Medieval early modern was the development Clock from Salisbury Cathedral ca. 1386.

Clock from Salisbury Cathedral ca. 1386

One of the most significant development of the Medieval era was the development of economies where water and wind power were more significant than animal and human muscle power.

[41]:38 Most water and wind power was used for milling grain. Water power was also used for blowing air in blast furnace, pulping rags for paper making and for felting wool. 


The Domesday Book recorded 5,624 water mills in Great Britain in 1086, being about one per thirty families.

[41]  The Muslim caliphates united in trade large areas that had previously traded little, including the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the Iberian Peninsula, and parts of the Indian subcontinent.

1.East Asia

2.Indian subcontinent

3.Islamic world

The science and technology of previous empires in the region, including the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman empires, were inherited by the Muslim world, where Arabic replaced Syriac, Persian and Greek as the lingua franca of the region. Significant advances were made in the region during the Islamic Golden Age (8th-16th centuries).

The Arab Agricultural Revolution occurred during this period. It was a transformation in agriculture from the 8th to the 13th century in the Islamic region of the Old World.

The economy established by Arab and other Muslim traders across the Old World enabled the diffusion of many crops and farming techniques throughout the Islamic world, as well as the adaptation of crops and techniques from and to regions outside it.

[42] Advances were made in animal husbandry, irrigation, and farming, with the help of new technology such as the windmill. These changes made agriculture much more productive, supporting population growth, urbanisation, and increased stratification of society.

Muslim engineers in the Islamic world made wide use of hydropower, along with early uses of tidal power, wind power,

[43] fossil fuels such as petroleum, and large factory complexes (tiraz in Arabic).

[44] A variety of industrial mills were employed in the Islamic world, including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, and tide mills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation.

[45] The earliest paper mills appeared in Abbasid-era Baghdad during 794–795.

Muslim engineers also employed water turbines and gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.

[46] Many of these technologies were transferred to medieval Europe.

[47] Wind-powered machines used to grind grain and pump water, the windmill and wind pump, first appeared in what are now Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan by the 9th century.

[48][49][50][51] 

They were used to grind grains and draw up water, and used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries.[52] Sugar mills first appeared in the medieval Islamic world.

[53] They were first driven by watermills, and then windmills from the 9th and 10th centuries in what are today Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

[54] Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through Al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted across Europe. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century.

The Muslim world adopted papermaking from Abbasid-era Baghdad . 

[55] The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via predominantly Islamic countries,[56] where formulas for pure potassium nitrate were developed.

[57][58] The spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by the early 11th century.

[59] It was later widely adopted in Europe, where it was adapted into the spinning jenny, a key device during the Industrial Revolution.

[60] The crankshaft was invented by Al-Jazari in 1206,

[61][62] and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine and automatic controls.

[63][64] The camshaft was also first described by Al-Jazari in 1206.[65]

Early programmable machines were also invented in the Muslim world. The first music sequencer, a programmable musical instrument, was an automated flute player invented by the Banu Musa brothers, described in their Book of Ingenious Devices, in the 9th century.

[66][67] In 1206, Al-Jazari invented programmable automata/robots. He described four automaton musicians, including two drummers operated by a programmable drum machine, where the drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns.

[68] The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari, was an early programmable analog computer.

[69][70][71]  In the Ottoman Empire, a practical impulse steam turbine was invented in 1551 by Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf in Ottoman Egypt. He described a method for rotating a spit by means of a jet of steam playing on rotary vanes around the periphery of a wheel. Known as a steam jack, a similar device for rotating a spit was also later described by John Wilkins in 1648.

[72][73] Medieval Europe

While medieval technology has been long depicted as a step backwards in the evolution of Western technology, a generation of medievalists (like the American historian of science Lynn White) stressed from the 1940s onwards the innovative character of many medieval techniques. Genuine medieval contributions include for example mechanical clocks, spectacles and vertical windmills.


 Medieval ingenuity was also displayed in the invention of seemingly inconspicuous items like the watermark or the functional button. In navigation, the foundation to the subsequent age of exploration was laid by the introduction of pintle-and-gudgeon rudders, lateen sails, the dry compass, the horseshoe and the astrolabe.

Significant advances were also made in military technology with the development of plate armour, steel crossbows and cannon. The Middle Ages are perhaps best known for their architectural heritage: While the invention of the rib vault and pointed arch gave rise to the high rising Gothic style, the ubiquitous medieval fortifications gave the era the almost proverbial title of the 'age of castles'.

Papermaking, a 2nd-century Chinese technology, was carried to the Middle East when a group of Chinese papermakers were captured in the 8th century.

[74] Papermaking technology was spread to Europe by the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.

[75] A paper mill was established in Sicily in the 12th century. In Europe the fiber to make pulp for making paper was obtained from linen and cotton rags. Lynn Townsend White Jr. credited the spinning wheel with increasing the supply of rags, which led to cheap paper, which was a factor in the development of printing.

[76] Engineering, mathematics

Before the development of modern engineering, mathematics was used by artisans and craftsmen, such as millwrights, clock makers, instrument makers and surveyors. Aside from these professions, universities were not believed to have had much practical significance to technology.

[77]

A standard reference for the state of mechanical arts during the Renaissance is given in the mining engineering treatise De re metallica (1556), which also contains sections on geology, mining and chemistry. De re metallica was the standard chemistry reference for the next 180 years.

[77] Among the water powered mechanical devices in use were ore stamping mills, forge hammers, blast bellows, and suction pumps.

Due to the casting of cannon, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The blast furnace had been used in China since the 4th century BC.

[78] The invention of the movable cast metal type printing press, whose pressing mechanism was adapted from an olive screw press, (c. 1441) lead to a tremendous increase in the number of books and the number of titles published. Movable ceramic type had been used in China for a few centuries and woodblock printing dated back even further.

[79]

The era is marked by such profound technical advancements like linear perceptivity, double shell domes or Bastion fortresses. 

Note books of the Renaissance artist-engineers such as Taccola and Leonardo da Vinci give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied.

 Architects and engineers were inspired by the structures of Ancient Rome, and men like Brunelleschi created the large dome of Florence Cathedral as a result. He was awarded one of the first patents ever issued in order to protect an ingenious crane he designed to raise the large masonry stones to the top of the structure.

Military technology developed rapidly with the widespread use of the cross-bow and ever more powerful artillery, as the city-states of Italy were usually in conflict with one another. Powerful families like the Medici were strong patrons of the arts and sciences. Renaissance science spawned the Scientific Revolution; science and technology began a cycle of mutual advancement.

Age of Exploration

An improved sailing ship, the (nau or carrack), enabled the Age of Exploration with the European colonization of the Americas, epitomized by Francis Bacon's New Atlantis.


 Pioneers like Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Magellan and Christopher Columbus explored the world in search of new trade routes for their goods and contacts with Africa, India and China to shorten the journey compared with traditional routes overland. 

They produced new maps and charts which enabled following mariners to explore further with greater confidence. Navigation was generally difficult, however, owing to the problem of longitude and the absence of accurate chronometers.

 European powers rediscovered the idea of the civil code, lost since the time of the Ancient Greeks.

Pre-Industrial Revolution

The stocking frame, which was invented in 1598, increased a knitter's number of knots per minute from 100 to 1000.[80]

Mines were becoming increasingly deep and were expensive to drain with horse powered bucket and chain pumps and wooden piston pumps. Some mines used as many as 500 horses.

 Horse-powered pumps were replaced by the Savery steam pump (1698) and the Newcomen steam engine (1712).


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