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What Ancient Tech Do You Do?
neonfrog asks: "Before silicon, before electricity even, what the heck did those of us with geek brains do? Our brains have not evolved appreciably in half an eon (at least mine hasn't, but I may be descended from turtles). What would today's programmers have been doing centuries before the invention of the keyboard? What would an electrical engineer be doing a millennia or three before the concept of resistors and capacitors? What piqued their curiosity? Were their skills esoteric or exotic? They can't all have been Leonardo Da Vincis or court 'magicians', right? Summer's starting and, for some, it's hobby time. I bet the Slashdot community harbors quite a few Journeyman, or even Masters. I know a lot of geeks are beer-makers (and I do so appreciate you folk ... urp!) so there's no danger of that knowledge getting lost. What other ancient tech do you indulge in and keep alive? What are some good resources?"
It looks promising, but I have not started yet (mainly because the landlord does not appreciate foundry equipment in the appartment).
Their catalog is really cool, they have reprints of documents from 1900, 1800 and before, all obsolete by now, of course, but that's how the Golden Gate and the Titanic were built.
They also have an electrical section, for example, how to make an analog amplifier in a Jar from a speaker and a carbon microphone. Really neat stuff, and I wish I could tinker with it some more.
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
A lot of "geeks" I know are all members of the SCA. SCA arts and sciences encompass a wide range of reasonably geeky activities, including but not limited to brewing beer, smithing armour and weapons, leatherworking, costuming, fighting in armour, archery and so on.
A large amount of effort and detail is put into the crafting of authentic armour and weaponry, and the enthusiasm and energy dedicated to these tasks often exclude the demands of a more normal, healthy lifestyle, thus making these a small part of larger geekdom.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
one more for blacksmithing, i took a class at the local community college, and rented all the books at the library, and now have my own forge. its pretty cheap to setup. harbor freight has usable anvils for under 5o bucks, and the forge itself is propane mixed with air tossed into a box made of refractory brick or something similar. carefull, its HOT!!!!
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
"I swear, if you ever get a good mead, you'll never drink beer again. I'm not kidding"
Good cool mead taste masks the incredible quantity of sugar that you are actualy drinking. Sugars compete with alcohol for dehydrogenase and overworked alcohol dehydrogenase is the cause of the hungover.
I swear, if you ever get a good mead hungover, you'll never want to drink again.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
What were engineers doing over 2k years ago? How about building the Antikythera Mechanism (web copy of a June 1959 Scientific American article, p60-7)
An amazingly complex, intricate, and accurate mechanical astronomical calculation device from 80 BC. Found in a shipwreck in 1900, and not fully reverse engineered until 1973, there are no other examples of this level technology in the ancient world.
"It is hard to exaggerate the singularity of this device, or its importance in forcing a complete re-evaluation of what had been believed about technology in the ancient world. For this box contained some 32 [brass] gears, assembled into a mechanism that accurately reproduced the motion of the sun and the moon against the background of fixed stars, with a differential [gear] giving their relative position and hence the phases of the moon."
You can see a reconstructed version of the Antikythera Mechanism here. Another article detailing the probable creation date of the device based on the construction of the gears can be found here"
Another article makes the conjecture that ancient navigators could have used the Antikythera Mechanism to determine longitude via the position of the moon (1800 years before longitude calculation was perfected in England)
Ben in DCBen in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
Trust me - Harbor Frieght sells a terrible anvil. Wait till you get to use a good one and then you will appreciate the difference. I work pt (for fun) at Arms and Armor I shudder to think of what it would cost to rebuy our forging equipment (especially the stakes) and we have a couple nice anvils and one that looks like we put it under a surface grinder daily - flat smooth - nice. As for doing the Gingery books - I highly recommend trying the casting ones, but as for the rest - it is a lot like 'roll your own linux' very educational, kinda fun, but man alive - your time is also worth something - try Grizzley tools.They are still junky tiawan/chinese tools - but they are considered the best of the low/pro-sumer tools. Sorry this was so long - meh.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Good cool mead taste masks the incredible quantity of sugar that you are actualy drinking.
Not sure what you mean by "cool mead", but your statements are only true for what I've typically heard called a "sack" or sweet mead, which is much easier to make, but not as delicious as the dry recipies (IMHO). A dry mead is more my style, and has an amazing spectrum of flavors that really do justice to the layman's description, "honey wine".
The citric acid is important to conceal the alcohol flavor in a dry mead, however... I think I'm going to be making some more real soon. This thread has me salivating at the thought...
REgards,
Ross
"they [Arabic Islam] developed our modern mathematical characters and the idea of 0."
t s.htm
This is actually not true: the concept of zero originates with Hinduism, around the 7th centure BC.:
http://www.udupipages.com/book/hindhu.html
http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Advanced_Concep
Stachel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead