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Drew Bedo
20-Oct-2020, 07:53
Now this is just really useful or productive, but it coughtmy imagination in the erly dark this morning:

Given what is now known about various photographic processes: How early could some form of photography been done? The Daguerreotype process was published in 1839 of course, but years of experimentation in many processes had gone before. If someone already KNEW that it could be done, how early could it have been done?

Mu guess is that Dags could have been made at least thirty years earlier. Of course polished silver and elemental Mercury were known in antiquity. For that matter, red glass was available way back too, so Becquerel development was possible le in ancient times too. I think the choke point was the isolation of elemental Iodine in 1800 or so.

Now, what about some of the salted paper processes? What about collodion on glass? When could Silver Nitrate come into use?

Anybody?

karl french
20-Oct-2020, 08:10
You should take a look at "Burning with Desire" by Batchen. It's about proto photography and the lead up to 1839.

Drew Bedo
20-Oct-2020, 08:14
LEns technology oes back to the 1500s and Galileo of course.

cowanw
20-Oct-2020, 08:45
My understanding was that the chokepoint was fixing the image, initially with salt but it was really the identification of Hypo that did it. If so then 1819 would be the date.

Emmanuel BIGLER
20-Oct-2020, 09:20
Hello from France!

Before the official disclosure of the daguerréotype process in 1839, Nicéphore Niépce had experimented with the bitumen process in the 1820s. Dates are not precisely known since Niépce kept secret most things he was doing.
However the "View at Le Gras" is a bitumen plate preserved today in the collection of the University of Texas at Austin. Dated 1827.
https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/niepce-heliograph/

Before 1827, Niépce had achieved some contact prints of old engravings on bitumen plates.
Some of those very early prints were sold in France in 2002 at an auction.
This newspaper article mentions a contact print dated 1825, reproduction of an engraving, for sale at this auction.
https://next.liberation.fr/culture/2002/01/09/la-collection-jammes-chez-sotheby-s-en-mars_389791

The Niépce museum mentions a contact print from 1823.
https://photo-museum.org/fr/catalogue-oeuvres-niepce/


At the end of the XVIII-th century (1777) the effect of light on silver halide salts was documented by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, but fixing the image had not yet been possible. The effect had probably been discovered before but not scientifically studied.
Hence the bitumen process came earlier than silver halide processes to record a photographic image for the first time, by contact printing or behind a lens; and could have been discovered much earlier, at least in terms of available technology.
In modern terminology, the bitumen process is a negative photoresist process, those processes are today used routinely in the micro-electronic and micro-technology industry.

The bitumen process, too slow, was abandoned for photography, but continued to be used in the XIX-th century for photogravure: pictures printed in newspapers from photographic images were achieved in the 1860's if I remember well.

Vaughn
20-Oct-2020, 10:49
The discoveries leading to the carbon process began in the early to mid 1800s. Suckow in 1832 and Becquerel in 1840 worked with the effects of dichromate and organics, and Talbot filed a patent in 1852 for dichromate's reaction to light in gelatin, all leading to Poitevin's work and eventually the patent by Swam in 1864.

People were playing with chromates in the 1700s, so all this could have been utilized earlier for producing prints.

Drew Wiley
20-Oct-2020, 11:04
Lenses in a crude fashion go way back long before Galileo, perhaps even to stone age use of natural glass for magnification. What allowed him to make a dramatic practical improvement in spy glasses, or telescopes as we now term them, is that someone had recently discovered how to produce relatively bubble-free thick glass, which allowed him to experiment more successfully. The earliest known photographs are from the early 1820's, as noted in a previous post. There seem to have been several experimental processes prior Daguerrotypes. I've personally seen a number of early prints similar to Talbotypes. And of course, many families in this country, including mine, has Daguerrotypes portraits of ancestors. We have a remarkable one of a great great great ... Grandma overtinted with oil color to make it look like a color image, with the eyes beautifully painted in (otherwise blurred due to the long exposure); but none of that helped with the puckered-in toothless non-smile.

