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Old 01-14-2008, 12:30 PM   #5
William Cloud Hicklin
Loremaster of Annúminas
 
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Join Date: Oct 2006
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William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
For Tolkien (who assigns the Hobbits things like watermills, which use pulleys and gears), the dividing line is pretty clearly the use of chemical combustion for motive force: external combustion (steam and by extension electricity) and internal combution (gasoline and diesel). He had no problem with 'natural' power sources: wind, water, gravity and muscle- even if mechanisms were involved. After all, Bilbo had a clock!

So draw the line at Newcomen. (I note that in the last illustration to The Hobbit, Bilbo is dressed in clothes of about 1700).
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