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Pre-20th Century Gadgetery

Posted by Zonk on from the yay-science dept.

The Byelorussian Hatter writes "Wired, presumably bored to death of Cellphones, Zunes, MairBook Nacs and what-have-you, looks back at the elegant inventions of a less civilized age. 'The Turk was a chess player concealed in a table packed with cogs and gears, contrived to give the appearance of a mighty chess-playing machine. Atop the table, an articulated automaton would be seen to make the moves determined by the master within. One of the 18th and 19th century's many illustrious hoaxes, the Turk is perhaps the greatest gadget that wasn't.'"

16 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Makes you relize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Makes you relize how far man has NOT come. We think ourselves a group of bad asses right now. We have nearly seemless technology in large parts of the world, I can see and hear people literally years away by foot. I can do amazing things from my home... but is any of this really that far from clockmaking? Its all just extensions of simplier ideas. Clockmaking extends from the idea of gears. All eletronics extend from the idea of harnessing eletricity.. when will we enter a phase where we seek new mediums to harness? Instead of becoming masters of electrons, we master all energy and matter. Etc.. so before we think ourselves genius, rememeber that were but a step into the long journey to true tech. mastery.

    After all, I still have yet to welcome our matter to energy and back converting overlords...

    1. Re:Makes you relize by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 5, Insightful
      A while back, I was musing how far we have come. Our ancestors feared the elements, but in my house, they are at my command. I want it colder--it become colder. I want it hotter, it become hotter. I can raise and lower the humidity. I want water to flow, it flows. I want wind, I have wind.

      Then I realized that it isn't me doing any of those things. Someone else built my heating and cooling system, and my plumbing, and ventilation. I'm really no better than a caveman--I just found a much nicer cave to move into.

    2. Re:Makes you relize by tsjaikdus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >> All eletronics extend from the idea of harnessing eletricity

      Electronics is just the only survivor in a world of many species. The idea of processing information by itself is (indeed) not new. But many machines have been invented in the past that didn't make it. Then electronics is fast, tiny and can be mass produced for almost nothing. That's why this technology survived and information processing with water, gears, relais, and torque amplifiers did not.

      The same holds for flying cars. The idea is an old one. And the only solution we have so far is to attach four propellers to it. Which, I think, is a species that is dead to begin with. But you can learn from it.

      And you're right about ideas as 'very few good ideas are truly novel'. But having an idea is often not that hard. As is the first proof of concept. Creating something really useful is. Expressing this as 'an extension of simpler ideas' I think is wrong. Because this is the part were all the work is done.

    3. Re:Makes you relize by dajak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So true. When in the 19th century the literary fiction of the medieval flat Earth was invented, I imagine this was to be able to illustrate how Enlightenment scholars revolutionized cosmological views without directly confronting the readers with their own ignorance of those cosmological innovations made centuries earlier.

      People like to think they individually know substantially more than their ancestors, while in reality they just know different things. Medieval peasants knew how to slaughter a cow: we don't. We know how to operate a microwave: they didn't. Only collectively we clearly know more.

    4. Re:Makes you relize by mdwh2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Obviously there is a long way still to go, but I don't think that means we haven't come far. On the contrary, I was thinking the opposite - how just a hundred years ago, so much of our modern everyday gadgets didn't exist, and would have seemed impossible.

      but is any of this really that far from clockmaking? Its all just extensions of simplier ideas. Clockmaking extends from the idea of gears. All eletronics extend from the idea of harnessing eletricity.. when will we enter a phase where we seek new mediums to harness? Instead of becoming masters of electrons, we master all energy and matter.

      But what do you mean by "new mediums"? If you say that modern electronics is just like clockmaking, wouldn't in the future someone still say than mastering all energy and matter is still just like clockmaking?

      Modern electronics harnesses electricity, and requires understanding of quantum mechanics, both things which are fundamentally different to clockmaking. We have harnessed the nuclear force to some degree (albeit not in a "gadget"). The only force still a mystery to us is gravity. I do not see why everything we know today is just like clockmaking, but a future device that harnesses gravitation would be some fundamental new breakthrough.

  2. Call me weird, but... by Ai+Olor-Wile · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...haven't we seen our fair share of articles and such things mentioning the Turk and Antikythera mechanism already? I propose that this article wins in the dull department--or perhaps it is merely an unidentified form of blog spam disguised as a popular tech magazine!

    1. Re:Call me weird, but... by flyingsquid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it's an interesting concept for an article, but sloppily executed. The Mechanical Turk doesn't really qualify as a "gadget" in the sense of being a portable, high-tech tool. First, it's a fraud, not a device to solve a practical problem, and second it was sufficiently large that you could hide a person inside it, so it wasn't exactly portable. And the Ark of the Covenant? Give me a break. It's not a gadget. It's a box. A decorated box. They also miss some pretty obvious gadgets. The abacus, the slide rule, and the telescope were all high tech, portable pieces of technology.