John Layton
20-Oct-2020, 12:59
The Vikings apparently were capable of lathe-grinding spherical optics...the sphericity of which came close to that which would have been more typical in the early 20th century. The emperor Nero utilized natural crystal to aid his vision. The middle eastern mathematician Ibn Al Hatham made good use of a long prison sentence to develop theories of human vision - many of which proved quite accurate.

Then of course there were those optical devices (camera lucida, camera obscura, etc.) being used by artists...from interpreting perspective to tracing an actual projected image - well back into the early 17th century (in the case of the lucida), a bit later for the obscura, which depended on utilizing lenses. Chevalier comes to mind as someone manufacturing some early meniscus lenses - followed by Voigtlander, Wollaston, et al.

In terms of what we know about the history of actual chemical imagery - it was Josiah Wedgwood who (I believe in the very late 1700's early 1800's) really began to work this out as an adjunct to his production of ceramics - but he lacked the knowledge of fixing the image, which came a few years later with the astronomer Herschel.

So...lots of ingredients coming together in the early 19th century. The thing thats always sort of bugged me about using bitumen of Judea on a pewter plate, to achieve a hardened image which was then washed with lavender oil (tried this with a class once - big fail!) - is that this, to me, is more of a mechanical process than a chemical one. With this in mind...I'm thinking that Fox-Talbot needs a bit more credit, and Niepce a bit less.

Drew Bedo
20-Oct-2020, 13:57
From Wikipedia:



"In 1811, iodine was discovered by French chemist Bernard Courtois,[5][6] who was born to a manufacturer of saltpetre (an essential component of gunpowder). At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, saltpetre was in great demand in France. Saltpetre produced from French nitre beds required sodium carbonate, which could be isolated from seaweed collected on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. To isolate the sodium carbonate, seaweed was burned and the ash washed with water. The remaining waste was destroyed by adding sulfuric acid. Courtois once added excessive sulfuric acid and a cloud of purple vapour rose. He noted that the vapour crystallised on cold surfaces, making dark crystals.[7] Courtois suspected that this material was a new element but lacked funding to pursue it further.

Now the question comes to me: How early was Sulphuric Acid known?

Drew Bedo
20-Oct-2020, 14:05
And now for Sulfuric Acid. again from Wikipedia.

"The study of vitriol, a category of glassy minerals from which the acid can be derived, began in ancient times. Sumerians had a list of types of vitriol that they classified according to the substances' color. Some of the earliest discussions on the origin and properties of vitriol is in the works of the Greek physician Dioscorides (first century AD) and the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD). Galen also discussed its medical use. Metallurgical uses for vitriolic substances were recorded in the Hellenistic alchemical works of Zosimos of Panopolis, in the treatise Phisica."

Drew Bedo
20-Oct-2020, 14:09
If I w3ere writing a Sci-Fi time travel novel, I might try to work in the making of a Daguerreotype somewhere.

Perhaps ancient Greece, first century Rome or during the early Crusades . . . .

Well it5 could have been done . . .if you already knew what to do!

'Course hey might think you were doing black magic.

Tin Can
20-Oct-2020, 15:42
Image making by accident?..... does happen.....

Perhaps disasters in the far past made images

Consider "Human Shadow Etched in Stone" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Shadow_Etched_in_Stone) recently

Drew Bedo
20-Oct-2020, 18:12
TC: You may have misread the part about Iodine. The discovey was an accident, not a disaster.

There is an old joke about a fat lady and a fan. . . .

goamules
20-Oct-2020, 18:50
My understanding was that the chokepoint was fixing the image, initially with salt but it was really the identification of Hypo that did it. If so then 1819 would be the date.

True. Until fixing was discovered, many processes had to be observed in dim candle light, or they would get obliterated. I think each discovery begat another problem, until another discovery. Like most human endeavors, you can't drop just one solution into the timeline 50 years back. There are no time machines then, or now.

John Layton
21-Oct-2020, 08:45
Well...chew on this - that if there were a time machine now...then there would be a time machine then! Ha!

