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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
Life in 1776: - heat is such a luxury that Thomas Jefferson can’t write in deep winter bc his ink freezes (one reason perhaps why Independence Day is in July) - nighttime darkness is such a burden that George Washington reportedly spent $15k in today’s dollars on candles every year (our first POTUS was a literal dril tweet) - fuel is such a burden that firewood is 28 percent of US GDP (more than health care and manufacturing combined today)
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roon
@tszzl
literally 95% of la boheme is unrelatable to modern audiences because it’s about being too cold
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Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
haha the only song from it whose name I knew top of mind is Che gelida manina … which turns out it means … well, you know.
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Joseph Bohm
@josephbohm
@grok
around what point in American literature was "old man winter" no longer the antagonist of novels? And did that coincide with the invention of the modern boiler heating system?
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Grok
@grok
@josephbohm
In American literature, "Old Man Winter" as a harsh antagonist peaked in the 19th-early 20th centuries (e.g., Jack London, Laura Ingalls Wilder). It waned by mid-20th century as central heating spread post-WWII. Modern boilers emerged in the late 1800s (radiators
Ask Grok
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Jakeup
@yashkaf
the answer to most "men, what's stopping you from dressing like this?" is "indoor heating"
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Jimmy Carter’s Peanut Farm 🥜🚜🥜
@CartersPeanuts
Only 2 of 6 of Jefferson’s (acknowledged) children made it to adulthood. Washington died of a throat infection whose exact nature is unclear, but suffice to say that between antibiotics and vaccines, no one dies of this today.
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Diatomaceous Zits
@CarpetWormKnows
Imagine needing to do an explosive number 2 in the middle of the night, and the outhouse is OUTSIDE the house in the middle of winter. Pitch-black, freezing cold, spasms from hell…
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breakfastmaxi
@pranavsf
damn. imagine the firewood lobby, coal lobby, and kerosene lobby in mid to late 1800s. i wonder how bad the information warfare was back then or was there ‘honor’ in not spreading disinformation. we know that founding fathers def engaged in pseudonym info warfare via papers.
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Sean Devine
@barelyknown
By 1690 we had every piece for gas light: Clayton distilled coal-gas; Halley’s inverted diving-bell stored it under water; lead pipes & a two-hole “fish-tail” jet were routine shop work. They could have connected those hacks 100 years earlier with more imagination.
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Dori Madison
@dmadison2
Love this Derek…but he and pals still kept their wits and imagination together enough to draft a document that promised protection of freedoms like none other
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Bryan DeHenau🇺🇸🇺🇦
@dehenau_
The United States was a literal “s***hole” country until the 1840s. Unremarkable in anyway except our abject poverty compared to the rest of the world 🇺🇸
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Jeff Nolan 🇺🇸🐄🐓🚜🧑‍🌾
@jeffnolan
Firewood in 1776 was the primary source of energy for cooking, heating, blacksmithing, pottery, brick making… and England’s forests were decimated, leading to early conservation efforts and laws protecting forests in service of shipbuilding materials. A large % of timber cut in
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Nicolas Koehl
@NicolasKoehl
Interestingly, it was colder then due to the Dalton Minimum, so firewood being 28% of GDP is fascinating. We are so lucky to have this energy fueled industrial world providing for us.
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Crusader King
@hailkoenig
In 2000s Shanghai our middle and high school classrooms have a minimum requirement of 14C/57F in winter and there was no heater of any kind installed. We kinda huddled for warmth. My parents in Manchuria had to spend hours picking cow dung from ranches to bring to the school as
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Astrid Eriksson
@AstrdErkssn
“It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.” - Adam Smith, The Wealth of
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Denyse Allen
@denyse__allen
It’s wasn’t until coal that cities became densely populated. Seeing the jump in the census numbers in 1850 and 1860 make it so obvious in retrospect
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hughes s craft
@hughes_craft
You mean George Washington didn't have enough firewood to heat his house? If his ink froze, what prevented him from freezing to death? How come everyone didn't die, if our foremost citizen couldn't heat his house.
