The Invention of
Invention
W
hen Adam Smith came to write about these things in the eigh
teenth century, he pointed out that division of labor and
widening of the market encourage technological innovation. This in
fact is exactly what happened in the Europe of the Middle Ages—one
of the most inventive societies that history had known. Some may be
surprised: for a long time one saw these centuries as a dark interlude be
tween the grandeur of Rome and the brilliance of the Renaissance.
That cliché no longer holds in matters technological.^1
A few examples:
- The water wheel. It had been known to the Romans, who began
to do interesting things with it during the last century of the empire,
when the conquests were over and the supply of slaves had shrunk al
most to nothing. By then it was too late; order and trade were break
ing down. The device may well have survived on Church estates, where
it freed clerics for prayer. In any event, it was revived in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, multiplying easily in a region of wide rainfall and
ubiquitous watercourses. In England, that peripheral, backward island,
the Domesday census of 1086 showed some 5,600 of these mills; the
Continent had many more.
Even more impressive is the way waterpower technique advanced.