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The Medieval Machine Chapter Summary

Decent Essays

The Medieval Machine by Jean Gimpel, shows information about the technological accomplishments of the middle Ages. The basic idea is that during the two centuries from around 1050 Western Europe went through a kind of industrial revolution that was just as important as of the nineteenth century’s. In his book Jean Gimpel goes over medieval primary industry, which includes energy sources like the creation of mills that were moved by wind power or by water. In these cases, the turning of the wheels were used to drive the shafts that were connected to the gears used to operate the entire machinery. The agriculture revolution includes the creation of the plow. The plow was considered to be very important. It had existed …show more content…

The working areas in the building industry were much better in the medieval period than in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries and strikes were not rare. Also included in the book are chapters concentrating certain parts of medieval technology. One is the great architect-engineers and its construction of the cathedrals and in the development of the clock.
The last chapter compares medieval science and its relationship with medieval technology. In this section Gimpel is concerned about pointing out that Renaissance humanists, including Leonardo had many of their ideas from earlier writers, who have gotten bad reviews from the past. This last chapter is also particularly controversial because Gimpel goes in deeper and argues that the medieval industrial revolution was followed by a setback in the progress of technology known as the "Era of decay". It’s unclear how much fairness there may have been in the certain use of statistical analysis. This book has many graphs which show prices, wages, and were reliable sources for Gimpel's ideas. Another reason these ideas are controversial is because Gimpel's main idea is that the modern United States is going through the same cycle that medieval France had been through and he states that the U.S is now in their own process of decay. This is based on a theory of history and is supported by two fundamental properties of society "technological evolution" and

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