In many ways technology, as we know it today, started when man learned to release stored energy. No doubt this fist occurred when man learned to use and control fire. The first use may have simply been for comfort. It must have been nice to set around a fire, especially at night. Maybe that is what first made man distinct from all other animals? I know of no animal, except man, that finds and gathers wood to keep a fire going.
I wonder how long it took for someone to learn to use fire to make pottery, then glass, and eventually to find and use metals such as: gold, silver, and copper. These are about the only metals that occur in the metallic form. Did the American Indian ever use metals? Certainly not iron. But they did make rather elaborate pottery. Probably, making pottery, or ceramics and brick, was a necessary step before melting metal became possible.
Once man learned to refine iron, using little more than a large brick enclosed kline fired with wood, technology was on its way. Making and using steel for knives, needles, tools, bearings, wheels, guns, and eventually steam engines and the machines they powered was all little more than releasing the stored energy of wood and coal. I believe the use of steel is what made it impossible for the natives of the United States to resist the advances of "the white man", in taking virtually everything owned by the Indians and essentially the demise of the entire race. Rocks, flint, quils, and bow and arrows was no match for men with guns.
The vast wealth of resources taken from the natives, the heritage connection to technologically advanced nations of Europe, and the protection of large oceans on both sides that ultimately made it possible for the United States to become the most powerful and dominant nation in the world. Many Americans would like to believe they are in someway superior, or endowed by God, and that is what made this nation great. Brutal thievery would be more accurate.
In 1859 the first oil well was dug in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It turned out petroleum was an extremely versatile product, useful for far more than lubrication and a replacement for whale oil burned in lamps. Virtually, all of the transportation we have today comes from petroleum; and the list of other uses is long indeed.
Almost all of the technology we enjoy today comes from the release of stored energy: all things electrical, the farming done with tractors and pumped water, the synthetics and plastics, and even the refining of petroleum involves the use of stored energy. A little stored energy comes from hydro electric, and nuclear power, but by and large stored energy comes from fossil fuels.
The production of food using: tractors, pumped water, and chemical fertilizers and insecticides; has made it possible to feed a population at least ten times as large as would be possible using only renewable forms of energy.
The world supply of petroleum has mostly been used, and world production will forever decline. This will force a reduction of world population, back to even less than it was in 1859 because we have used so much of the forests that existed then.
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