Reasonable later inventions at earlier tech levels

[panton41]

I've been working on a fictional story but came into a question that I know a lot of fantasy gamers wonder about - how many inventions could be created at a lower level of technology but weren't simply due to chance. I think the classic example is the paperclip. Nothing is preventing its invention from the day metal started being drawn into wire, but it was actually invented in the 1870s.

For my story I was briefly considering execution methods in a setting with late-Medieval technology and wondered if a culture had the desire to, could they build a guillotine? Even if the quantity of steel and iron needed to be efficient was too high the blade could be weighted with another more easily obtained metal and only edged with steel.

Besides that what other technologies could easily be invented and made useful at lower tech levels except weren't.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

GURPS Fantasy-Tech 1 makes a case for gunpowder, germ theory, and literacy. I suspect oil paints could have been invented significantly earlier than they were, which would open the door to early development of the printing press. I'm not sure that any of these qualify as "easy," but they may be, at least, superficially plausible.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

I've been working on a fictional story but came into a question that I know a lot of fantasy gamers wonder about - how many inventions could be created at a lower level of technology but weren't simply due to chance. I think the classic example is the paperclip. Nothing is preventing its invention from the day metal started being drawn into wire, but it was actually invented in the 1870s.

For my story I was briefly considering execution methods in a setting with late-Medieval technology and wondered if a culture had the desire to, could they build a guillotine? Even if the quantity of steel and iron needed to be efficient was too high the blade could be weighted with another more easily obtained metal and only edged with steel.

Besides that what other technologies could easily be invented and made useful at lower tech levels except weren't.

You could probably make a guillotine with the buziness end being bronze rather than steel.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Surgery. What you need is a way to keep the patient unconcious, the germ theory of disease (or a theory that leads to the same conclusion -- keep the would clean), and the ability to sterilize your instruments. Well, a way to make the instruments too.

Telescopes.


Hans

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

Surgery. What you need is a way to keep the patient unconcious, the germ theory of disease (or a theory that leads to the same conclusion -- keep the would clean), and the ability to sterilize your instruments. Well, a way to make the instruments too.


Hans

You mean invent surgery even before TL0?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

You mean invent surgery even before TL0?

Hans's discussion is clearly of modern surgery, the sort that emerged in the 19th century. I don't consider that interchangeable with Paleolithic or Roman or medieval surgery.

Bill Stoddard

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

You mean invent surgery even before TL0?

No, I think metal implements would be needed. So TL1.


Hans

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Hans's discussion is clearly of modern surgery, the sort that emerged in the 19th century. I don't consider that interchangeable with Paleolithic or Roman or medieval surgery.

Neither do I, because Paleolithic and Roman and medieval surgery wasn't sterile. But it could have been if people had knowns about germs or had theorized that disease spirits didn't like clean wounds.


Hans

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

Neither do I, because Paleolithic and Roman and medieval surgery wasn't sterile. But it could have been if people had knowns about germs or had theorized that disease spirits didn't like clean wounds.

Or even just an obsession with ritual cleanliness - I could see a hypothetical Jewish surgeon (what with the Torah's strong dislike of blood and body fluids generally) being a good candidate. How were the Carthaginian beite seper with surgery (on the assumption that a high priority on ritual cleansing might be shared across the various Semitic peoples)?

[RyanW]

Ideas are a good bet. There's little reason why positional notation, zero, and calculus had to wait as long as it did. And imagine if some school of Greek philosophers had decided to buck tradition and look at the world to see if their careful logic actually led to conclusions that made any sense. Bam! Scientific revolution two thousand years early.