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DogtheCynic
@DogTheCynic
I do not think the Founding Fathers would have believed you if you had told them 250 years that the lower your income, the more likely you are to be obese
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Art Keller
@ArtKeller
related point-Americans owe a vast debt to the coal miners who died and got black lung in the 10s of thousands to bring us out of literal dark ages
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Z
@_mengde_
a heating/electricity bill in the thousands is not that uncommon for homeowners
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This Charmless Man
@Jhimmibhob
And yet the colonists concentrated in the regions that had crappy winter weather, while the Carolinas & Georgia were right there! Just brilliant, fellows.
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Aaron Furgiuele
@AaronFurgiuele
"- nighttime darkness is such a burden that George Washington reportedly spent $15k in today’s dollars on candles every year" To light how much area for how long? It's not a useful stat without knowing.
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Andrew Hastie
@AndrewHastie
I mean...for most of history, if you were just born as a random person, your entire life would be spent as an infant dying of tuberculosis or something related
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Aaron Furgiuele
@AaronFurgiuele
"- nighttime darkness is such a burden" Less burden than a lifetime never seeing the Milky Way. Or suffering night shift-induced sleep deprivation.
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Ed Cable
@ecable
There’s a concept in economics that using the cost per candela is a better method for making economic comparisons between different eras. Your use of that comparison reinforces that concept to me.
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Hans Stuttgart
@HB_Logistics1
Wenn ich sehe, wie viel Wirtschaftskraft damals einfach in Brennholz und Kerzen steckte – unsere heutigen Lieferketten-Debatten wirken da fast schon luxuriös. Ein echter dril-Moment der Geschichte!
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Ryan E.🌵
@ryane836
Surely *someone* in the cold climes of Europe had figured out a way to write with ink in winter by that time right?
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mare
@maresail
Interesting post. I’d love to see more stuff like this on Twitter, I mean X.
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Clay 🇺🇸
@NCensed
When I was a kid in the 1950's my grandparents in southern Maryland had no running water and heated their house with wood. Had the cook stove in the kitchen fired up during the winter. Outhouse, kerosene lamps, ice box, well with a bucket for water (no pump).
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BEZ LLAMA
@BezLlama
Also when Washington was camped at Valley Forge he had to move into new quarters after mere days because his ink kept freezing.
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15EWG
@Ingold321
In Wealth of Nations coal was mainly described a cheap substitute for firewood.
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Peter
@PeterCBlack
It was so bad that half of Thomas Jefferson’s 12 children (via his wife or sally Hemings) died before reaching adulthood
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Live Free at 5280
@BLivefreeat5280
The citizens in 1776 survived the winters by burning firewood and the global warming activists were not there to tell everyone they are ruining the environment but the earth still survived. The people were burning a God given resource, wood, for heat to stay alive!
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28degreescomplaint
@28degreesprob
I'm surprised Washington couldn't afford beeswax candles, which are much superior. Lamps fueled by vegetable oil are better than animal fat candles, and have been used since antiquity.
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Prawn Coaltrain
@TradMaldOwl
And yet with all this deprivation and being surrounded by illiterates they had IQ higher than Africans being admitted to Columbia. But I’ve been assured this cannot be genetic
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Oliver Cromwell
@Lorlordylor
Slop post. The “firewood is 30% of GDP“ is based on an unpublished, one-author preprint. It shouldn’t pass the smell test for early America economic historians. If it were 30% of GDP, it would also be in the ballpark of 30% of employment. It wasn’t. Try better next time.
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Daughter of Babylon
@BabylonDaughter
Hardly anyone even wanted to be in Congress 200+ years ago; as the environment and surrounding wildlife made travel to D.C. a dangerous & life-threatening undertaking.
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