Engineering thread

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StolenWindows

StolenWindows

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Aug 1, 2025
Let's get some radioshack geeks in here. I love radios and I love ancient Rome. Here's my pick: a steam-powered flywheel that spins a hemp or linen belt on two drums, generating static friction, on an iron post, with a bronze spark gap next to it with telegraph key and leyden jar wired to the spark gap using bronze on the top and bottom of the jar, with the screw-in on the top serving as the antenna (it's a bronze knob). A bronze chain goes inside the jar from the bronze lid and touches metal bronze foil inside. That's a medieval capacitor and a Roman-style spark gap transmitter. For the receiver, since they didn't have any magnets, use lodestone which is weaker quality, so expect low audio cracking and beeps, use a bronze diaphragm with wooden ear cups and copper wire for the headphones, use a wooden block with a galena crystal on top of it, with bronze holding it to the wood, and metal bronze pads on the sides to hook the headphones to listen in. Use beeswax to insulate wires.
 
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StolenWindows said:
The crazy part is they already had the technology for this. They had advanced plumbing, looms (foot-powered warp-weighted loom and horizontal ground loom) and steam power.
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but they lacked the material science to make any kind of high-pressure boilers, so even though they could go steampunk, a donkey on a big-ass hamster wheel would generate a lot more horsepower than anything they could make

and they did have very complex factories, look at roman-era oil mills (for extracting olive oil), they are almost the same as modern day oil mills, except they were powered by a donkey tied to a wooden beam walking in a circle instead of electricity

they also had triphammers for blacksmithing, which are like today's steam hammer, except powered by water falling instead of high-pressure steam


tho the byzantines were much closer to industrialization than ancient rome

if the eastern roman empire didnt collapse, they'd be the forefront of the indutrial revolution instead of the UK (and a few centuries earlier to boot) and we'd all be speaking latin

like, the byzantines were a hair's length from an industrial revolution, and if it wasnt for the fuckin turks the world would have been a better place
 
donksmanSupreme42 said:
but they lacked the material science to make any kind of high-pressure boilers, so even though they could go steampunk, a donkey on a big-ass hamster wheel would generate a lot more horsepower than anything they could make

and they did have very complex factories, look at roman-era oil mills (for extracting olive oil), they are almost the same as modern day oil mills, except they were powered by a donkey tied to a wooden beam walking in a circle instead of electricity

they also had triphammers for blacksmithing, which are like today's steam hammer, except powered by water falling instead of high-pressure steam


tho the byzantines were much closer to industrialization than ancient rome

if the eastern roman empire didnt collapse, they'd be the forefront of the indutrial revolution instead of the UK (and a few centuries earlier to boot) and we'd all be speaking latin

like, the byzantines were a hair's length from an industrial revolution, and if it wasnt for the fuckin turks the world would have been a better place
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Yep. This is the weak point of all "what if romans invented steam power?" scenarios. Romans had no fucking idea how to turn crappy iron into durable tool steel. They kinda understood that hot metal + water == strong metal but it was only really in the middle ages did Europe discover the delicate and highly versatile properties of carbon steel. Matter of fact, the romans did have prototypes of simple steam engines.

What really fucked them is that they never sat down and properly mapped through trial and error the process of making good, medium carbon steel from a random chunk of iron. You can't make railways out of iron, neither can you make them from over quenched high carbon steel. The same goes for most tools and weapons. You NEED to hit that spot where the carbon percentage is just right so that your chunk of steal doesn't deform like a piece of playdough, or shatter into a million pieces when put under strain. If carbon steel never existed, and humanity still somehow had a functioning civilizations similar to ours, then people would be writing scifi stories describing carbon steel because it's that much of a fascinating and versetile material.

I always found the cope that the Catholic Church/turkroaches somehow suppressed the industrial revolution for years funny. What about China, India or the Middle east? They didn't have the church breathing down their necks? Why didn't they just continue on from where the romans left off? Almost as if technological advancements are not linear and are instead exponential? Almost as if building steam engines isn't as easy as "yeah bro just build a steam engine bro what's the matter".

Also, y'know. Off loading all of your hard labor to slaves isn't really creating a demand for the automatization of hard labor.
 
