Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
7.1 Development of an idea. (a) Ancient Chinese spoon tilt
hammer. (b) Medieval European forge hammers. (c) Nine-
teenth-century waterwheel-driven English hammer.
heavy cart on a muddy road of early medieval Europe. In
contrast, the efficiencies of wood combustion (in simple
fireplaces) or charcoal production (in earthen kilns)
hardly changed for centuries. Similarly, human capacities
remained basically unchanged. In the West the domi-
nance of human and animal muscles, water and wind
(harnessed by simple devices), and biomass fuels (burned
with low efficiency) ended before 1900. Their combi-
nation was the not-so-distant foundation of our present
affluence.
In many low-income countries animate labor remains
an important prime mover, and hundreds of millions of
people still rely on biomass fuels as their only or domi-
nant source of heat (see chapter 9). Modern understand-
ing of traditional prime movers and biomass fuels has
benefited from works that focused on the history of indi-
vidual cultures or particular periods as well as the studies
that cut across historical eras. Notable contributions
in the latter category include Neuburger (1930), Usher
(1954), Singer et al. (1954-1958), Klemm (1959), Bur-
stall (1963), Forbes (1964-1972), Daumas (1969), Gille
(1978), L. White (1978), Landels (1980), K. D. White
(1984), T. I. Williams (1987), Basalla (1988), Pacey
(1990), Cardwell (1991), Goudsblom (1992), McClel-
lan and Dorn (1999), and Sieferle (2001). I appraise
preindustrial achievements by looking first at animate
power, then at water and wind conversions, and biomass
fuels. The chapter closes with surveys of energy use in
construction and transportation.
7.1 Animate Power: Human and Animal Muscles
For most of humankind, animate power remained the
dominant prime mover until the middle of the twentieth
century, and its limited fluxes, circumscribed by the met-
abolic and mechanical imperatives of animal and human
bodies, marked the boundaries of human achievement
and affluence. Societies that derived their kinetic energy
solely from animate power (ancient Egypt, except for
