05-13-2008, 06:45 AM
The DRB has been well known for ages, and extensively analysed - among other things, it is the book that contains the famed Thoracomachus description (if I recall correctly). It is also very much an engineering book - divided from theorethical science (as we have already discussed). It was widely reproduced in both the late classical, medieval and early modern worlds, and translated to English by Thompson in the 1950s.
I think the Byzantine guys on these forums know more. My general impression is that the eastern roman empire developed among similar lines to its neighbours, although it naturally enough was less productive itself during the period it was fighting for its existence or suffering internal crisis.
Quote:Do you know of any other medieval inventions from Greek Christiendom? (You can count things like watermills and latteen sails which were known in the Iron Age but became common and important in the Middle Ages). I don't know enough about Byzantine technology to have a sense of how fast or slowlt it developed, and it sounds like you do know.
Offhand, I can think of the fire siphon as an invention and the stirrup, frame-first shipbuilding, and traction trebuchet as borrowings or shared inventions. All those are rather early, though, ...
I think the Byzantine guys on these forums know more. My general impression is that the eastern roman empire developed among similar lines to its neighbours, although it naturally enough was less productive itself during the period it was fighting for its existence or suffering internal crisis.