  3. less civilized? by rubycodez · · Score: 2, Insightful

    what era had the most inhuman weapons, the worst of all wars, businesses controlling governments to wage war for resources, the worst dictators with the largest body count and count of maimed for life?

    1. Re:less civilized? by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'd argue the body count over the last 50yrs has been extrodinarily low in per capita terms. Another post alluded to the dark ages as an example. Perhaps the height of WW2/1 reached the same level of inhumanity as everday life in the dark ages but the rest of the century has been relatively peacefull in large parts of the planet.

      As for inhuman weapons - Depends on what you mean by inhuman, before the invention of antibotics countless millions of walking war wounded died a slow and horrible death.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  4. Probably the Middle Ages... by TFer_Atvar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    More specifically, from about 600 AD - 1300 AD. Nasty, nasty stuff. No centralized government, nothing like the Red Cross, no medical treatment worthy of the name, travelers slaughtered for their food, the worst plague in history, untold destruction of knowledge and people... all and all, it's not a time I'd like to visit should I ever get a time machine.

    1. Re:Probably the Middle Ages... by SeekerDarksteel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You have a misconception about The Plague. killed two million per year at the most. And you'd have to count all victims in all three outbreaks centuries apart to reach the total of 137 million.

      2 million a year is kind of a big deal when it comprises THREE TO FOUR PERCENT of the european population at the time. It would be equivalent to almost 22 million people dying in europe per year today.

      --
      The laws of probability forbid it!
  5. Re:Well... by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "I've learned too much about history to hold any romantic notions about it."

    I think you have your 'ages' mixed up, for example stone henge was built with stone age tech and the people who built it lived in thatched roundhouses, some up to 60' in diameter, they had pens for domesticated animals. Indoor heating and light came from a central fire and the roof had no hole since smoke passed straight thru the thatch.

    There is no denying life was brutally uncomfortable (particularly in cold climates like the UK), but stone age man was intellectually no different to modern man. Even Neanderthals were more advanced than the picture you paint and they were a different species. Stone age people simply thought religion and science were the same thing, and a large chunk of humanity still thinks exactly the same way.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  6. Re:Well... by sticks_us · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hunter-gatherers (still present today in various locations around the world, btw) spend approximately 1/3 of their day looking for food--just surviving.

    Modern office workers (still present today in various locations around the world) spend approximately 1/3 of their day working so they can pay for their food--just surviving.

    --
    "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
  7. Re:Well... by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 3, Insightful

    of course there were nerds in the stone age, who do you think invented stone axes, and spears? not to mention bows and arrows and spear throwers. It may not seem impressive now but when some cave nerd tyed some animal guts to a bendy stick and used it to catapult tiny spears at animals, must have seemed like a uber dork to his pointy stick waving friends. And don't think it was a simple case of putting together, some cave nerd probably spent many long hours searching for bendy enough wood and trying to get arrows to fly straight, while the other cave men laughed at him. And imagine how much worse it was for ancient Australian nerds, imagine how much the other aborigines laughed at the guy who after hours of careful carving presented a bent stick as the ultimate hunting weapon?

    Prehistory is even categorised by the achievements of nerds, only when some geek decided to find out what happen when you stuck funny looking rocks in a very hot fire did the stone age become the bronze age. Sure being a prehistoric nerd would have been hard work, but rest assured, there were plenty of them, and its thanks to those uber nerds who decided they could represent spoken words using little squiggles on paper that prehistory finally ended.

    --
    What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
  8. Re:Well... by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hunter-gatherers ... spend approximately 1/3 of their day looking for food--just surviving.

    Modern office workers ... spend approximately 1/3 of their day working so they can pay for their food--just surviving.

    Sources? I'm a "modern office worker", and I know I only spend a few (2 to 2.5) hours a week earning money for food. That's 6.25% of my working hours (assuming a 40-hour week), and just 2.23% of my waking hours (taking a "day" as 16 hours, with eight hours for sleep). Even at minimum wage -- less than a typical office worker can expect to get -- the cost of essential food should only be about 20% (1/5) of waking hours. Also, a lot more emphasis is placed on attributes -- preservation, individual taste preferences, variety -- which are mostly unavailable in those hunter-gatherer societies at any price.

    --
    "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
  9. Re:Well... by wkitchen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Apples and oranges. Modern office workers spend 1/3 of their day working so they can enjoy material benefits far beyond what the hunter-gatherers can. Thanks to excess productivity, modern people can do things like write books, create and build machines, teach, learn, and many other things that hunter-gatherer societies just don't have time for. Tell me, what are the hunter-gatherer's children doing while the modern office worker's children are spending 1/3 of their day getting an education (class time + homework)? Hunting and gathering, perhaps?

    I'm sure that any who wish to have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the modern world could accomplish it with far less than a 40 hour work week.