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Building a Telegraph Using Only Stone Age Materials
MMBK writes "It's the ultimate salvagepunk experiment, building a telegraph out of things found in the woods. From the article: 'During the summer of 2009, artist Jamie O’Shea of the organization Substitute Materials set out to test whether or not electronic communication could have been built at any time in history with the proper knowledge, and with only tools and materials found in the wilderness of New Jersey.'"
This video is a big let down: all he's doing is showing that it's possible to smelt iron & copper and construct an organic battery. This is not news...
Furthermore, he uses stone tools and tries (and fails) to start a fire with a friction bow drill.
For building a telegraph (or any electronic communications medium), the challenge lies in the miles of wire that are needed. The scale of manufacturing for this task is huge and is a long project -- not something you'd set out to do in the wilderness with your stone axe.
If civilization collapsed and needed to be rebuilt with only stored knowledge and what can be found outside, don't you think we'd start by finding flint and making knives & axes? You know, like humans did thousands of years ago... Not to mention the fact that other needs, like shelter/water/food would take priority -- and once you've met those needs efficiently and adequately, you'll probably already have a nice collection of tools, machines, and furnaces that will let you get started on higher technology.
I was expecting, and would be much more interested, in seeing documentation on how to build a telegraph using basic midievil technology (i.e. assuming the existence of metal tools, furnaces, and animal/water-powered machines)
Watched the video. He basically made a small furnace out of clay where he got copper and iron out of ores found in the area(malachite for copper, no idea about the iron, don't remember).
Basically, the video is just a proof of concept of how you would make a battery to use as a telegraph using only stone age materials combined with knowledge. The video ends after he uses a voltmeter to measure his "battery" made out of clay and the aforementioned iron/copper(he gets like 1V out of it or something).
All I got was some site that played video ads, tried to set Flash cookies, and displayed popups. Is this a spam article?
This was years ago, and probably it was originally a BBC series since most of the scientists seemed to British, judging by their accents, but I saw it on a local PBS station in the USA. In the various episodes scientists were taken away from their high tech infrastructure and challenged to do things that normally required fairly high tech equipment, like receive radio messages or determine their latitude and longitude.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
If you've got copper or iron you can make an electromagnet. The electromagnet pulls on something ferrous and makes it click against something else. That's how telegraphs worked.
The real problem would be smelting the tens or hundreds of miles of copper wire needed to make this thing even remotely useful. Not to mention building a battery big enough to put a useful signal through that much crappy copper wire.
Like the title says, thought I'd check out the parent's book recommendation: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8993
It doesn't take that much "skill" to make a fire with a bowdrill, honestly. My brother was into this kind of thing. It turns out that the choice of wood, string, and a decent bow make a _huge_ difference. E.g. I saw him get a glowing ember from his drill setup in less than a minute, and in less than 90 seconds had a handful of flames. Impressed by how easy it looked, I traipsed into the woods, found some sticks of various sizes, with no thought whatsoever to their suitability, made a rough bow, carved out a notch, got a rock and started going at it. Half a day later, I could barely get smoke. I didn't know why. He let me use his setup, and within two minutes I too had an ember.
You need a wood that grows straight, has little resin, and is somewhat dry for the drill, and a flexible but stiff wood for the bow. A soft maple is excellent. It needs to be dead and dry, not green (obviously). You want a good solid leather string that will grip the drill nicely. You want a good amount of tension in the bow, but not too much. The drill should be between 2 and 3 cm wide, around 15 to 20 cm long. For the base you want a somewhat harder wood with a little more resin. Oak is good. Gather good kindling to catch, often by peeling bark into super thin strips and making a little nest of them. The glowing ember will come from the dust of the drill being worn down and getting hot. For the top you want a rock not much bigger than the palm of your hand, so that you can get a good grip on it and put some weight to keep the whole system stable. You want to get a nice point on the drill on the rock side and if possible scratch a bit of a hole into the rock so the point from the drill fits. If you can find some lubrication of some sort for the top that helps.
After the notch in the base gets worn in and the friction part of your drill gets worn into the appropriate shape, it is not actually that hard to make a fire in less than a few minutes. I've done it.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.