Tin Can
21-Oct-2020, 09:03
Some people think synchronicity is a real phenomenon

as in when an idea is ripe, the breakthrough may occur at the same time in a few places, 'Atomic bombs' and spies...

even before modern communication, we always searched for connexions

The Science Behind Coincidence (https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-science-behind-coincidence)

Drew Wiley
22-Oct-2020, 15:02
Then there's the shroud of Turin, which looks remarkably like a mineralized impression of the features of a conspicuously gothic statue somewhow transferred to tightly applied cloth. But what I'd particularly like to know out of sheer curiosity is how true color (not painted-in) Daguerrotypes happened. A few still exist. They were all sheer accidents, and unrepeatable. Presumably some sort of chemical contamination due to the dicey nature of quality control back then happened. But short of destructive testing, how could that be specifically identified? There are ways to possibly do that now, but these objects seem to be so rare and presumably fragile to any more light, that nobody has been willing to cross that line yet.

Jody_S
22-Oct-2020, 16:52
Given how ephemeral even 'archival' photographs are today, I think we should be asking: Is this the first time photography has been invented?

Drew Wiley
22-Oct-2020, 17:36
Let's be glad that so many current photos are ephemeral, or don't even exist except on the web, or in cyberspace.

Drew Bedo
23-Oct-2020, 16:48
Some people think synchronicity is a real phenomenon

as in when an idea is ripe, the breakthrough may occur at the same time in a few places, 'Atomic bombs' and spies...

even before modern communication, we always searched for connexions

The Science Behind Coincidence (https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-science-behind-coincidence)


Calculus, Genetics and the periodic Chart to name a few other concepts that were "discovered" roughly in parallel without mutual consultation. But so many "inventions" were only figured out well after the enabeling technology was available. . . .which is the point of the OP. Photography (Daguerreotyping) got me started, but controlled unpowered flight (a hang glider) is one example.

I saw a documentary on a PBS show that maintained that the concept of an alphabetic notation was invented only once in egypt. You gotta see the show.

Drew Bedo
26-Oct-2020, 11:30
What is the earliest lens . . .1400s-1500s?

The Egyptians made glass in the Bronze Age (pre-1100 BC). Could they have made relatively colorless glass? What about bubbles? Could the Romans?

What was the Renaissance era breakthrough on optical glass and lenses?

tgtaylor
26-Oct-2020, 12:08
See https://www.spiritsofsilver.com/galleries/a_little_history - especially the 2d and 3d paragraphs.

Jason Greenberg Motamedi
26-Oct-2020, 12:23
I think an important point is that Daguerreotypy was not the first form of or mechanism for photography, it was the first commercially viable form of photography. It built off of the industrial revolution (winding down by 1839) and its practice of standardization. Niepce and likely others made images, but Daguerre made a product, and thanks to the French government, which held the patent, it was available to all (unlike Talbot's process).

All that said, I think iodine was the key compound, at least for silver-based processes.

Tin Can
26-Oct-2020, 14:00
History of optics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_optics

Tin Can
26-Oct-2020, 14:06
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_telescope_technology

Tin Can
26-Oct-2020, 14:21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography

Tin Can
26-Oct-2020, 14:36
The story of photon graphs, aka lens aided drawings may be very old

pre history

found glass, a eureka moment, a drawing made

now obliterated in time

a lot of 'stuff' is never written

even now

mysteries

Vaughn
26-Oct-2020, 16:45
What is the earliest lens . . .1400s-1500s?

The Egyptians made glass in the Bronze Age (pre-1100 BC). Could they have made relatively colorless glass? What about bubbles? Could the Romans?

What was the Renaissance era breakthrough on optical glass and lenses?

So the big question is then, when did the first ant get fried with a magnifying glass?

Drew Bedo
27-Oct-2020, 06:06
Off topic but a relevant tangent:

Fermented beverages are at least as old as the pyramids. There are hieroglyphics describing bread making and beer brewing . . .both involving fermentation. So why did it take well into the medieval period (3,000 years?) for anyone to figure out distillation ? I have seen a museum artifact that is supposed to be a ceramic pot-still in the Jamestown exabits in Virginia.

