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Medieval Technology




Alfred Crosby described some of this technological revolution in ''The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600'' and other major historians of Technology have also noted it.

European technical advancements of the 14th and 15th centuries were usually not native to Europe, but cross cultural exchanges through trading networks with the east, such as Chinese or Arab civilizations. Yet, the revolutionary aspect lay not in the inventions themselves, but in their application to political and economic power. Though Gunpowder had long been known to the Chinese, it was the Europeans who fully realized its military potential, precipitating European expansion and eventual imperialism in the Modern Era. Also significant in this respect were advances within the fields of Navigation . The Compass , Astrolabe and Sextant , along with advances in shipbuilding, enabled the navigation of the World Oceans and thus domination of the worlds economic trade. Gutenberg ’s Printing Press made possible a dissemination of knowledge to a wider population, that would not only lead to a gradually more egalitarian society, but one more able to dominate other cultures, drawing from a vast reserve of knowledge and experience.


MEDIEVAL TECHNOLOGIES

List of important medieval technologies.

  • Circa is the approximate date or first mention of a technology in Medieval Europe. Technologies were often a matter of cultural exchange and date and place of first invention are not listed, see main links for a more complete history of each.




SEE ALSO



REFERENCES

  • Crosby, Alfred. ''The Measure of Reality : Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600''. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1997.

  • Gies, Frances and Joseph. ''Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages.'' New York: Harper Collins, 1994.

  • White, Lynn. ''Medieval technology and social change.'' Oxford: clarendon Press, 1962.



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