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Renaissance Potters Were Nanotechnologists
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article, Nature says that "tiny metal particles give 15th century Italian ceramics lustre." Nature adds that iridescent glazes -- changing colour when viewed from different perspectives -- were achieved by using "particles of copper and silver of between 5 and 100 billionths of a metre across." And the story becomes even more interesting. Nanotechnology meets alchemy! "The ability to change colour was regarded as an alchemical property, making iridescence magic too." Read this summary for more details. And for more information, you can read the abstract of this research paper, "Copper in glazes of Renaissance luster pottery: Nanoparticles, ions, and local environment," published by the Journal of Applied Physics."
Just goes to show how many "revolutionary" things we've come up with were adaptations or exact duplicates of something that already happened naturally. These alchemists had no idea that there were nanoscopic particles whose physics lead to the change in color, yet it happened, and we are only NOW finally realizing why and how it happened.
I haven't RTFA, so I don't know if it was the author or the submitter who attached this trendy term to a story about ceramic glazes. But unless the potters in question were building microscopic robots, they weren't "nanotechnologists" in the generally understood sense of the word.
People have been using finely ground substances of one sort or another at least since the mortar and pestle were invented.
the same technique is used today when creating similar materials.
They seem to have used silver and copper salts and a mix of other things that turned the salts into metal at 600 degrees.
I suppose we still do the same thing current day - people are ever searching for perpetual motion machines and researching anti-gravity. Every time someone puts together a device the layman can't figure out, funding pours in and our modern alchemists continue employment in various potentially unsolvable problems.
Myself, I prefer Feymann's approach: considering how likely you are to solve a problem as well as how valuable the solution is (not to mention how many others could solve the problem).
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Actually, McCarthy's book covered this very fact. They had no idea what they were doing at the time but laid the ground work centuries later for quantum dots.
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A company attempted to put a hologram on a bill. However, one of the tests it had to pass was a test that crushed the currency. This broke down the intereference pattern, destroying the hologram. So, they got the idea of chopping up the hologram into tiny bits, mixing it into an ink-type base and applying it to the bill that way.
Voila! Color-shifting ink.
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Wouldn't that be an amazing demonstration of nanotechnology? One would think...
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Considering something to be "alchemic" implied it to be man-made, not magical; magic came from god(s).
I'm going a little OT here, but here's my take on that (caveat: IANAL where L = Luthier):
I don't buy the "special formula" theory on Stradivari. There were plenty of great luthiers of his era (as well as before and after) who took a different approach than that of Stradivari, and yet produced equally great results. Stradivari is the most famous because he made a crapload (almost 700 surviving, god-knows how many produced) of instruments. One of his hallmarks, aside from the sound, is the physical appearance of his instruments. He paid an unusual amount of attention to the shape of the scroll, the varnish, and other aspects which may or may not have had an impact on sound. But the theories like the one quoted above are nothing but romanticism. (Kind of like the ones that describe ancient Italian potters as "nanotechnologists").
Ask a professional Violinist/Violist/Cellist what instrument he/she really wants, and "Stradivarius" will not be the first thing out of his mouth. It's like saying Ferrari makes the "best" cars. Great cars, but "best" is in the eye of the beholder.
There is a HUGE difference between "nanotechnology" and "nanoscale". Some modern corporations started using the term interchangeably because nanotech sounded cooler. Please don't follow their example.
We know what ingredients and pigments where used to produce those glasses, but the exact production process is lost. What makes the glasses so special is their "controlled imperfection"; there are bubbles of air and other gasses in the glass that break the light shining through it. It was done by controlling the heat and airflow to the glass while firing, but exactly how it was done is lost for some colors.
I don't remember the exact colors anymore (this is from an arts lecture I took about 20 years ago) so it's hard to find links.