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Technology Videos 160 videos

History of Technology 1: Windmills
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History of Technology 2: Wheels
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How did people move stuff around before the wheel was invented? More importantly, why didn't they take a break for a few minutes from moving stuff...

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History of Technology 1: History of Waterwheels 268 Views


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Transcript

00:00

look up in the sky it's a bird it's a plane it's a waterwheel [Waterwheel flying by in the sky]

00:09

waterwheel that seems super dangerous anyway the waterwheel was used power [Hamster running in a wheel]

00:14

mills and other devices all over the world for more than two thousand years

00:18

dinky little farms cobble together small wheels to grind their wheat and big [Lots of wheat being poured into a pile]

00:23

scary empires built huge waterwheel complexes to make food for their armies [Soldier telling the hamster to run faster]

00:27

some of the biggest and most advanced water wheels were used in ancient Rome [Water wheel bounces in front of the colosseum]

00:32

you know gladiators Julius Caesar toga party that ancient Rome let's think of

00:36

its awesomeness the Roman Empire stretched over the entire Mediterranean [Roman empire spreading out over the globe]

00:40

Sea for those of you keeping score at home that's a lot of mouths to feed and [Lots of hands reaching out to Cesar]

00:45

if it turns out feeding so many people without modern industrial technology is [Water wheel rolls past hungry people]

00:49

really really hard especially when Caesar refused to share his salad so the

00:55

Romans had to go beyond the power of individual human labor they created huge

00:58

waterwheels powered factories that ground massive amounts of grain these

01:03

kind of innovations allowed the Romans to feed the entire empire and Caesar got [Food being handed out]

01:08

to eat his precious salad around the same time in history water

01:11

mills were becoming an important source of energy in the Han Dynasty in China [Water wheel next to the dynasty in China]

01:14

its Chinese didn't just grind grain with them Chinese blacksmith also used water

01:20

wheels that powered the bellows for their iron forges on Chinese farmers

01:24

used water wheels to move water through irrigation ditches and into rice paddies [Water wheel being used on a farm]

01:28

by 1086 ze over 5000 water wheels stretched all across England you will [Water wheel covering a map of the UK]

01:35

Europe was a happenin place for water wheels Europeans were harnessing huge

01:40

amounts of natural kinetic energy in those days so what did they do with it [2 men throwing a harness round a water wheel]

01:44

also most of Western Europe relied on cereal crops like wheat barley Cap'n

01:48

Crunch and oats survived all of which had to be ground before they were edible [The seeds and the box of cereal is planted]

01:53

okay fine maybe not scab crush but waterwheels also powered giant hammers [Giant hammer hitting a pile of wood]

01:58

and mule powered hammers could be used to smash wood into pulp to make paper the

02:04

thing - without paper we wouldn't be able to procrastinate at work so [Guy chucking balls of paper into a bin]

02:07

efficiently we'll also needed a beat-down before it could be turned into [Guy about to hit a sheep with a hockey stick]

02:11

cloth and later on watermills were in charge of grinding

02:15

gunpowder and that sounds totally safe precise yeah well all these new [Explosions at a factory]

02:20

applications for water power had major consequences for Europe first the

02:24

European economy could grow far beyond its smallish population because people

02:28

were making more stuff with less labour and second European attitudes toward [Two guys assembling toys]

02:33

technology and machines were changing sooo pretty soon Europeans were saying

02:37

what are the sources of energy and we exploit along with Kentucky water will

02:43

be flying in the sky that seems super dangerous yes ah what's up with that [Water wheel falls out the sky and hits a guy, then everyone else runs away]

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