• Caveman@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    You go fire - > kiln - > charcoal - > furnace - > steel and copper - > permanent magnets - > electric motor.

    The tricky thing is that you need a naturally occurring magnet (lodestone) to make the first steel magnet. If you happen to have a magnet on you you can do heat treatment of the steel, rub the magnet to align the atoms and get yourself a better magnet.

    After you got the electric motor you both have a generator and a motor easy peasy.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      You can use chemical batteries to create electric current without magnets.

      You can also create weak permanent magnets by just hitting iron with a hammer.

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Looked it up, this looks the easiest to tech up. You still have to heat it up to a dark red color, align it north to south and then hammer. It uses the earth’s magnetic field to magnetise.

        Then tech up to stronger steel magnets.

    • Etterra@discuss.online
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      12 days ago

      So you have any idea how hard it is to make wire consistent enough to make the windings? There’s a reason that wire wasn’t really a thing until the 1700s at the earliest.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      The wire part of that isn’t trivial. They were pulling wires in the middle ages for holding armor together, but high volume and specialization didn’t come until the Renaissance. Good insulation pretty much requires plastics. Wax could be used before that but it’s not as good. Your early motors will have shorts that reduce power or kill it entirely.

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Well yeah, definitely not practical to do it with zero tech, a water wheel is better in most cases. Even a bike with gears for an unmovable drill is nice.

        But the electric motor can tech up some interesting chemistry later on.