---
title: "History of technology"
chunk: 7/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_technology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:28.072474+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Before the development of modern engineering, mathematics was used by artisans and craftsmen, such as millwrights, clock makers, instrument makers, and surveyors. Aside from these professions, universities were not believed to have had much practical significance to technology.
A standard reference for the state of the mechanical arts during the Renaissance is the mining engineering treatise De re metallica (1556), which also contains sections on geology, mining, and chemistry. De re metallica was the standard chemistry reference for the next 180 years. Among the water-powered mechanical devices in use were ore stamping mills, forge hammers, blast bellows, and suction pumps.

Due to the casting of cannon, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid-15th century. The blast furnace had been used in China since the 4th century BC.
The invention of the movable cast metal type printing press, whose pressing mechanism was adapted from an olive screw press, (c. 1441) lead to a tremendous increase in the number of books and the number of titles published. Movable ceramic type had been used in China for a few centuries and woodblock printing dated back even further.
The era is marked by such profound technical advancements as linear perspective,  double-shell domes, and Bastion fortress. Notebooks of the Renaissance artist-engineers such as Taccola and Leonardo da Vinci give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied. Architects and engineers were inspired by the structures of Ancient Rome, and men like Brunelleschi created the large dome of Florence Cathedral as a result. He was awarded one of the first patents ever issued to protect an ingenious crane he designed to raise the large masonry stones to the top of the structure. Military technology developed rapidly with the widespread use of the cross-bow and ever more powerful artillery, as the city-states of Italy were usually in conflict with one another. Powerful families like the Medici were strong patrons of the arts and sciences. Renaissance science spawned the Scientific Revolution; science and technology began a cycle of mutual advancement.

==== Age of Exploration ====

An improved sailing ship, the nau or carrack, enabled the Age of Exploration with the European colonization of the Americas, epitomized by Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. Pioneers like Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Magellan, and Christopher Columbus explored the world in search of new trade routes for their goods and contacts with Africa, India, and China to shorten the journey compared with traditional routes overland. They produced new maps and charts which enabled mariners to explore further with greater confidence. Navigation was generally difficult, however, owing to the problem of longitude and the absence of accurate chronometers. European powers rediscovered the idea of the civil code, which had been lost since the time of the Ancient Greeks.

==== Pre–Industrial Revolution ====

The stocking frame, which was invented in 1598, increased a knitter's number of knots per minute from 100 to 1000.
Mines were becoming increasingly deep and expensive to drain with horse-powered bucket-and-chain pumps and wooden piston pumps. Some mines used as many as 500 horses. Horse-powered pumps were replaced by the Savery steam pump (1698) and the Newcomen steam engine (1712).

=== Industrial Revolution (1760–1830s) ===

The revolution was driven by cheap energy in the form of coal, produced in ever-increasing amounts from the abundant resources of Britain. The British Industrial Revolution is characterized by developments in textile machinery, mining, metallurgy, transport, and the invention of machine tools.

Before the invention of machinery to spin yarn and weave cloth, spinning was done using the spinning wheel, and weaving was done on a hand-and-foot-operated loom. It took from three to five spinners to supply one weaver. The invention of the flying shuttle in 1733 doubled the output of a weaver, creating a shortage of spinners. The spinning frame for wool was invented in 1738. The spinning jenny, invented in 1764, was a machine that used multiple spinning wheels; however, it produced low-quality thread. The water frame patented by Richard Arkwright in 1767 produced a better quality thread than the spinning jenny. The spinning mule, patented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton, produced a high-quality thread. The power loom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1787.

In the mid-1750s, the steam engine was applied to the water-power-constrained iron, copper, and lead industries to power blast bellows. These industries were located near the mines, some of which used steam engines for pumping. Steam engines were too powerful for leather bellows, so cast-iron blowing cylinders were developed in 1768. Steam-powered blast furnaces reached higher temperatures, allowing the use of more lime in the iron blast-furnace feed. (Lime-rich slag was not free-flowing at the previously used temperatures.) With a sufficient lime ratio, sulfur from coal or coke fuel reacts with the slag so that the sulfur does not contaminate the iron. Coal and coke were cheaper and more abundant fuels. As a result, iron production rose significantly during the last decades of the 18th century. Coal converted to coke fueled higher temperature blast furnaces and produced cast iron in much larger amounts than before, allowing the creation of a range of structures such as The Iron Bridge. Cheap coal meant that industry was no longer constrained by water resources that drove the mills, although water remained a valuable source of power.