Anton Howes, an economic historian, writes about the history of invention and innovation, such as why the steam engine came late.
HN commenters cite it as an example of the high-quality niche blogs on Substack and link it for its history of early steam power and printing.
It goes to the beginnings of Western science.
The alchemist Cornelis Drebbel successfully harnessed what he considered to be the perpetual motion of the universe for his perpetual motion machine...
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-the-steam-cc8
... that now we know to have been changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure, both concepts which were very fuzzy at the time, especially the pressure.
Sadly, his machine had made such an impression, that the legend of it then continued to plague patent applications for centuries !
To me the most surprising thing about this series is that de Caus had a working CSP (concentrated solar power) setup by 01615 (https://antonhowes.substack.com/i/57230676/solar-powered-steam-engines, original source https://archive.org/details/raisonsdesforce00Caus). I had thought CSP only dated to Shuman's installation in Egypt in 01913, but I see that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#History also mentions that Mouchout did a solar steam engine in 01866.
But 01615! We've had working solar power machinery for four centuries.
Relevant. The Ottoman empire got its first Muslim-owned printing press in 1729; nearly 300 years after its invention and widespread adoption in Europe: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/53544/did-the-ottoman-empire-suppress-the-printing-press#:~:text=The%20first%20printing%20press%2C%20which,printing%20press%20in%20New%20York.
[edit] Even better: https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-did-the-ottomans
Substack is driving a blog renaissance. A ton of high-quality niche blogs popping up everywhere.
See, for example, https://antonhowes.substack.com/ (I'm not affiliated with the writer, though I am considering switching from free to paid)