• This is too general: "Technology of the textiles industry along with banking systems emerged and progressed."
• ideally, say something about when, how and why
• this is a good relatively short response:  "In this chapter the authors discuss the rise of the Medieval city which seems as a precursor to modern cities.  I wonder, however, if the people truly liked living in this bustling cities rather than the open land they used to farm.  In the farm the authors describe the cities as being disease ridden and the streets filthy with blood and entrails from the butchers.  They also describe the living conditions as being small cramped and rather dirty as well.  I understand that the city provided more financial freedom and an escape from the feudal system but with half of the population living in the cities I wonder how many of them truly preferred living in these deplorable conditions."

Note the quote on p. 178 from Robert Lopez: "Wool yarn... was coarser and cheaper; there was no incentive to invest in a costly machine while it was possible to put out the wool to underpaid spinstresses."  What changed that calculation?
how did people decided whether they were interested in new machines to do a task

• would machines reduce quality?
• is there a mass market for low cost goods, or is the opportunity for international trade in luxury goods
• what is the cost of labor
• can you calculate what profit you will make from a new machine (bookkeeping)
  
• buying a new machine takes money
  

Climate change:

• a merchant brings raw materials to people who work at home (spinning and weaving) and picks up the product
• if the merchant sold the wool to the weaver and then bought the finished product then the weaver took a lot of the risk
• introduction of the spinning wheel, which could spin thread twice as fast as with a drop spindle
• both this and the metal carding comb increased production but decreased quality
• (p. 178 describes tapestry making as similar to darning)
• water power was not yet applied to textiles except a specialized process for silk (throwing or plying) and fulling
• cotton production increased Italy, using different forms of organization because it was a low cost product sold to a mass market
• cotton and linen became more available
  

• ancient records are full of lists--still the system in 1211 (p. 184)
  
• manors increasingly kept accounts of receipts and expenses
• merchants used temporary partnerships or owned shares of a project from the beginning of the commercial revolution
• shared ownership of an ongoing company because common in 13th century Italy
  
• early 14th century invention of double entry bookkeeping--enter each transaction both into a list of material acquired and onto a list of money spent
• this makes it easy to keep track of the worth of the company; you will pay more attention to profit if you can easily calculate it
  
• 14th century bill of exchange: a promise to pay a particular amount of money on a future date in a particular place, again with interest hidden in exchange rates and fees
• spread of Hindu (Arabic) numerals

Master masons who built cathedrals and large buildings

• not highly educated, but did use geometry
• engineering was done by rules of thumb, not engineering calculations
• example of a modern rule of thumb for the joists supporting a timber floor:  Take the span in feet, divide by 2 and add 1 for hardwood, or add 2 for softwood. The result is the joist depth in inches. eg 10' joist needs to be 6" hardwood or 7" softwood.

• cast iron has more carbon and melts at a lower temperature
• can be made into wrought iron in a second furnace that heats it and blows air on it
• steel is actually intermediate, but techniques were not yet invented for stopping at the right point
• this made possible very primitive cannon and handguns

Invention of the clock

•  monasteries needed timekeeping beyond the sundial to manage a demanding schedule of prayers--the Gies's say water clocks were sufficient for that need
• first clocks were not practical timekeepers but models of the motion of the sun, moon, and planets
  
• how to divide up movement evenly: verge and foliot escapement invented probably in the second half of the 13th century
• city clocks became a source of pride
• astronomers divided days into equal hours, rural people used variable hours--12 hours between sunrise and sunset
•  but time was still based on local noon (8 minutes difference between Charleston and Greenville)
  
• equal hours made it possible to begin to think about time as money

improvements in road building and ships, with more useful compasses (but the problem is you need to know where you are more than what direction you are going)
spread of Greek knowledge and some efforts to improve on it

Astrology