Mike Carrell wrote:
Most of Edison's inventions could have been built anytime in the Iron Age by someone "who knew what to do".
I think that is somewhat exaggerated. Edison's improved stock market ticker and his phonograph required precision parts and advanced metallurgy that were not available in Europe before ~1400. They could have been made by the ancient Greeks, however, as shown by the Antikythera computing device. The Antikythera level of precision manufacturing was not rediscovered in Europe until roughly 1700 according to what I have read. I expect moveable type printing (1450) was the first high-precision European invention good enough to allow Edison's research.
The Chinese or Japanese might have made the Antikythera computing device or Harrison's chronometers around 1500 or 1600, judging by their printing, miniature sculptures such as netsuke, and precision gunmaking.
I do not know about other ancient civilizations.
Of course it is difficult to imagine what sort of substitutions or other techniques might have been used to overcome problems with precision or metallurgy. Any technology can be improved -- even stone age tools. Jared Diamond made an interesting comment about this in "Guns Germs and Steel." He pointed out that the remaining primitive tribes who still use stone tools (or what might be called "modern Stone Age families") use materials and techniques far advanced over ice-age stone tools.
- Jed
