these engines will be water pumps. They want to pump water out of coal mines.
Coal mines, why do they need coal mines?
Because they're cutting down all the trees. They're running into
that ecological constraint I talked about.
So they're digging coal out of mines so that they can
burn coal for heat instead. Meanwhile, the mines fill up with water,
so they need to pump the water out of the mines.
Then having done that, they think, hmm, gee you know, I wonder if
this thing that can turn stuff round and round could also be used
to drive some sort of contraption to help us deal with pulling apart cotton.
Cotton is hard to
work with, but if you can work with it, you
can create yarn, and from cotton yarn you can create clothes.
Pulling apart cotton is hard for people to do.
Machines can do it faster, once they figure out a machine to pull apart cotton.
So by the time you're really in, say, the year
1800, steam engines are beginning to get more and more
developed, in part because they've gotten really good at pumping
out water out of these mines, and that turns out to
be very helpful.
And they've gotten very good at making cotton yarn and making cotton cloths.
By the way, why are they so interested in making cotton clothes?
Because England has passed protectionist
legislation to keep out the imports of clothing, of textiles, from India.
India was the great manufacturer of textiles.
It dominated the world's textile market. Well, this was threatening
the really key interest in England, which were the
people who make clothes out of wool from shearing sheep.
So they passed legislation to help keep out all those good Indian textiles.
The result is, though, it gives a real space for someone in
England who can figure out how to make cotton textiles, in England.
Creates a market for them to encourage people to encourage people to
build steam engines that will help them pull apart cotton.
How do they go about doing this?
It's kind of, what's the process?
I won't go into all the mechanical details, which I barely understand anyway.