Roman Steam Punk!

[sunday]

1 minute ago, KV7 said:

Cast bronze sleeve and wrought iron rings.

Expansion coefficients, and electrolytic corrosión are not going to play well. The later could be deal with, the former not much, IMHO.

5 minutes ago, bojan said:

Roman were able to use surprising quantity of the wrought iron considering they lacked blast furnaces (through they had bellows pumped version that did increase quality of iron). Affordable is relative. Early cannons were expensive, but thing here is that you don't need that much of them to make an impact. And they can be relatively small and lightly constructed since main idea is firing grapeshot vs historical ones that main purpose was taking down castle walls.

 

But they already could shot grapeshot-like things from ballistae, I think.

[bojan]

Variant of ballistae, but those were large and not really portable. ~50mm cannon, with low pressure load of powder firing grape shot would be very, very useful at the ranges of about ~150m and very easy to transport.

[bojan]

3 minutes ago, sunday said:

Expansion coefficients, and electrolytic corrosión are not going to play well. The later could be deal with, the former not much, IMHO.

There were historical cannons made like this, and not in the small numbers. So they worked obviously, through they were replaced by more easy to produce full cast bronze ones.

[sunday]

 

9 minutes ago, bojan said:

Variant of ballistae, but those were large and not really portable. ~50mm cannon, with low pressure load of powder firing grape shot would be very, very useful at the ranges of about ~150m and very easy to transport.

Something like the English 3pdr battalion guns used famously at Culloden? Those could be quite smaller that the equivalent ballistae, yes.

7 minutes ago, bojan said:

There were historical cannons made like this, and not in the small numbers. So they worked obviously, through they were replaced by more easy to produce full cast bronze ones.

I recalled vaguely something about that kind of mixed ordnance, but could not find anything to support that memory. Have you any links available?

[bojan]

49 minutes ago, sunday said:

Something like the English 3pdr battalion guns used famously at Culloden?

Yes, idea is not to replace Roman war machines with gunpowder equivalent, since there is no real point, but to enable field armies to have efficient fire support, very effective vs both infantry and cavalry, with a new class of weapon.

Quote

I recalled vaguely something about that kind of mixed ordnance, but could not find anything to support that memory. Have you any links available?

Not really, but I know there is one preserved locally in the museum (through it is reverse - wrought iron barrel with brass bands reinforcing it...), plus examples in Vienna, Budapest, St. Petersburg and probably more.

[sunday]

20 minutes ago, bojan said:

wrought iron barrel with brass bands reinforcing it

That makes sense, as iron is harder, and wear resistant, while brass is more elastic, and less fragile. Could have been some kind of decoration, however.

[bojan]

Not a decoration, as it were simple but pretty massive rings on the barrel. Will look if there is pic, I think I did take a photo of it. OTOH, with the low pressures involved brass barrel could work. Reinforced wooden artillery pieces were also used occasionally, some as late WW1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_Mortar

[sunday]

Wirebound barrels could be very strong, see those 15" Royal Navy guns of WWI.

Also, Gustavus Adolphus had "leather" cannon, and hemp cannon, the later built from copper bound with hemp rope.

[KV7]

You can make an all iron cannon from wrought iron staves and rings, I only suggested a bronze liner as a means to include a cast component, which would get around the problem on true cannon of the barrel being hard to get smooth when using staves. For bombards etc. the stave and ring design worked fine, because the barrel is short and the pressure and required velocity is low.

If you want to get fancy, you could even cast an outer liner over the built up structure, giving you want looks like an all brass cannon but with the core of the structure being iron. Perhaps you could even do both in a single pour, by placing the built up iron structure into a mould.

In any case if gunpowder is invented, one of the lowest technology but militarily useful uses will be grenades, and grenade projectors. A relatively low power ballista that can be used as a battlefield support weapon could easily launch a relatively large grenade a useful distance.

If we want a distinctly Roman invention, an explosive plumbata would be a fun thing to include, with the lead weight replaced by a grenade. The stick will increase range over a standard grenade, the iron spike will still cause damage on impact, and if it misses it will now explode (which also mostly solves the problem of the enemy throwing it back). Bonus points for getting it embedded in someone who then runs around in horror with an about to explode warhead attached to them.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Thing is, you could probably build cannon long before Europe did, but as for gunpowder, that requires developing it about 600 years before China did. Which I guess they could, although I think the chances are rather less than say, concrete, or fictional inventions like steam railways.

I suppose Maximus Bangus could knock something up whilst developing a means of quickly extracting stone for the worlds first multistory chariot carpark. But knowing Romans, you know for the first 150 years they will be using it as fireworks for the backdrop of the Emperors latest debauchery...

 

[KV7]

Gunpowder could have plausibly been invented far earlier, because it has few technological prerequisites. If we found that people in the chalcolithic were using a gunpowder like mixture for firework like things but then forgot about it as it had no economical uses, it wouldn't even be that surprising.

Edited September 27, 2021 by KV7

[Doug]

Ancient wooden cannon. 

 

 

[bojan]

3 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Thing is, you could probably build cannon long before Europe did, but as for gunpowder, that requires developing it about 600 years before China did.

Yes, but all prerequisites were there. Saltpeter was known, and used as food preservative and condiment, sulfur was widely known and used, charcoal was... well. All you need is someone, potentially with a vision, having an survivable explosive accident in order to see military use.

There is absolutely nothing preventing people from making gunpowder in the Roman, or even High Hellenistic times. Yes, that gunpowder would suck before (more-less) modern ways of refining saltpeter, but it has sucked until wet process of gunpowder corning was discovered, yet it did not prevent it's widespread use.