Bob Salomon
27-Oct-2020, 08:12
Off topic but a relevant tangent:

Fermented beverages are at least as old as the pyramids. There are hieroglyphics describing bread making and beer brewing . . .both involving fermentation. So why did it take well into the medieval period (3,000 years?) for anyone to figure out distillation ? I have seen a museum artifact that is supposed to be a ceramic pot-still in the Jamestown exabits in Virginia.

“ April 10, 1849
Washington - Walter Hunt, of New York, NY, received patent #6,281 for the safety pin on April 10, 1849. Hunt's pin was made from one piece of wire, which was coiled into a spring at one end and a separate clasp and point at the other end, allowing the point of the wire to be forced by the spring into the clasp.”

But if you go to the Dëutches Romanish museum next to the Dom in Cologne you will see a Roman safety pin that is at least 2000 years old that appears identical to the pin described above.
You will also see a Roman carriage with leather leaf springs for a suspension.

Drew Wiley
27-Oct-2020, 10:53
Fermented brewsky no doubt goes way way back in time, tens of thousands of years before the time of the Pyramids. Seemingly every primitive tribe in the world knew how to do it, even under hunter-gatherer Stone-Age style conditions. All kinds of fruit-eating animals have been known to get drunk - monkeys, birds, fruit bats, even coyotes. Just this past summer I saw plenty of coyote inebriation because they couldn't reach the wild plums up high on the limbs, so ate the over-ripe ones fallen on the ground instead.
Distillation requires specific gear; but even possums in Appalachia know how to do that. The Egyptians fermented agricultural grain, mainly barley, I believe. The Indians in my old neighborhood used manzanita berries and elderberries (the latter horribly laxative), often fermented in dugout canoes. Distilled hooch took over after the Gold Rush, then mass-produced fortified wines, and the average lifespan plummeted 75%.
One device I find interesting is the "invention" of the "first water pump" by Archimedes, called the Archimedes Screw. He simply saw them in action in Assyria and got credit for it in the Greek world. They had been in use in Nineveh hundreds of years before his time. Cordless drills have existed for tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of years, and were better than the ones we use today because they didn't even require batteries!

Tin Can
27-Oct-2020, 13:43
How did we make those pyramids, must have had some darn good surveyors, tools with smart workers

and now we find a whole lot of Maya with Lidar

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/science/archaeology-lidar-maya.html

Drew Wiley
27-Oct-2020, 14:47
Strings, sticks, and shadows did it all. Primitive geometry combined with non-union labor, heh heh. Seems like the bean counters have always been in charge. But they got their bowl of barley or millet long before modern men got their bowl of Wheaties or Corn Chex. The Maya had certain other incentives, sometimes more sanguine, it seems.

Drew Bedo
28-Oct-2020, 06:26
Archeologists can make a career out of dating the first fermented beverages. I cited the Egyptians because there is documentation of their process carved in stone. My wonder is that a pot-still can be made from coiled clay pieces. Copper tubing is not absolutely required. The one I saw at the Jamestown exhibit looked much like an alchemist's retort without a condensing coil (the moonshiner term is "Worm").

Fired and glazed pottery pre-dates farming by . . .well a lot.

I just picked distillation as another example of a technique or process that became common well after the technology to do it was available. This is a really easy one.

gunpowder and firearms' were also possible (in my view) for the Bronze Age Egyptians, and more likely for the technology available to the Romans of the 1st Century AD, but a little more involved. The key is knowing to treat wood ashes with urin to get the oxidizer, Potassium Nitrate.

Photography as a Daguerreotype is interesting to think about and relavent to this forum. The controlling technology seeming to revolve around Iodine and Sulfuric Acid . . .Considerably more involved than boiling beer and condensing the steam. Maybe the Romans could have done that. The Byzantine Greek more probably could have.

The Byzantine Greeks managed the so-called "Greek Fire" which is well documented as a real weapon, not mythology. Kept as a state secret, today the complex process of making it is lost. So is the mechanism for projecting it. There have been serious attempts to recreate Greek Fire but no success.

We can make an Atom Bomb but not Greek Fire. Surely we have the technology to do that . . .we just don't know how.

