Question: what are some post industrial Inventions that are possible without industry?

Vylon Disigma

Vylon Disigma

As in the title, I am interested in what inventions , technology and discoveries would still be possible without an industrial revolution.
i.e. without machines, precision manufacturing, or engines.

Name as many as you can; I find it hard to think of many, but certainly invention would not have stopped without the industrial revolution.

Best I can come up with is bicycle, though surely there are better ones.
 
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SunKing105

SunKing105

Steam engine. It would still be useful for pumping out water in mines, and other such purposes, without an industrial revolution.
 

herkles

Weren’t post boxes a Victorian invention? That sounds like something that could be made before the industrial revolution l.
 

Canuck Wingnut

Optics seem like an option- glass can be produced in craft shops, and glasses, telescopes, spyglasses, microscopes would all be possible products of a sufficiently experienced glassmaker. As discussed in earlier threads, if advanced glass optics are made earlier, there's no reason why you couldn't have optical telegraph systems in antiquity.
 
SunKing105

SunKing105

RedKing said:
But couldn't that lead to an industrial revolution if they start using it for other purposes?
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Not without the necessary economic, social, and political background needed to kickstart one, a very rare collection of these factors existed in a few places by the time of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and ultimately only one, Britain, managed to be the first to do so, with everybody else having to play catch-up.
 
Vylon Disigma

Vylon Disigma

Analytical Engine said:
People make modern guns in their own workshops.

The real issue is how many weapons you can make, short of mass production.
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You can probably make a fair few just by having a lot of guys in workshops. Difficulty will be reliability without precision manufacturing generating virtually identical parts. I suppose I'm mainly talking about cartridges here. There would be a lot of cases where a batch of hi spec guns will barely function with the ammunition they were given.
 
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Canuck Wingnut

On the question of weapons, I think the Kalthoff repeater- arguably centuries ahead of its time, rightfully obscure- is a good example of incredibly advanced technology from a (mostly? I'm not quite sure when we should count Europe as transitioning from a pre-industrial to an industrial society) pre-industrial society.
Obviously the Kalthoff didn't revolutionize the world. On the other hand, I think that in some ways the demands of mass warfare and the need to create chemically identical powder loads to keep using the rifles means that advanced gunpowder weapons technology is a particularly industrial problem.
 

GuildedAgeNostalgia

Vylon Disigma said:
You can probably make a fair few just by having a lot of guys in workshops. Difficulty will be reliability without precision manufacturing generating virtually identical parts. I suppose I'm mainly talking about cartridges here. There would be a lot of cases where a batch of hi spec guns will barely function with the ammunition they were given.
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You could have standardization with regulations implemented by a national guild system for gun smiths.
 
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