Reviews for History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times - Donald Routledge Hill - Paperback

The average rating for History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times - Donald Routledge Hill - Paperback based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-08 00:00:00 Luigi Fagioli This is a solid technical summary of various developments in Medieval and Classical Technology. Focusing almost exclusively on the technical details of how ancient structures and devices were built. It quickly moves over civil engineering (large static structures), mechanical engineering (large devices with moving parts, water raising machines, water wheels and so on) and Fine Technology (including things like Astrolabes, automata and clocks). Almost half the book is on civil engineering detailing how various ancient and medieval structures were built. The emphasis is on more utilitarians structures like roads and bridges with little time given to more ornamental features like temples and cathedrals. The section on medieval Muslim water clocks and associated mechanisms is more extensive than in other such overview histories of technology. This seems to reflect the authors expertise and previous research. Sections on other kinds of clocks are severely curtailed. The social and historical context for these developments is minimal, but attention is paid to dating the structures and giving some sense of their overall function in the societies that used them. The section on water power seems to underplay the extent to which the Romans made use of water mills. Reflecting a view of ancient technology that has since been revised with greater emphasis on Roman use of water mills and water wheels in mining etc. The section on fine technology is somewhat superseded by later developments in research around things such as the Antikytheria mechanism where later radiographic and photometric studies have changed and vastly increased our knowledge of the technical details and intellectual context (written inscriptions on the device) of the machine (given how little was initially known this is still strictly limited). Since these developments occurred long after the book was written this is no reflection on the author, but it seemed worth noting.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-15 00:00:00 Naveed Wali Let's start with the good. If you are interested in a survey of the technical capabilities of engineers in Europe and the Middle East from the Hellenistic world to the High Middle Ages, this is a superb resource. Dr. Hill covers techniques of water transport, construction of buildings, facility with fine machines such as clocks, and much more, all in a relatively slim volume. He gives an appreciation of the state of the research, notes areas of contention, and renders what I take to be sound judgments based on his acumen not only as a historian but as a trained engineer himself. He is concise but thorough, focused but informative. He does not stray into social history, confining himself strictly to the technical questions, so his book has an admirable directness that compares favorably to a lot of books I have read on classical and medieval technology. Now to the bad. Hill is not a good writer. Let's be clear about this. Among the things at which he is bad are introductions, conclusions, and transitions (though this is not an exhaustive list). He is not generally unclear, but his prose has no style to it whatsoever - he writes like an engineer. Where he is unclear, which is thankfully rare, it's not due to his use of technical jargon (which is mostly decipherable for us non-engineers through context), but rather because he just occasionally writes a sentence that defies any conventional understanding of grammar or style. I'm sure they made sense to him when he wrote them, but the worst of these (thankfully rare) clunkers simply caused me to stop and stare in admiration at how badly they were written. Read this book if you are interested in the subject. Don't read it for fun. It is not fun. It's not a horror-show, but it's not "entertaining" in any fashion. To be fair, I doubt it was intended to be; the book does what it sets out to do quite admirably. Still.