Tin Can
28-Oct-2020, 07:16
The Alcoholics of the Animal World

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-alcoholics-of-the-animal-world-81007700/

Many critters get high besides humans

It's Natures Way https://youtu.be/YsTK2LHZKPQ

Drew Wiley
28-Oct-2020, 09:53
Greek Fire was a sort Byzantine napalm they could shoot over the water. It no doubt had something like paraffin in it, among other things, allowing it to float atop the water while still violently burning. It's what kept their capitol protected for nearly a thousand years from invasion by sea. What it couldn't protect them from are there own sports riots, which once almost ended their civilization from within after a contentious chariot race when the Empress lost a lot of bet money and had the winning team executed. Nothing really changes. More people died in that riot than were killed fighting Goth Invaders outside the city walls at the same time.

Tin Can
28-Oct-2020, 12:46
While researching making glass filters, I found

World’s oldest glue used from prehistoric times till the days of the Gauls

https://www.cnrs.fr/en/worlds-oldest-glue-used-prehistoric-times-till-days-gauls#:~:text=Birch%20bark%20tar%2C%20the%20oldest,hafting%20tools%20and%20decorating%20objects.

turns out our ancients were NOT dummies

Duh!

Vaughn
28-Oct-2020, 12:53
There is no evidence that suggests the ancients, 'primitives', and others were any less intelligent then the species is now -- and some indication maybe more than now. :cool:

Bob Salomon
28-Oct-2020, 13:13
There is no evidence that suggests the ancients, 'primitives', and others were any less intelligent then the species is now -- and some indication maybe more than now. :cool:

Take Caesar. When he had to have his army cross a very wide and rough part of the Rhine he had his engineers build a bridge that could withstand the fast current and be wide and strong enough to March his army, their wagons, horses, etc. over. And then once across to show the native Germans how strong his army was, marched them back across the bridge and destroy it.

Drew Bedo
30-Oct-2020, 07:53
OK . . .we are waaay off topic now, but here is my BS input on the ancients.

If space aliens (see the "History" Channel) did help the Egyptians build the Pyramids, why didn't they teach them how to make a stone arch . . .or distil ardent spirits? I don't think that pyramid-period Egyptians had the wheel yet either; not for another 500 years or so. Al;l are ideas ideas, concepts or techniques that were well within the abilities of the existing Egyptian culture around 2,500 BC.

Two thousand years later, the Greeks of the classical period still were not using the arch in architecture. . . .or distilling brandy from wine.

Vaughn
30-Oct-2020, 08:30
drew -- when did 'distilling' by freezing start -- any clues?

Drew Wiley
30-Oct-2020, 10:07
Other Drew - but the classic Greek architects knew about the Golden Mean, how to correct for certain psychological and physiological anomalies in vision to make straight lines look straight by actually curving it just the right amount, likewise vertical column etc. In other words, they were way ahead of the average photographer or lens designer today. Would you really want to see a sculpture by Phidias designed in a computer program and 3d printed? or an ancient Greek Legoland?

GoodOldNorm
31-Oct-2020, 03:10
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/31/from-daguerreotypes-to-glass-plates-australias-oldest-images-photo-essay

jnantz
31-Oct-2020, 06:58
I think an important point is that Daguerreotypy was not the first form of or mechanism for photography, it was the first commercially viable form of photography.

+1

people were doing things before that whether they were able to be fixed to light to not, but exposures were very long. I think the word commercially viable is the key.. ( well besides the iodine & a few other things like hyposulfate of soda )
if Nicéphore Niépce had current "fast" papers, and baking soda he would have been able to make his "retina prints" in 6 seconds in bright sun, and fix them.. ( well, sort of )


Well...chew on this - that if there were a time machine now...then there would be a time machine then! Ha!

there are time machines now ( and were then ) ... "be excellent to each other" ...

Drew Wiley
1-Nov-2020, 08:54
The time machine got sent back in time for service; but they went out of business four centuries ago, so can't send it back! Should have read the fine print on the warranty.

Drew Bedo
3-Nov-2020, 09:05
Other Drew - but the classic Greek architects knew about the Golden Mean, how to correct for certain psychological and physiological anomalies in vision to make straight lines look straight by actually curving it just the right amount, likewise vertical column etc. In other words, they were way ahead of the average photographer or lens designer today. Would you really want to see a sculpture by Phidias designed in a computer program and 3d printed? or an ancient Greek Legoland?

