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Show HN: The Roman Industrial Revolution that could have been

by miki_tyler on 6/11/25, 11:51 PM with 82 comments

• by ilinx on 6/12/25, 1:53 AM

  Comics aren’t typically my genre, but I love this concept. I’m not really qualified to comment on the historical plausibility of anything, but I did have one thought: In many cases there were more complicated reasons why a technology took so long to develop. For example, the difficult thing about wheeled carts wasn’t inventing the wheel, it was the ability to manufacture a straight axle long enough. It might be cool to see some of that explored. For example, the steam engine you teased would be really interesting to me because it necessitates a boiler that can withstand that kind of pressure. Or, I’d also probably enjoy it if it took some liberties and just had fun with the concept. It’s the sort of thing I daydream about all the time. I just think the idea is fun. I don’t know how much it’s been done before, but it’s a cool idea! I really think I would read this.

• by adrianmonk on 6/12/25, 2:31 AM

  The concept reminds me of that story from Reddit that was going to get turned into a movie but never did:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome,_Sweet_Rome

  I think this is the original Reddit thread:

  https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_de...

• by prennert on 6/12/25, 7:36 AM

  You probably found it already when doing your background search, but there is an acoup blog post about why the Industrial Revolution did not happen during the Roman period: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

  There might be some inspiration in there to guide the story towards breaking some of the chicken and egg problems. Maybe the Romans find a way (and reason) to exploit the English coal deposits and start encountering the same problems the English did eventually: how to pump water out of shafts.

• by tene80i on 6/12/25, 5:06 AM

  It’s an interesting project for assessing the capabilities of current AI models. I would never read it, because I’m not interested in creative work produced even in part by a computer model, when there is so much out there that is top-to-bottom the expression of a human self. I would rather see your unpolished prose or your amateur sketches than something a computer has generated, or even polished.

  I do understand that it allows people to be creative in areas they don’t have skill. I can imagine sensibilities changing over time, even if just between generations, in the way Douglas Adams described. Or maybe, as this sort of thing becomes rampant, people will seek even more the authenticity of human craft, despite / because of all its flaws, the challenge of doing it well, and the awe and human connection that results.

• by ggm on 6/12/25, 12:40 AM

  'lest darkness fall' by L Sprague De Camp..1939

• by Tagbert on 6/12/25, 3:45 AM

  “To Turn the Tide” by S.M. Sterling is a story positing a small group of modern people transported to the time of Marcus Aurelius and bringing modern technology ideas to prevent the Germans from degrading the Roman Empire. They don’t really try to explain how the time travel happens. It’s done in the first few pages with out explanation.

  https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Tide-S-M-Stirling/dp/1982193530

• by jcranmer on 6/12/25, 3:53 AM

  > Grateful for any thoughts on pacing, historical plausibility, or character depth.

  Originally, I thought you were suggesting an endogenous Roman industrial revolution, which, no, that's not historically plausible (see https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... for details as to why). But on a closer reread, I found that you're talking instead about Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court-style introduction of the Industrial Revolution to the past. Which... probably still no?

  There's a few factors that make Roman Industrial Revolution unlikely. It's dubious that the Romans had the technology to make a working pressure cylinder necessary for a steam engine--that requires some degree of precision engineering that I don't think they had. But there's other missing technologies: for examples, the Romans lack the spinning wheel (it would be invented ~1000 years later), and even more importantly, their looms likely aren't up to the production capacity that automatic thread production would enable. It's not implausible that this is part of future-tech-transfer, but getting this tech transferred would require a decent amount of specialized knowledge not easily available to either person here.

  More importantly, I don't think the Roman economy is really at a stage that can handle an industrial revolution. Most production is still relying essentially on local production. A shortage of wool workers isn't an "oh no, we have too much wool, how ever are we going to turn it into yarn?" problem; rather, it's a "whelp, we've got nobody to deal with all the sheep" problem.

  The final note is that your plan for the inevitable old-versus-new conflict is... well, "industrial revolution turns everyone into Revolutionary American liberals" is a summary of that idea, and I don't think that's anywhere near an accurate read of what a Roman reaction to an industrial revolution. I'd go into more detail, but I don't trust my own knowledge of the 1st century Roman Empire sociopolitical structure is accurate enough to model what it would look like in detail.

• by ilamont on 6/12/25, 4:35 AM

  Robert Silverberg wrote something in this vein in the 90s, Roma Eterna. I don’t remember details about industrialization but by the last chapter Roman civilization had reached the rocket age.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_Eterna

• by quuxplusone on 6/12/25, 5:32 PM

  FWIW:

  (1) The art style is 100% "WikiHow meme", when I think you were probably (or should have been) shooting for "ligne claire". It's... distracting, at least. The facial expressions in particular are WikiHow-style.

  (2) I can't quite read that "handwritten note" on page 14, nor is it explained to the reader how the protagonist figures out what date it is ("A.D.") for the Roman he thinks he's time-travel-talking to. Nor why he immediately jumps to time travel paradoxes; wouldn't it be obvious at first that this is, at weirdest, some sort of MMAcevedo situation, not a magic time travel communicator? Or is that my HN bias showing?

• by don-code on 6/12/25, 1:51 AM

  I love the first issue and went to follow the site's RSS feed, but the four posts on the feed seem like spam? They each start with "Leverage agile frameworks to provide a robust synopsis..."

• by rbanffy on 6/12/25, 12:37 PM

  I remember reading, a long time ago, in a science fiction magazine I can’t remember the name, a story about the first contact with aliens and a current-age Roman Empire. The single point of change was that, in that timeline, Jesus got a beating and was released. As a result, Christianity became a minor religion in the empire, which never fell, there was no Middle Ages and the world enjoyed a Pax Romana since then. An interesting read.

• by tomrod on 6/12/25, 2:26 AM

  Rome Sweet Rome comes to mind. Looking forward to the concept.

• by satvikpendem on 6/12/25, 3:55 AM

  I like this series from ToldInStone about how an Industrial Revolution was not remotely possible from the Roman perspective [0] but I like what you've done with the comic.

  [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uqPlOAH85o

• by Animats on 6/12/25, 3:19 AM

  I want to see how he makes a non-toy steam engine using Roman technology.

• by notavalleyman on 6/12/25, 2:30 AM

  How much of the part 1 pdf was made by a person versus chatgpt if you don't mind me asking?

  The MC's hair colour and stubble change between the first three frames and everything has that yellow sheen.

• by cellis on 6/12/25, 3:02 AM

  Pretty good. Reminds me of the Sword of Jupiter (Imperium series).

• by 90s_dev on 6/12/25, 2:25 AM

  I always wondered if Archimedes could have realized more applications of his lever and invented the gear and kicked off the industrial revolution early.

• by kristopolous on 6/12/25, 2:02 AM

  I've always wondered if China was actually closer

• by huangjingyun on 6/12/25, 3:29 AM

  做不出来的，没有牛顿，没有瓦特，没有达芬奇，就没有所谓的工业革命

• by Findeton on 6/12/25, 2:33 AM

  Shameless plug as AUC calendar is mentioned: https://aburbecondita.com

  Years since the founding of the City (Rome), Ab Urbe Condita. Although during Imperial times they used years since the current emperor started his mandate, ehich could be confusing as sometimes there would be three emperors in a year.

  Btw I loved the comic and I will anxiously wait for the next edition.