Thanks. I was sure you had a good reason.I know what y'mean, but I checked before writing with my scientific advisor, Mr Thande,who advises me that there's no reason it couldn't've been discovered earlier. Basically, I asked him about obtaining hydrogen, and he said: "Acid, and you can have it discovered sooner."
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- Thread starter MrP
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Thande
Donor
Geber's discoveries, like Paracelsus' (who went on to use those acids to discover that hydrogen was produced when they reacted with metals - though he didn't quite know what was going on) are the sorts of things that anyone could have done in the ancient world, they just didn't.
Geber discovered vitriol and then reacted it with various salts to produce several other different strong acids by displacement reactions. The whole acids-dissolve-metals thing fits nicely into the philosopher's stone, and that was an issue to ancient alchemists as much as mediaeval ones.
Like many ancient discoveries, it's not something that fits neatly on a Civ4 tech tree: like Hero and the steam engine, or Roger Bacon and a half-dozen other things, the problem is not finding one genius to discover it, but getting some more practical engineering people who will then find a use for it. There's no reason why it couldn't have happened earlier.
Hendryk
Banned
How about having Daedalus also popularize another stillborn Minoan invention, movable type? In OTL the idea went no further than the Disk of Phaestos since the right socio-cultural conditions weren't yet met, but if it survives into the classical age, it could take off in a big way.
Thande
Donor
That depends on if P wants to turn this into a Classical Technological Advancement TL in general or just focus on the implications of flight.
I believe at this point it is actually compulsory to mention the Antikythera Mechanism
MrP
Banned
Moveable type, eh? Hmm . . . I shall have a ponder.
I believe at this point it is actually compulsory to mention the Antikythera Mechanism