Oh sure; All of that good stuff. I was fortunate to be sent for work in Athens in the early 1980s. Saw and appreciated much of the antiquities there.

I am just a bit surprised that so many cultures in antiquity that were amazingly accomplished in architecture and building with stone did not use the concept of the arch. The Romans did.

Distillation too is a simple technology that was discovered by the Arabs in the 7th century AD, but not used for making strong spirits, though they knew wine . . .read the poems of Omar Khayyam. Crusade4rs brought the technique back to Europe and figured out what to do.

Black Powder is a bit harder but still possible for any major Bronze Age culture. Certainly it is within the abilities of the Romans and Carthaginians. Imagine what the confrontations between the Persian and Greeks would have been like if either or both sides had firearms of any sort.

The Chinese could have invented gliding flight . . . .but did not. Leonardo de Vinci imagined it but missed.

I did kick this off with musings about photography; The Renaissance would have been different for sure.

Drew Wiley
3-Nov-2020, 10:18
There's quite a debate in the culinary world who first developed the pizza. The Chinese claim Marco Polo stole the idea from them and brought it back to Italy, while Italian chefs claim just the reverse. Of course, our modern idea of a pizza and Italian fare contains a lot of tomato paste had to await the tomato itself being imported from the Americas. There should be some way to either turn all that topping guck into Greek fire instead of heartburn, or perhaps photosensitize it using silver salts. A new equally messy art form.

LabRat
3-Nov-2020, 10:35
Didn't Barney Rubble have one of those "Polarock" cameras with the pecking bird going at the "plate", saying "It's a living"??? :-)

Steve K

Drew Bedo
4-Nov-2020, 05:53
I don't have any idea about freezing a beer or wine to increase the % ethanol.

Pizza? Same thing.

I think there are aspects of modern sailing technology that could have affected historical outcomes in ancient times if implemented. Fore and aft rigs coupled with leeboards instead of the single big square sail are just two easy ones. The concept of a rudder with tiller instead of a side mounted steering oar is a bit more complicated, but doable I think.The ability to sail into the wind is a huge advantage. The Vikings could have had a wider influence . . .or could have been more effectively opposed. The Punic wars could have been decisively tipped, either way, well before Hannibal too.

Simply changing the concept of hygiene could have made significant effects on ancient history. Old fashioned lye soap is not hard to make. Getting wet all over on purpose is just a societal taboo, not a technological advance . . .and it came very late . . . in the Victorian era.

It continues to be intriguing to think of what was possible technology before it someone had the stroke of insight to do it.

Tin Can
4-Nov-2020, 06:11
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/86/86-h/86-h.htm)

Drew Bedo
4-Nov-2020, 14:05
Yeah it is a fun read. Did a lot of thinking while reading it.

Much of the stuff he dropped into 11th-21th century England was beyond the existing technology base; A Colt revolver, telegraph and so on.

But he could have brought in a matchlock. The metallurgy and machining just not there for the Colt. Same goes for the iron or copper wire for the telegraph.

I think he brought in soap though.

Twain/Clemens was writing in the late 19th century and so had no ideas about hang gliders . . .which is the sort of thing that got me thinking about this stuff. Writing at about the same time, Jules Vern didn't come up with it either, though he did shoot men to the Moon with a giant black powder canon. A bit later on, HG Wells imagined "land ironclads" but missed linked tracks. Early Tom Swift novels imagined extensive use of lighter-than-air ships.

Science fiction writers from the 30s missed nuclear power, but then the real scientists didn't ge into it either until 1940.

It is easy to innovate backwards of course. The trick is to come up with something new.

So then: What would the technology of today allow is to do that we simply haven't done yet?

Mark Sampson
4-Nov-2020, 14:54
Not ready to answer that last question, but here's a book I read decades ago and still remember; "Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague deCamp (a name too good to forget).

Tin Can
4-Nov-2020, 15:50
I am eager for Laser Disintegrator that reduces large objects, such as bridges, skyscrapers to recyclables we reuse to 'print' better infrastructure on the spot

It's already possible

Then let robots run the whole damn thing

While we drink beer and brag about how humans could do it better...

