[Fantasy-Tech] Much Earlier Electrostatics

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

What sorts of interesting devices might they have, and what applications might they come up with for this technology? (For example, I imagine an Indiana Jones sort of archaeologist opening a tomb, and the movement of the door sets electrostatic generators spinning, activating the ancient defences and causing the eyes of a statue of Sutekh to glow violet.)

The problem is there really aren't any. Those electrostatic motors aren't going to power any useful defenses, given that they have outputs best measured in milliwatts. That's pretty much the case all around, electrostatics simply don't accumulate very much energy. You are limited to relatively low energy sparks (probably not enough to do any damage), or exerting small forces on small objects - making hair stand on end, attracting ash or fluff, bending a stream of falling water a few degrees. In theory high dielectric constant materials might eventually allow you to build capacitors that could store something in the range of springs of similar size, so you maybe could [eventually] store enough energy to do something noticeable with TL6+ equipment, but even that is iffy. Maybe you could build a lighter (I've proposed before that jewelers messing with tourmaline might invent the piezoelectric lighter, but without distillation there aren't many fuels the energy content of a small electric spark is enough to ignite.