalled
bulk transportation by land. Big cargoes had to travel by ship, and the
need for bulk transportation of iron and coal resulted in the
construction of a network of canals. If the mine lay any distance from a
navigable waterway, overland transportation had to be furnished. Sleds,
baskets, wheelbarrows and wheeled carts were awkward. One expedient,
first adapted in about 1600 by collieries on the Trent and Severn
rivers, was to dispatch wagons on wooden rails down a slope and to pull
the empty wagons back up on a similar railway.
By the eighteenth century, every large coalfield in Britain moved coal
by horse-drawn railways; at the turn of the century the circuit of coal,
iron and steam was complete, and the first steam locomotives appeared on
colliery railways.
The coal industry had set the stage for a new order. The need for an
alternative to wood fuel had provoked countless technical innovations
and discoveries, culminating in the Industrial Revolution.
Perhaps we are now on the brink of yet another technological revolution.
The historical shortages of animal food, of manpower and of wood proved
beneficial in the long run. To secure alternative sources of power,
people had to come to grips with their environment. The discoveries they
made in the process of adapting the new power sources to society's needs
bred a host of technological refinements. The energy shortage that we
face also bids fair to stimulate new inventions and discoveries as well
as a new social order.
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"It is the mark of the untrained mind to take its own processes as valid
for all wo/men, and its own judgements for absolute truth."---Aleister
Crowley

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