BinaricHate said:
What really fucked them is that they never sat down and properly mapped through trial and error the process of making good, medium carbon steel from a random chunk of iron
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ironically china did have much better knowledge of metalurgy at that time, and rome and china almost had diplomatic relations during augustus's reign (but the ambassadors got killed by the parthians)

there was some trade between the two tho, but again, the parthians were a major roadblock

BinaricHate said:
simple steam engines.
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it's also a much better design than the british one, the aeolipile worked more like a steam turbine than a piston engine
 
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For the telegraph key, use a bronze spring strip. Romans used springy bronze in things like brooch pins (fibulae), clips and small mechanical catches. Certain bronze alloys (especially with more tin) have natural springiness when hammered and work-hardened. How they'd build it: flat bronze strip = lever arm, wooden base block, bronze contact screw (front), and bronze stop/contact plate (below). How bending works: the bronze strip is fixed at the back with a rivet or clamp, free at the front where you press, when you push it down it flexes, when you release metal spring tension lifts it back up. That’s literally how early 1800s telegraph keys worked. Plus Romans already had glassblowing, so a leyden jar would be easy.
 
donksmanSupreme42 said:
but they lacked the material science to make any kind of high-pressure boilers, so even though they could go steampunk, a donkey on a big-ass hamster wheel would generate a lot more horsepower than anything they could make

and they did have very complex factories, look at roman-era oil mills (for extracting olive oil), they are almost the same as modern day oil mills, except they were powered by a donkey tied to a wooden beam walking in a circle instead of electricity

they also had triphammers for blacksmithing, which are like today's steam hammer, except powered by water falling instead of high-pressure steam


tho the byzantines were much closer to industrialization than ancient rome

if the eastern roman empire didnt collapse, they'd be the forefront of the indutrial revolution instead of the UK (and a few centuries earlier to boot) and we'd all be speaking latin

like, the byzantines were a hair's length from an industrial revolution, and if it wasnt for the fuckin turks the world would have been a better place
Click to expand...
You don’t need industrial-revolution horsepower. You just need continuous motion, static charge buildup and periodic discharge. A tiny steam rotor could do that. They also had glassblowing in ancient Rome. In fact, this transmitter can go up to kilometers in range.
 
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Ignore the spark gap part. AI messed it up. But this is roughly what the constructed device looks like.

file_0000000063ac71f8ba54111ee0f916f7.png


Here's the receiver:

file_000000006f4471f58abdc954c87968e8.png
 
Lieutenant Rasczak said:
Real talk, bronze provides far more resistance than copper. There's different types of bronze, but if you're talking standard tin bronze, you'd be better off with aluminum or brass as a conductor.
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Bronze antennas are much simpler. They don't require spinning into wire. You just erect a brass knob and that's the antenna. In the receiver pic there's wire going through it and going to a copper coil over a bronze rod so you can have antenna + ground wire. That's your tuning coil. Probably need 100 ft of ground wire. The headphones are connected to two brass posts. Use a bronze cat's whisker to hold galena crystal to block. Use bronze screws to hold it in place. It uses brass/bronze binding posts for the antenna, ground, coil taps and headphones. For the headphones, again, use wooden ear cups with leather ear molds, with thin bronze diaphragm.
 
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StolenWindows said:
You don’t need industrial-revolution horsepower. You just need continuous motion, static charge buildup and periodic discharge. A tiny steam rotor could do that. They also had glassblowing in ancient Rome. In fact, this transmitter can go up to kilometers in range.
Click to expand...
in theory u could make this radio if u were a time traveller stuck in ancient rome, but rome didnt discover the theory behind this, they could have never achieved this

still would be a fun project to try and make a radio using only materials and manufacturing methods that could be reasonably used 2026 years ago
 
donksmanSupreme42 said:
in theory u could make this radio if u were a time traveller stuck in ancient rome, but rome didnt discover the theory behind this, they could have never achieved this

still would be a fun project to try and make a radio using only materials and manufacturing methods that could be reasonably used 2026 years ago
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You could make it hang crank using a lever, some gears, a flywheel and two drums to spin the hemp belt with to generate froction and it'll basically be a glorified cigarette lighter.
 
StolenWindows said:
Ignore the spark gap part. AI messed it up. But this is roughly what the constructed device looks like.

View attachment 8486799

Here's the receiver:

View attachment 8486813
Click to expand...

Hand Crank → Belt → Static Drums

This is essentially an ancient version of a friction electrostatic generator, like the early glass globe machines or a baby Van de Graaff without the dome.

Romans definitely had woodworking precision for gears, textile belts (linen, hemp, leather), bronze/iron shafts and bearings (simple but workable). A person can produce WAY more usable rotational speed than an aeolipile. That means higher surface speed, more charge separation and more frequent sparks.

So yeah — as a “glorified cigarette lighter”? That’s actually a perfect description. You’d get snapping sparks, ozone smell and hair-raising static tricks. Totally within pre-industrial physics.

Now you store that charge in a jar and dump it across a gap?

Congratulations, you’ve built a Roman electroshock toy / curiosity device. They would’ve used it to shock slaves (sad but historically likely), shock dinner guests for laughs, perform “temple miracles”, or scare the hell out of people as “Jupiter’s fire". This part is very believable historically if someone obsessed with mechanics discovered it.

@naffatune

file_000000000bfc7230b77e66450cf7c68c.png
 
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