08-08-2020, 02:26 PM | #4941 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Massive paper production requires either massive rice production (rice paper), massive textile waste production (rag paper), and/or TL4+ hemp fiber/wood pulp production (hemp fiber paper at TL4 and wood pulp production at TL5). The Romans Empire had none of the above and lacked the ability to gain any of the above due to its environment and the structure of its economy.
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08-08-2020, 07:01 PM | #4942 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
Wood pulp is a high tech process, because wood has lots of lignin in it, and separating the cellulose fibers from it is a substantial chemical engineering challenge, and I suspect papyrus is difficult for similar reasons of separating the fibers from other sticky stuff, but the limitation on massive paper production isn't the materials, it's the (lack of) incentive for the massive part. Textile fibers are still relatively expensive after all, which pretty much kills the non-writing uses of paper, especially since a lot of them overlap the uses of cloth anyway, and demand for writing materials just isn't that enormous.
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08-08-2020, 08:42 PM | #4943 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Hemp (and, to a lesser extent, flax and jute) is hard to make into affordable paper before TL4 because of the hurds or shives. With widespread TL4 watermills and windmills to provide the mechanical energy to accelerate the processing of hemp, it became affordable to divert hemp from clothing production to paper production (hemp grows densely and easily on low quality land, so it was always the labor costs that prevented more widespread use of hemp). Roman slave labor, while suitable for cloth fiber production, would have been unsuitable for widespread hemp paper production, as the cost of feeding the slaves alone would not have allowed hemp paper to be cheaper than papyrus.
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08-09-2020, 12:09 PM | #4944 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: New Reality Seeds
They made hempen cloth in ancient times, so hemp based paper makes sense. There are cultivers of hemp which are better for paper making, my hypothetical Cabalist might easily get seeds of the best cultivers of hemp brought to this parallel.
Remember, hemp isn't the only plant you can grow for paper that grows well in the Mediterranian basin. A world jumping Cabalist might seek out the optimun plant or plants and bring them to this parallel.
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08-09-2020, 12:50 PM | #4945 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Cowtown, Canada
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Re: New Reality Seeds
I would like to know more...
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08-09-2020, 01:29 PM | #4946 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: New Reality Seeds
It was a slave holding society, which limits economic incentives for improvement (slave holders are often the wealthiest members of society and have a vested interest in keeping the status quo) and limits demand for recreational literacy (while Rome had literate slaves, their literacy served the interests of their masters, not the entertainment of the slaves). Without extensive recreational literacy, there is insufficient demand for paper.
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08-09-2020, 02:50 PM | #4947 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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08-10-2020, 10:58 AM | #4948 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Cowtown, Canada
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Re: New Reality Seeds
Quote:
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08-10-2020, 05:25 PM | #4949 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: New Reality Seeds
From what I understand the early printing presses printed church materials and government needs mainly. At least by day, there was also apparently porn printed at night off the books. Rome would have all three markets.
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08-10-2020, 05:25 PM | #4950 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: Tollerances
Quote:
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