Re: Inventions

> > The Chinese ?

OK, this really was intended as a poke at a statement that seemed to me
rather overblown. IMO, any contest about which nation has produced the
most
and greates inventions is a rather moot point. Today's culture, science
and
technology is a product of many people in many place and times. Claims
to
singular greatness in this respect are usually pretty silly.

> > Paper, ink, the compass, blackpowder, rockets, silk,
> > real seaworthy ships,
> > oil-drilling, cast iron, printing...
>
> 1)You can't give them credit for silk.  That's
> caterpillar stuff.  They were just lucky enough to
> live next to mulberry trees.

Wild sillkworms produce a fairly rough silk that is not too attractive
as a
fiber. Tame silkworms have been breeded for the quality of their silk.
Also,
keeping silkworms and unrolling the fibers from their cocoons takes a
fair
degree of skill.

> 2)Paper and ink I'll give them--although ink was
> developed by practically every culture on the planet.
> Even stone age Irishmen had ink good enough for
> tattooing.

That probably was just soot. Am how do you know that stone-age Irishmen
were
tattooed ?

> None of the rest were ever (with the exception of cast
> iron) exploited.

With all those exceptions (and more to come) this starts to sound like
the
piece of dialogue in "The Life of Brian": "What did the Romans ever do
for
us ?"

> They sort of put together a few
> prototypes, said "oh, what an interesting toy" and got
> rid of it again.

A common misconception

Gunpowder was used for warfare extensively in rockets, flame throwers,
primitive guns and mines.
Chinese vessels sailed all over the waters from Malaya, Indonesia, the
Philippines up to to Japan and beyond, for many centuries.
Expeditions went all the way to Africa
Printing was soon very common after its invention in the 7th or 8th
century
AD. A huge volume of novels, poems, religious tracts, practical advice,
historical texts was produced and has survived ovre the centuries. This
includes a military manual printed in nthe 1040's (2 decades before the
battle of Hastings) that details gunpowder weapons.
Deep-well drilling was exploited to gain salt brine and petroleum, which
was
used for lamps, as well as to produce soot to make ink.

> Whereas within 100 years of developing ...

Copying, adopting, adapting and developing...

> the stern post rudder, the magnetic
> compass, and practical firearms the Europeans had
> taken 2/3 of the world away from it's original
> inhabitants.

Pretty much an exxaggeration.
a) Europeans adopted these inventions in the 14th century. In the 15th
century they were still not going anywhere.
b) Let's be generous and set 1492 as the start date. Look at a map of
1592
and tell me that 2/3rds of the world were in European hands.
Europeans were all over the place, but with a few notable exceptions,
they
had conquered only tiny outposts.

Greetings
Karl Heinz

>
> However, if you're having this discussion with ink and
> paper I want to know how.

Before e-mail, all long-distance discussions were held by snail-mail
letters
(And I am old enough to have had some)

Greetings