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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.'"

18 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. "Ark of the Covenant"? by random_amber · · Score: 3, Funny

    What the heck is this in a list of the greatest gadgets for? Push a button and out comes God (to melt faces)?

  2. 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 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.

    3. Re:Makes you relize by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Let's not get all excited by this "royal we" concept. Some of us can slaughter a cow - you need not be a medieval peasant, just someone who grew up or has worked on a farm or ranch.

      I think your premise is a bit flawed. Clearly, as a society or race or species (however you choice to enclose large groups of humans) "we" understand and can manipulate much larger bodies of knowledge than say, a medieval priest or even royalty. But on an individual level, this is also true. Lots of folks I know can slaughter a cow, at least pretend to fix a microwave, certainly fix an internal combustion engine, use a complex piece of electronic equipment (and I'm not talking about an iPod), shoot a gun, etc. recall the quotation from St. Heinlein:

      A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. For an earlier perspective... by weeboo0104 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay about The Turk in 1836 titled "Maelzel's Chess Player".

    --
    It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. Amazon's Mechanical Turk by paulthomas · · Score: 4, Informative

    In case anyone hasn't put two and two together*, Amazon's Mechanical Turk is named in reference to the chess playing Turk from the article. Amazon's FAQ has more info.

    * 5, for large values of two.

  7. Didn't make the list... by Antarius · · Score: 4, Funny


    It didn't make the list, but was vapourware at the time:

    Duke Nukem Forever

  8. Re:No weaponry? by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm surprised they didn't include the Japanese automaton dolls from the Edo period, the karakuri ningyo.

  9. 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.
  10. Re:No weaponry? by tsjaikdus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >> I'm surprised they didn't include the Japanese automaton dolls from the Edo period

    I'm more surprised that the Droz automata are not listed. If 'The Turk is perhaps the greatest gadget that wasn't', then the Droz androids are the gratest gadgets that actually were. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ypKJWXFj48&feature=related

  11. 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.
  12. 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
  13. 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?
  14. Al-Jazari by Deus.1.01 · · Score: 3, Informative

    For shame that this article does not mention the father of enginering. He made robots, automatons that were highly complex. I wonder why non of his inventions is mentioned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jazari

    --
    My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.