00:00What if I told you that the infinite glory of the Roman Empire could have been preserved?
00:07There are some historians who argue that Rome wasn't all that far away from its own industrial
00:13revolution.
00:14Let's get to the bottom of this.
00:16Oh, and at the end, you'll also get to hear about the sponsor of today's side quest,
00:22Morning Brew.
00:23But anyway, here's the Roman Empire at its height, ruling over a vast territory
00:29stretching from Portugal to Persia.
00:32It was without a doubt the eminent European superpower, while it lasted, which wasn't
00:38all that long.
00:39As with many things in life, once the Germans got involved, things went downhill fast.
00:45Yet one can't help but imagine a world where Rome had lasted, preferably excluding the dastardly
00:52myths like Christians tied to big stakes covered in tar and burnt alive, or being torn apart
00:58by dogs at Caesar's cocktail party, for example.
01:01In such a based timeline, we may very well have skipped the destructive Middle Ages altogether,
01:06and gone straight to European global hegemony centuries earlier.
01:10It's less implausible than it sounds.
01:13By some estimates, Rome was only 300 years away from its own industrial revolution when things
01:21turned sour.
01:22The Romans had a lot going for them.
01:25Coal was mined throughout the empire, and was used to smelt iron and to heat public baths.
01:31A little-known fact is that the Romans had actually invented a rudimentary steam engine during the
01:38first century AD in Roman Egypt.
01:42There, our good friend Hero of Alexandria put together this wonderful little contraption.
01:49It was too small to provide any meaningful amounts of power, but it clearly showed that
01:55the Romans understood the concept of steam engines.
01:59So, that begs the question, why didn't the Romans industrialize, and how close were they
02:06to it, really?
02:07Well, starting with the technology, the Romans did have the necessary tools to, in theory,
02:14build a working steam engine.
02:16It would have had to be made of iron rather than steel, though.
02:20The Romans hadn't figured out yet that adding carbon into the mix makes it a lot stronger
02:25easier.
02:25An iron steam engine would be able to withstand about half the pressure, and would thus deliver
02:31a lot less energy.
02:32It would still be useful, of course, until you considered its price.
02:38Unfortunately, iron was quite expensive during Roman times.
02:42It cost very roughly seven times as much as it did in Victorian England, and twenty times
02:48as much as steel costs today.
02:50But even if an enterprising senator or governor splurged out to get such an engine built, he
02:57would quickly run into a big and fairly obvious problem.
03:01Steam engines, on their own, aren't particularly useful.
03:05Without the necessary infrastructure like railroads and train cars, getting lots of stuff from point
03:11A to point B gets rather difficult.
03:14Making tracks out of iron rather than steel would be a big no-no.
03:19You'd either have to carry very light loads, or you'd have to lay new tracks every other
03:23week as soon as the old ones crumbled.
03:25Now, even if the Romans somehow built a fully functioning railroad for one of their mines,
03:30it would have been easily outcompeted by something as simple as a cart pulled by a pair of oxen.
03:36This also applies to other areas of the economy, like farming and manufacturing.
03:42Rome, as we know, was built on the back of good old-fashioned slavery, and no one really
03:48cared to make the work of the slaves any easier.
03:51They were slaves, after all.
03:54This goes on top of the fact that there were very few people in Rome with the resources
03:59to even try such an undertaking.
04:01I mean, there were no banks or stock markets or insurance companies, so unless you had
04:06truly stupendous amounts of money or appetite for risk, attempting to apply any industrial
04:13innovations would have been beyond your reach.
04:16Only the very top echelons of the Empire could have tried it, and they were usually too busy
04:22trying to usurp each other and planning civil wars.
04:25If only they had some place where they could read all the best news and stories in business,
04:32finance and technology, maybe then Rome could have survived after all.
04:37Luckily for you, our good friends over at Morning Brew do just that.
04:43Their daily newsletter helps you get up to speed on everything important going on in the world
04:48of business and tech with a delicious dose of wit and spicy humour.
04:53Keeping up with the news has never been easier, and the best part is that it's totally free.
05:00You can subscribe to Morning Brew by going to morningbrewdaily.com forward slash sidequest,
05:08or by clicking the link in the description below.
05:11It'll take you 10 seconds, my friend, and it'll make your mornings a lot better.
05:16But now, my friends, I must away.
05:18Thank you for watching and stay tuned for the next imperialistically industrial episode of SideQuest.
05:30Friends, Romans, countrymen, help me to pronounce the letter R.
05:41Subscribe to myalka.com forward slash sidequest, and commenttitoli will read.
05:42Bye.
05:42Let's go.
