Renaissance of The 12th Century - Technology

Technology

During the High Middle Ages in Europe, there was increased innovation in means of production, leading to economic growth.

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.

  • The earliest written record of a windmill is from Yorkshire, England, dated 1185.
  • Paper manufacture began in Spain around 1100, and from there it spread to France and Italy during the 12th century.
  • The spinning wheel was brought to Europe (probably from the Islamic world) in the 13th century.
  • The magnetic compass aided navigation, attested in Europe in the late 12th century.
  • Eyeglasses were invented in Italy in the late 1280s.
  • The astrolabe returned to Europe via Islamic Spain.
  • Leonardo of Pisa introduces Hindu numerals to Europe with his book Liber Abaci in 1202.
  • The West's oldest known depiction of a stern-mounted rudder can be found on church carvings dating to around 1180.

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Famous quotes containing the word technology:

    “One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”
    —Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)

    “Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
    —Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)

    “Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body—we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!”
    —Max Frisch (1911–1991)