Quote:
Originally Posted by maximara
Actually, once the printing press (achievable with TL2 materials) is available the knowledge of High-tech manufacturing spreads quite quickly.
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No, because artisans kept their secrets to themselves, and could not necessarily read the prestigious foreign languages in which the handful of handbooks were written. Projects like the
Encyclopédie don't appear before the 18th century and I don't know of any evidence that they had much impact on the spread of European technology to the Muslim world, India, or China. As far as I can tell, the usual methods were importing foreign workers and having them train and organize the locals, or importing foreign objects and trying to imitate them.
We know that the South German cities slowly learned to compete with and then surpass the Italian ones for cheap mass-produced plate, and we know that print had nothing to do with it, because no books ever described how plate armour was made in more detail than you could get by wandering through a few shops. The same with some textile industries.
When Europeans wanted to learn to make porcelain, they did not send someone to buy a Chinese book on the subject with pocket change (books were cheaper in China than Europe in the 18th century) because none of them could have read it and the porcelain manufacturers did not describe their trade secrets in writing.
Even worse, I don't know of any early handbook which describes the division of labour, organization of all stages in the production process, agreement to standardize different tools and products, etc. which were key to even late medieval high-tech industry like weaving. (Guild regulations get very detailed). Sorting those issues out was necessary if a town wanted to compete on cost, and not just offer different products.