It's bad form to reply to my own post, but a strong cup of tea has invigorated me with some ideas that follow on from building the first working beam engine.
I'm introducing a second invention, halfway through, because you need something to pump industrial quantities of capital as well as water.
Firstly, you probably won't have the cashflow to purchase another mine and build another engine for at least a decade. Not unless you're mining silver, or there's a severe economic supply contraint on copper, tin, or whatever you're extracting, permitting you to mak...
This is wrong, but less wrong than I thought:
" Steam engines, for example, weren't invented until the 1700's because metals were so bad at the time that pressure vessels were impossible to make safe "
Not quite: the development of high-pressure engines was delayed, but the initial deployment if low pressure engines was an immediate success.
The first steam engines were, of course, atmospheric engines: fill a large piston with low-pressure steam, squirt cold water, and - whoosh! - the steam condenses to water and a pretty good vacuum, leaving the p...
Interesting stuff: but I'm going to throw in a few disappointments on technological triumphs, and propose a peaceful takeover by affordable glazed pottery.
Firstly, the printing press: movable type is a great idea but you also need paper. And you'll need the 'killer app' - or rather, the book with a massive pre-existing demand. In 1 AD, that's not the Bible! If you got the authorities interested in the promulgation of official edicts and shool texts, you might be able to scale up the business to kickstart a commercial printing economy - but scaling-up is no...
Partially correct, and partially wrong. The great patricians and senators will try to keep down a plebeian, but this is equally true of a fellow-patrician emerging as a dominant power.
But people could and did succeed in Rome: your point is an objection, not an insoluble problem.
I would point out that not getting assassinated - or coming up against a power bloc that can stop you - is a problem with all 'Become Emperor of Rome' scenarios: and it was solved by all emperors.
It boils down to politics. A strong point of the Joint-Stock plan is that you make a lo... (read more)