Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[CR055H41RZ]

I've been thinking about mechanics and industry in DF and I thought; well the first mechanized industry irl was the textile industry, so why not have a mechanized textile industry in DF too?
It would be cool to have to build all the makings of a textile plant I think.

[Miuramir]

... well the first mechanized industry irl was the textile industry ...

That depends on how you define "mechanised" and "industry", but I'd think that under most definitions the milling of grain and related industry would qualify.  That clearly dates back to at least the first century AD, with such places as the Barbegal aqueduct and mill being particular elaborate examples; a complex system of aqueducts driving 16 water wheels producing an estimated 4.5 tons of flour a day (enough to feed about 10,000 people).  And sure enough, DF has the millstone, which requires mechanical power such as a water wheel or windmill. 

...so why not have a mechanized textile industry in DF too?

The nominal cut-off date for technology in DF is about 1400 AD, with a strong European bias.  Mechanized textile production doesn't seem to really date before the mid-1700s anywhere; the flying shuttle is about 1733, and was developed to speed *manual* looms and allow wider fabrics.   This led to a demand for more yarn, the famous spinning jenny of about 1764, and so on.  At more than three hundred years past the DF cutoff, it's clearly not "medieval" in the slightest, nor even "renaissance"; in fact, it is usually seen as the definition of the start of the industrial revolution. 

[Larix]

Another industry that invested in machinery quite early was ...
mining.

Water (and animal) power was extensively applied in medieval and early modern mining and various machines were used to drain water from the mines and to ventilate them, but also in processing the mines' products - bellows to get furnaces going, stamp mills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_mill#History) to crush rock/ore for further processing etc.

Georg Agricola's "de re metallica"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_metallica
is a good source for early-modern mining and its machines; it shows the state of technology ~1500-1550, but afaik most of what he talks about and displays had been around earlier.

[CR055H41RZ]

I really wish that donkeys and mules were trainable to haul stone to stockpiles
It'd be a good alternative to minecarts which at least in my fort aren't really practical due to it's architecture

[Hans Lemurson]

Another industry that invested in machinery quite early was ...
mining.

Water (and animal) power was extensively applied in medieval and early modern mining and various machines were used to drain water from the mines and to ventilate them, but also in processing the mines' products - bellows to get furnaces going, stamp mills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_mill#History) to crush rock/ore for further processing etc.

Georg Agricola's "de re metallica"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_metallica
is a good source for early-modern mining and its machines; it shows the state of technology ~1500-1550, but afaik most of what he talks about and displays had been around earlier.

Wait, you mean you don't just chuck a boulder in an oven and come back the next day to retrieve a bar of pure metal?

[Tacomagic]

If you mean pumping waste products into the river, then YES!  I cannot imaging anything more Dorfy than waging environmental war on those tree-humping hippies the elves.

[Swonnrr]

If you mean pumping waste products into the river, then YES!  I cannot imaging anything more Dorfy than waging environmental war on those tree-humping hippies the elves.

I already have a refuse stockpile linked to a minecart that dump everything in a hole. Some forts it's a 30z pit inside, some it's a volcano. And sometimes it's the river.