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by bojan

[sunday]

Could it be that a bit later, when Rome had transformed into the Byzantine Empire, greek fire was playing the same role, in a very approximate way, as gunpowder in the late Middle Ages?

[Doug]

No because it's useless for propelling projectiles. 

[sunday]

Sorry, I could have been clearer.

Role of a weapon is not propelling projectiles, but destroying and/or killing.

Greek fire was good enough for defending forts and walls, and in sea battles.

Edited September 27, 2021 by sunday

[Markus Becker]

15 hours ago, KV7 said:

Cast bronze sleeve and wrought iron rings.

Psittacoidea cannon! 

 

Re: Christians, if the Empire does well, actually better than ever before I'd expect the Christian religion with their end of days doom and gloom to be less popular. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

1 hour ago, bojan said:

Yes, but all prerequisites were there. Saltpeter was known, and used as food preservative and condiment, sulfur was widely known and used, charcoal was... well. All you need is someone, potentially with a vision, having an survivable explosive accident in order to see military use.

There is absolutely nothing preventing people from making gunpowder in the Roman, or even High Hellenistic times. Yes, that gunpowder would suck before (more-less) modern ways of refining saltpeter, but it has sucked until wet process of gunpowder corning was discovered, yet it did not prevent it's widespread use.

 

As I said much earlier, there is little reason why the Romans couldnt have invented the steam engine, because they invented damn near everything else. 

However, there may be one reason why it didnt happen with gunpowder. When the Chinese invented Gunpowder it was apparently a result of an offshoot of the the search of an elixir of life. I was just doing a search for it in connection with Rome, and it doesnt seem there was a demand for one in ancient Rome, hence presumably elemental experiments were at a minimum. They certainly did do some chemistry, we know that Roman concrete is in fact stronger than modern concrete. They certainly employed Greek fire. But they dont seem to have gone much further than that.

That isnt saying it couldnt happen, it just seems to me less likely in Rome than in places such as China, or the Byzantines that seem to have been interested in searching for an elixir or philosophers stone.

Following that through further, isnt it more likely the Greeks would have been ones to have invented the steam engine? After all we know many of the Greek scientists were already working with fluid mechanics in other forms. That doesnt mean the Romans wouldnt have adopted it subsequently of course. They were clearly interested in Greek tech, as we can see by their looting of the Antikythera mechanism.

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 hours ago, KV7 said:

Gunpowder could have plausibly been invented far earlier, because it has few technological prerequisites. If we found that people in the chalcolithic were using a gunpowder like mixture for firework like things but then forgot about it as it had no economical uses, it wouldn't even be that surprising.

Have you got a link for that? I did a search and ive not personally found anything.

[KV7]

6 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Have you got a link for that? I did a search and ive not personally found anything.

I think you may have misunderstood. The above is a pure hypothetical. Once there is mining then it's discovery just requires a fortuitous accident, and so evidence of some  hypothetical earlier discovery would not require us to update any of our other views about technological sophistication.

In the case of the Romans all the necessary ingredients were well known, and sulfur was apparently even used in firework like devices at their circuses.

[bojan]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

...However, there may be one reason why it didnt happen with gunpowder. When the Chinese invented Gunpowder it was apparently a result of an offshoot of the the search of an elixir of life....

Just because thing A was discovered by searching for a thing B does not prevent it being discovered by searching for thing C. Once basis are laid (and basis is knowledge of sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal) there are hundreds if not thousands of ways it could be discovered.

For example Romans used straws packed by the mixture of charcoal and sulfur to blow over flame and produce impressive flames in festivals and circuses. You do realize how close that is to a gunpowder?

[Doug]

2 hours ago, sunday said:

Sorry, I could have been clearer.

Role of a weapon is not propelling projectiles, but destroying and/or killing.

Greek fire was good enough for defending forts and walls, and in sea battles.

Well, I guess you could make Moltov cocktails. And possibly flamethrowers, although if they couldn't even create a vacuum, I doubt they could develop the pumps required. 

[Markus Becker]

IMO: The Romans don't need gunpowder and cannons!

They'd be nice to have but the railways and steamships their strategic mobility has increased orders of magnitude. They can redeploy Legions faster than the previous generation of Legionaers can imagine. (Back in my days we marched like men!) And the increased availability of metals means the Imperial military is better equipped across the board. Local militias might have gear that is close to what only Super Elite Barbarian Forces get. 

[Rick]

34 minutes ago, Markus Becker said:

IMO: The Romans don't need gunpowder and cannons!

They'd be nice to have but the railways and steamships their strategic mobility has increased orders of magnitude. They can redeploy Legions faster than the previous generation of Legionaers can imagine. (Back in my days we marched like men!) And the increased availability of metals means the Imperial military is better equipped across the board. Local militias might have gear that is close to what only Super Elite Barbarian Forces get. 

😅 Now that is funny!! Second sentence would be "...in our barefeet -- no pagan sandals for us -- uphill, both ways, urrgghh!!

[sunday]

12 hours ago, Doug said:

Well, I guess you could make Moltov cocktails. And possibly flamethrowers, although if they couldn't even create a vacuum, I doubt they could develop the pumps required. 

They did invent flamethrowers, of several kinds. Here is a modern recreation of one type:

Use aboard ships: https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/topic/939-greek-fire-as-a-naval-weapon/

There is a wikipedia entry on greek fire, not very bad.

Edited September 28, 2021 by sunday