Notes: Difference between revisions
→Section VI
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Later in 1799 William Cockerill installed the first woollen spinning machine on the continent in Verviers, Belgium. Also Ghent "stole" the "spinning Jenny" factory in 1800 and a newly finished canal towards that city made Ghent the "manchester of continental europe" (lol those poor sods.) These two early installations made Flanders textile industry very strong in the 19th and early 20th century." | Later in 1799 William Cockerill installed the first woollen spinning machine on the continent in Verviers, Belgium. Also Ghent "stole" the "spinning Jenny" factory in 1800 and a newly finished canal towards that city made Ghent the "manchester of continental europe" (lol those poor sods.) These two early installations made Flanders textile industry very strong in the 19th and early 20th century." | ||
*"One minor incident that grew into a world changing event was the discovery of penicillin. Alexander Fleming was searching for something like penicillin. He accidentally left a petri dish open and some mold fell in it and grew. The next morning Alexander Fleming notice the moldy dish, and that the bacteria weren't growing near the mold areas. Thanks to penicillin the average lifespan of humans has increased and literally millions of lives have been saved." | *"One minor incident that grew into a world changing event was the discovery of penicillin. Alexander Fleming was searching for something like penicillin. He accidentally left a petri dish open and some mold fell in it and grew. The next morning Alexander Fleming notice the moldy dish, and that the bacteria weren't growing near the mold areas. Thanks to penicillin the average lifespan of humans has increased and literally millions of lives have been saved." | ||
**"As u/zywakem wrote, it was a much more complicated story and Fleming played a pretty minor role. There were 12 years or so between the time Fleming noticed his moldy petri dish and penicillin was tested by other scientists, and it was a different strain of mold, discovered by others, which turned out to be effective. | **"As u/zywakem wrote, it was a much more complicated story and Fleming played a pretty minor role. There were 12 years or so between the time Fleming noticed his moldy petri dish and penicillin was tested by other scientists, and it was a different strain of mold, discovered by others, which turned out to be effective. I would argue that the decision to test penicillin on mice rather than guinea pigs was more of a minor event that had an enormous impact, since penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs, and research would likely have stopped had all the test animals died." | ||
I would argue that the decision to test penicillin on mice rather than guinea pigs was more of a minor event that had an enormous impact, since penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs, and research would likely have stopped had all the test animals died." | |||
**"Just to ruin it for you the development of penicillin had everything to do with wars. Before WW2 too many soldiers were succumbing to sepsis even though antimicrobial compounds were available. They just weren't any good at preventing or treating internal infections. Money was poured into Flory and Chains research to help reduce battlefield deaths. By the end of WW2 if you were injured and we're able to be put back together you were unlikely to succumb to injection. It was mainly a war effort. A medical Manhattan project if you will." | **"Just to ruin it for you the development of penicillin had everything to do with wars. Before WW2 too many soldiers were succumbing to sepsis even though antimicrobial compounds were available. They just weren't any good at preventing or treating internal infections. Money was poured into Flory and Chains research to help reduce battlefield deaths. By the end of WW2 if you were injured and we're able to be put back together you were unlikely to succumb to injection. It was mainly a war effort. A medical Manhattan project if you will." | ||
*"Some Dutchmen, low on cash in a war with Spain try to figure out a way to make even more money from lucrative far eastern trade. They created the first multi-national company the VOC and a clever financial innovation called stock. Hard to overstate the impact these two business decisions have had on the world." | |||
**"IIRC, the wealth accumulated by the Dutch via the VOC would total over USD $7 trillion today." | |||
*"Most of the ancient history trade routes had massive and wide ranging effects across the globe, much more than anyone could have predicted. Mostly things like the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trade. On the Silk Road no one really traveled very far along it, small time merchants bought goods one place and sold them not far away in another place but this process was repeated from China to as far as Rome. You would think this was rather innocuous but it was so profitable it dictated social policies of entire countries, caused the rise and fall of kings and allowed the spread of social ideas and infectious diseases. The black death killing 1/2 of all Europeans? Caused by the Mongols reinvigorating the Silk Road. Buddhism taking over in SE Asia? Spread from India along the Silk Road. The wealth in China that allowed for the centuries of the dynastic system to work? The Silk Road. Islam taking over in Indonesia? The India Ocean trade. All in all, if you really want to understand why things played out in ancient history the way they did you should keep an eye on the big trade routes." | |||