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Lesson 6: The State of Science and Technology During The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages from the 5th to 16th centuries, Europeans invented many technologies out of necessity for warfare, agriculture, timekeeping, and everyday use. Major innovations included gunpowder, vertical windmills, mechanical clocks, improved water mills, Gothic architecture, the heavy plow, and the three-field crop rotation system. Famous inventions were the counterweight trebuchet, longbow, crossbow, full plate armor, horse collar, horseshoe, artesian well, wheelbarrow, blast furnace, hourglass, spectacles, vertical windmills, chess, oil paint, and the spinning wheel. Universities emerged in the 1100s to train professionals. However, the Black Death plague

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100 views3 pages

Lesson 6: The State of Science and Technology During The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages from the 5th to 16th centuries, Europeans invented many technologies out of necessity for warfare, agriculture, timekeeping, and everyday use. Major innovations included gunpowder, vertical windmills, mechanical clocks, improved water mills, Gothic architecture, the heavy plow, and the three-field crop rotation system. Famous inventions were the counterweight trebuchet, longbow, crossbow, full plate armor, horse collar, horseshoe, artesian well, wheelbarrow, blast furnace, hourglass, spectacles, vertical windmills, chess, oil paint, and the spinning wheel. Universities emerged in the 1100s to train professionals. However, the Black Death plague

Uploaded by

Christian Jay Cusay
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Lesson 6: The State of Science and Technology during the

Middle Ages

Science and technology in the middle ages flourished because of the need of inventions
to make life easier. In Europe, from the 5th century to the 16th century there was a radical
change in the inventions made. It was between the fall of the Western Roman empire and the
early modern era. This was a time for exploration in new ideas and ways of doing things. Europe
invented many things for wars, time-keeping, and for everyday use. These inventions may be still
used today. Europeans found that life was easier with new better inventions to help them in
everything.

The period saw major technological advances, including the adoption of gunpowder, the
invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, and greatly improved water mills,
building techniques (Gothic architecture, medieval castles), and agriculture in general (three-field
crop rotation).

Here are some of the famous inventions during Medieval times:

1. Military technologies such:


a. Counterweight trebuchet is a revolutionized medieval siege weapon which uses
counterweights and hurling of huge stones to very far distances. It was first used in
the eastern Mediterranean basin.
b. Longbow with massed, disciplined archery was used by the English against the French
during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). The Longbow was powerful' accurate
and contributed to the eventual demise of the medieval knight class.
c. Steel crossbow was the first hand-held mechanical crossbow. This European
innovation came with several different cocking aids to enhance draw power.
d. Complete Full plate armour appeared by the end of the 14th century. The armour
chain mail was made from thousands of metal rings and the armour was a long cloak
called a hauberk. Plate armour is considered the best in personal armour in terms of
body protection and showed the skills involved in working metal.

2. Agricultural Innovations such as the heavy wheeled plough, three-field system, horse
collar, the stirrup, and horseshoe were developed.
a. Heavy wheeled plough was important in the cultivation of rich, heavy, often wet soils
of Northern Europe that advanced their agricultural practices.
b. Horse collar went through multiple evolutions from the 6th to 9th centuries. It allowed
more horse pulling power, such as with heavy ploughs, while Horseshoes let horses
adapt to rocky terrain, mountains and carry heavier loads. They may have been known
to the Romans and Celts as early as 50 BC.
c. Artesian well is composed of a thin rod with a hard iron cutting edge placed in a
borehole and repeatedly struck with a hammer. Underground water pressure forces
the water up the hole without pumping. Artesian wells are named as such for Artois,
a region in France, where the first was drilled by Carthusian monks in 1126.
d. Wheelbarrow is used in construction, mining, and farming for carrying materials from
place to place. Wheelbarrows appeared in stories and pictures between 1170 and 1250
in North-western Europe.

3. Other inventions
a. Blast furnace or cast iron first appeared in Middle Europe around 1 15().
b. Hourglass was made from a dependable, affordable and accurate measure of time,
believed to be a medieval innovation first documented in Siena, Italy Mechanical clocks
is a European innovation, these weight-driven clocks were used primarily in clock
towers.
c. Vertical windmills is a pivot able post' mill efficient at grinding grain or draining water.
'The first mention of one is from Yorkshire in England in 1185.
d. Spectacles is composed of convex lenses to help far-sighted people to see.
e. Chess- it is said that the earliest predecessors of the game originated from India, in
the 6th century AD and spread through Persia and the Muslim world to Europe. The
game evolved to its current form in the 15th century.
f. Mirrors were made in 1180 by Alexander Neckham who said "Take away the lead
which is behind the glass and there will be no image of the one looking in”.
g. Oil paint was invented by a Flemish painter Jan van Eyck around 1410 who introduced
a stable oil mixture. Oil was used to add details to tempera paintings.
h. A tide mill is a special type of water mill driven by tidal rise and fall. A dam with a
conduit is created across a suitable tidal inlet, or a section of river estuary is made
into a reservoir. As the tide comes in, it enters the mill pond through a one way gate,
and this gate closes automatically when the tide begins to fall. When the tide is low
enough, the stored water can be released to turn a water wheel. The earliest
excavated tide mill, dating from 787 AD, is the Nendrum Monastery mill on an island
in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.
i. The spinning wheel was probably invented in India, though its origins are ambiguous.
It reached Europe via the Middle East in the European Middle Ages. It replaced the
earlier method of hand spinning, in which the individual fibres were drawn out of a
mass of wool held on a stick, or distaff, twisted together to form a continuous strand,
and wound on a second stick, or spindle.

By 1000s, the first universities were developed — they trained the middle class of the
cities in theology, medicine, and law. By 1100s, modern universities emerged throughout Western
Europe such as Oxford and Cambridge in England.

In the 14th century, Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was underway. A plague called Black
Death came, it wiped out so many lives it affected the entire system. It brought a sudden end to
the previous period of massive scientific change. The plague killed a lot of people in Europe,
especially in the crowded areas of the towns, where the heart of innovations lay. Quarantine
technique was established, initially a 40-day-period, the Quarantine was introduced by the
Republic of Ragusa to prevent the spreading of diseases like the Black Death. Venice began
quarantines, then the practice spread around in Europe.
Reference:

Aldea, K.I., Caronan, H. P., Candido, M.B. (2018), Science, Technology, and Society (OBE
Ready). Philippines. Books ATbp. Publishing Corp.

https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Science-and-Technology-in-the-Middle-Ages-PKCUDAQYVC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology#:~:text=The%20period%20saw%20major
%20technological,three%2Dfield%20crop%20rotation).

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