Many historians mention the medieval period as the “Dark Ages”, a period when reason and logic were sidelined with belief and religion. However, the late medieval period offered a great advancement in technology, including great inventors. After the Renaissance in the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a big change in new inventions, innovations, and economic growth.
There are even some inventions that we still use today, that are from the Middle Ages. Like the typewriter, clock, gunpowder, the piano and, many more but, there were still a lot of things they didn’t have during this period.
These technical advances led to things that we even still use today. Some examples are clocks, gunpowder, wind and water mills, spectacles, architecture, and agriculture, they even created the first flushable toilet! You wouldn’t think they would be able to come up with these inventions back in the 1400s but they did struggle with some things like transportation and communication. Even though the technology didn’t help their transportation because they obviously didn’t have a lot of resources for cars.
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They could only travel twenty miles in one day because all they had were carriages and the horses had to rest. So it would take forever to travel from one place to another.
Also, they struggled with communication because They didn’t have a mailman or a (top 10 inventions in the Middle Ages, litverse.com) delivering service. They had a dove carrying a message that they wrote to the person and hoped that it would get there, but most likely it didn’t. Technology also helped during the war. Gunpowder was made during this period so it was being used for handguns and cannons.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the main technology being used to attack castles was a cannon which did not develop until late in that period. Also, The cannon and handgun are both things we used in wars not too long ago around the 1700s and 1800s, but we use handguns more commonly than we do cannons anymore. The first gunpowder weapons were made in China, but since the formula, as we know it hadn’t been perfected, gunpowder burned too slowly to explode. ( Medieval European technology, sjsu.edu)
Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. He created the geometric compass, the thermoscope, the pendulum clock, and many more. We also still use some of his inventions today. The compass was made in 1597, it had two legs, each having seven proportional lines, joined by a quadrant marked with four separate scales.
He made the thermoscope in 1593 he made an invention that relied on the changes in the relative density of materials as they are heated or cooled. He also made the pendulum clock in 1602, Galileo was intrigued by the periodic motion of pendulums and began to publish studies.
He discovered that the amplitude of the pendulum’s swing had no effect on the period of time it takes to complete one cycle a property called isochronism. (Technology in the Middle Ages, thefinertimes.com) In conclusion, the Middle Ages period was a big technological advance. The impact of technology on an is always unexpected because technologies never end.
They lead to new technologies or new uses. Technology also helped medieval society and culture to learn new ways to improve their livelihood and sustain for a longer Period. The wide variety of technologies and scientific discoveries produced by humanity has led to the building and development of the civilizations of each age, stimulated economic growth, raised people’s standards of living, encouraged cultural development, and had a tremendous impact on religion, thought, and many other human activities.
