My latest post! Writing history for the public comes with risks and responsibilities. ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-…

Three highlights for me in this: - James Greener looking in hyper-detailed focus at how the Newcomen engine was likely invented - @JFredT on the earliest attempts at applying steam to rotary motion - @JFredT (again!) + John Kanefsky on steam engines raising water for waterwheels

Now this, this is the good stuff

When you spend a lot of time with the Singaporean approach, the UK equivalent seems VERY relaxed, underpinned by a long-held unstated agreement that wealth and national status are more or less guaranteed rather than established over time with marginal gains.

Answer: it's for winding copper wire around the pipes of steamship engines. Why? Because of the disastrous 1894 explosion of the steam valves aboard the SMS Brandenburg - the lead ship of German pre-dreadnought battleships. As the magazine The Engineer put it in June 1894 (the source of the illustration), "the accident on board the German ironclad Brandenburg, so fresh in our minds, brings home to us the necessity of paying more attention to copper main steam pipes than has been done hitherto, and it is undoubtedly wise policy on the part of the [British] Admiralty to require that all steam pipes above a given size shall be reinforced by means of a covering of copper wire." This particular machine was used at Messrs Yarrow & Co, ship- and torpedo-builders based in London's East End.

Extremely cool essay on the deep origins of the steam engine with interactive animations. Congrats on this @antonhowes. Energy historians, this looks like something that can be fun to use with students. rootsofprogress.org/steam-en…

Good advice. From The Rules of Civility (1671), p. 103

Edinburgh's Hogmanay festival is an ancient ritual dating back to 1993, instituted by the (then) Edinburgh District Council under a stated plan to become the "Hogmanay Capital of the World". It was a "3 day extravaganza" headlined by Capercaillie and the cast of Les Miserables

An impromptu #inventionquiz: what is this device?

Oh, and I totally forgot to mention my other personal favourite piece from this year, which was the work I did for NESTA on the history of coal, wind, water, and muscle-power, and their surprising interactions: media.nesta.org.uk/documents…

Before anyone says, what about the poor museums who will lose out £££! Remember, most don't make money selling images. It is loss making, for almost all cases of historic artworks. Even the National Gallery loses money. See my earlier thread here. >

Must-read thread. One of my core, core wishlist copyright reforms has come to pass thanks to the courts. (Whispers: but we could have had this a few years ago if we hadn’t arbitrarily decided not to adopt the 2019 EU Copyright Directive)

And a Christmas bonus! 6. A previously paywalled piece, now free: the most *surprising* would-be colonial powers of the seventeenth century ageofinvention.xyz/p/golden-…

Standing out to me is the circle of chimneys around the town, marking the route of the canals. Running a steam engine the two bulky and heavy items you had to deal with were deliveries of coal and removal of ashes add in the constant need for water. Canals provided the solutions

The problem was, we pointed out - the adults in the room - that someone still had to transcribe the message at the other end to turn it into the telegram. So what was the point?

A few Boxing Day long-reads from me

Also includes my *personal* favourite posts of the year: 1. The interactive story of the steam engine rootsofprogress.org/steam-en…

If they drew it, they saw it! Why won’t mainstream historians admit a giant race of intelligent rabbits once ruled humanity?!?!?! /s

Parking meters in newly resurfaced bus lanes. You're doing bus lanes wrong. #GettingStuffDone

My latest post! Full notes and transcripts from the Samuel More travel diaries of Industrial Revolution Britain, as a festive treat: ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-…

Major kudos to @antonhowes for sharing his transcripts of the diaries of Samuel More (a leading expert on innovation in late 1700s England) for free on the web here: publish.obsidian.md/antonhow… If you had wanted to read any of this before now, you would have had to go tot he British Library.