Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > Energy and Civilization: A History > Status Update

The development of the sailing ship and the ability to sail in unfavorable winds. It reached its apex just as the steamship became able to cross oceans.

How the bicycle went from dangerous curiosity to one of the most efficient forms of body-powered transportation. The development of canals, particularly the development of locks to move barges between high and low water levels.

Pre-industrial methods of heating. For much of history open fires have been the norm, but at times we see such things as hypocausts (warm air drawn from a fire through under-floor passages) and various types of stoves, mostly brick or ceramic. Lighting also weak and flickering, based upon combustion.

Waterwheels and windmills -- humanity's first non-biological energy source for getting work done. But both depend upon environmental factors not under human control. Various kinds of water wheels, horizontal and vertical, and the necessities of managing water flow for maximum output. Their replacement by water turbines in the Nineteenth Century. Early Dutch and other windmills...

The urban horse, and the horrific conditions these animals had to toil under -- and the sheer volume of waste they produced.

The Nineteenth Century sees sophisticated scientific measurements of human muscle power vs horse and other animals. Unsurprising, given this is also the century of the steam engine, with railroads, steamboats and the earliest steam traction engines. But steam is tricky to handle and hard to subdivide into small engines for farming and household use. So muscle power remains important.

The limits of muscle power -- including the fact that you can't turn the prime movers on and off at need, so you have to feed and shelter them all year even if you only need them a few months. The use of various simple machines -- wheels, levers, etc. -- to gain more work out of the same amount of effort.

As farming becomes more intensive, draft animals need more and better food -- putting them in competition with the humans they're working for. Improvements in tools, such as the Prairie Queen, can do only so much as long as they're dependent upon muscle power -- but early steam engines are unsuitable for field work. Intensive human labor can actually reduce the quality of diets, until things backslide.

Improvements in draft horse breeding and implement construction result in increases in production. Early draft horses struggled in heavy clay soil, so oxen were still used, but larger draft horses could produce more power to cut through heavy soils with better plows (although John Deere's Prairie Queen remained in the future).

The consequences of energy constraints on muscle-powered irrigation and those on yields, which affects population densities.