I live in the future already, as here and now is kaput

Next time we get it right

maybe

Vaughn
5-Nov-2020, 09:51
...So then: What would the technology of today allow is to do that we simply haven't done yet?

Blow ourselves up?
Clean up our messes? Somethings we could do if there were the resources (money, material, time, desire)

Bob Salomon
5-Nov-2020, 10:31
Yeah it is a fun read. Did a lot of thinking while reading it.

Much of the stuff he dropped into 11th-21th century England was beyond the existing technology base; A Colt revolver, telegraph and so on.

But he could have brought in a matchlock. The metallurgy and machining just not there for the Colt. Same goes for the iron or copper wire for the telegraph.

I think he brought in soap though.

Twain/Clemens was writing in the late 19th century and so had no ideas about hang gliders . . .which is the sort of thing that got me thinking about this stuff. Writing at about the same time, Jules Vern didn't come up with it either, though he did shoot men to the Moon with a giant black powder canon. A bit later on, HG Wells imagined "land ironclads" but missed linked tracks. Early Tom Swift novels imagined extensive use of lighter-than-air ships.

Science fiction writers from the 30s missed nuclear power, but then the real scientists didn't ge into it either until 1940.

It is easy to innovate backwards of course. The trick is to come up with something new.

So then: What would the technology of today allow is to do that we simply haven't done yet?





Watched an interesting show about the technology of the Roman Colosseum on Nova on PBS last night. They found that the Romans built several elevators to transport animals and gladiators from the basement to the main floor. These elevators had cages to hold the animals and, as the cage reached the top, the door would automatically open and a trap door on the Colosseum floor automatically tilted down to make a ramp for the animal to reach the main floor. The trap door then closed automatically and was strong enough to support animals, gladiators, carriages, etc..
They decided to recreate the elevator, took three different types of engineers, a computer expert, master carpenters and a 200’ crane to install it. Also took a couple of rebuilds before it would work.

Where did all that technology go to?

Tin Can
5-Nov-2020, 10:44
Rock tossers most likely

Archimedes did a lot

I will watch that PBS show soon



Watched an interesting show about the technology of the Roman Colosseum on Nova on PBS last night. They found that the Romans built several elevators to transport animals and gladiators from the basement to the main floor. These elevators had cages to hold the animals and, as the cage reached the top, the door would automatically open and a trap door on the Colosseum floor automatically tilted down to make a ramp for the animal to reach the main floor. The trap door then closed automatically and was strong enough to support animals, gladiators, carriages, etc..
They decided to recreate the elevator, took three different types of engineers, a computer expert, master carpenters and a 200’ crane to install it. Also took a couple of rebuilds before it would work.

Where did all that technology go to?

Drew Wiley
5-Nov-2020, 13:43
Archimedes basically plagiarized what the engineers under Sennacherib had already done on large scale before, based on smaller irrigation screw devices long in use in Mesopotamia, and still in common use when Archimedes saw them. When it comes to building large structures, the Romans had the advantage of easy availability to a lot of volcanic ash which made their concrete mixtures for aqueducts, the Coliseum, etc, exceptionally strong, even better than typical concrete today.
But extraordinary lifts and gear devices were necessary for the great Byzantine building projects and Medieval and Renaissance cathedrals. And remarkable vast waterworks projects happened before the Roman Empire, not only under Sennacherib and in desert outposts like Petra, but some the largest of all were done under Alexander the Great. In fact, when my Uncle was sent by the US in the 1940's to upgrade the water system of the whole Kabul area of Afghanistan, it was basically a repair of vast tunnels and canals built by Alexander's engineers long, long ago - that's quite a track record of reliability, when you don't even need to call the plumber until 2300 years later! People imagine Alexander was just a wild bandit suddenly running around Asia. Instead, he was probably the greatest military logistical organizer in all of history, second only to Tamerlane. Entire great cities like Alexandria were either built or rebuilt by his army corps of engineers and architects. He had a massive naval and overland supply infrastructure too.