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Comment by qikInNdOutReply

So why did it not win? The answer.

Slaves. Slaves in the mines, slaves in the home, slave driving the rowboats and all services.

Labour was cheap and plenty, also intelligent - with entrenched "automation" like this, no inventions are actually needed. Which goes to show, that technology stratifyng society strangles itself, by producing a servant class outcompeting all technology. Give it a hundred years and the "natural" order of things seaps into relgion and culture such that to perform science is to dare the gods.

PS: There are tons of good alternate history .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt

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