Technology reinvention and denim production?
My fictional world is based on a critical point that happened in the past: Magic, which beforehand had been used in everything, suddenly stopped working. Up to this point my world had been a sci-fi/technology-advanced world. Magic suddenly stops working, and everything breaks. Thus technology-wise the world is thrown back to non-magical means (which I envision as being the typical medieval fantasy world), though the knowledge of having more advanced stuff still exists (though probably a lot of it was lost, since if it was stored in something that used magic -- and everything pretty much did -- it crashed).
- How long would it take to reinvent modern technology using a different power source?
I'm hoping for a few centuries, considering our own history (medieval to the 2000s), but this was when we didn't know what was possible. For a very stretched example, it's like as if electricity and combustion in our world suddenly stopped working, but photosynthesis still did, and some guy wants to recreate the iPhone using photosynthesis. XP
I really have no idea how to search this, since it's more theoretical. I tried "information technology history", "invention history" and permutations of that but that gave, well, history, and it doesn't really fit what's happening in my fictional universe. - Can denim be manufactured by hand, or by very simple machinery?
I keep envisioning my main character in loose jeans for some reason. Because of the aforementioned magical crash, the previous methods of manufacturing don't work anymore -- so I'm trying to figure out how the cloth can be made by hand, or the simplest machinery that will do it feasibly.
Search terms: denim, denim manufacturing made by hand textile, "how is denim made", "cotton twill textile hand" <-- I learned about the weave, and stuff on how jeans are hand-made, but not on how/if the cloth itself is made by hand...