Really Old Shit General

Sometimes there’s threads for old shit, but it’s mostly just nostalgiaposting about your PC from 2002
Let’s have a thread for crazy computing technology that existed before the 18th century exclusively
Extreme bonus points for anything BC
>pic related, gear from the Antikythera mechanism that’s older than Jesus, 100 BC
>used for predictive astronomy and tracking the Olympics
Posting the schema for it shortly

Other urls found in this thread:

mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/gof-xkQMcEF8uLD2COd-_jaquetdroz3.gif
youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE
youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA/videos
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
youtube.com/watch?v=xlCW2lvacRE
youtube.com/watch?v=mjCJf8a5W9w
youtube.com/watch?v=7eNRRE2so-o
nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_magnetic_amplifier
youtu.be/0OrrcsYk22Q?t=25
youtu.be/ZR86JqKP8BQ
twitter.com/AnonBabble

How much did you pay for it?

>clickspring on youtube
This surely is the most autistic thing I've ever seen

Gear/computing technology of this caliber wasn’t developed for the next 1500 years
I wonder how they lost the knowledge.
I feel like we might do that
Hardly anyone knows assembly language, one day we might not know how our own machines work
If we lost them, the Antikythera process would just repeat

Forgot pic

>not including a link to clicksprings rebuild playlist
terrible choice of an op

I-I don’t know what you’re talking about...
I’m sorry desu

Next: Jaquet-Droz automata
>1770’s
>could write up to 40 customizable characters
>yfw even the NEETiest of NEETs couldn’t make this with modern parts and technology
Are we getting dumber, Sup Forums
File was too big for this:
mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/gof-xkQMcEF8uLD2COd-_jaquetdroz3.gif

Bump for not being a shill thread.

here is the 1st ep.
youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE
the rest you can check out on
youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA/videos
since there is some very related, in-between episode, videos worth seeing
also there are plenty of other rebuilds of that on youtube, this guy just goes into a more detailed and close-to-original approach

there's this old ass roman egyptian steam engine. I heard about it not so long ago, I though steam engines were much more recent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

not as old as some of the stuff in this thread, but still interesting. It is Charles Babbage's difference engine, a automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. He had completed a working model by 1822. by 1838, he had developed the plans for the Analytical Engine, which was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer

How did they even invented such complex device so early? It's way too ahead of its time. It's like someone today brings out of nowhere a device that can teleport you to other solar systems.

This
These are people who were hardly a wink out of the hunter-gatherer stage of humanity
How could this knowledge exist then?

My great, great grandfather's 19th century English finger box

It's possible some secret societies of humans have existed since the dawn of man. Certain sects of not necessarily higher intelligence, but always more clever and quick-witted silver tongues.
Perhaps they have always been a few steps ahead of us, developing technologies way ahead of not THEIR time, but EVERYONE ELSE'S time.
They've always been a few steps ahead of us because they didn't restrict themselves to cultural taboos or ethics. They existed outside of, isolated, as a barrier.

ancient greek scientists did a lot of crazy stuff that future scientists wouldn't even think of. All of these somehow were lost during Middle ages. It's not coincidence that middle ages are called "Dark ages". Just imagine how far technology would ha advanced if middle ages did not dump all these advancements.

What's a fingerbox?

I mean if they were making OP’s mechanism 2000 years ago they would have come up with modern computers, undoubtly, by the year 500 (and that’s being generous)
People were only making machines like OP’s again 300 years ago
The biggest question is how that level of knowledge could be lost within just a few decades

monitoring this thread

Maybe this is better off over at /x/ but here's a theory that the pyramids were used as a hydraulic ram water pump

Part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=xlCW2lvacRE
Part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=mjCJf8a5W9w
Part 3: youtube.com/watch?v=7eNRRE2so-o

>The biggest question is how that level of knowledge could be lost within just a few decades

Not most of the knowledge was lost, but rather declined by future scientists. for instance Eratosthenes accurately calculated earths radius back in 240 BC and indirectly proving that earth is a sphere. Despite this was documented, it took many centuries to end up to the same conclusion because people declined the theory that earth was a sphere. So together with it, the method that he used to measure the radius was dumped.

>machining is autistic
oh boy, the things you learn on Sup Forums

Nah /x/ only wants to talk about tulpas, not even legit interesting /x/ stuff.
Nice stuff by the way, they actually found a new sealed off chamber on the great pyramid not long ago with new scanning tech.

>Hardly anyone knows assembly language
Disregarding the fact it isn't true (depends to what extent desu), assembly is actually pretty high level. And Im not even talking about the whole ME thing.

>>The biggest question is how that level of knowledge could be lost within just a few decades
NASA has said that there's no way the Saturn 5 rocket that took men to the moon could be built today.
Even 20 years after the last landing so many suppliers had shut, engineers had died or retired, chemicals had been declared hazardous to the point that most of the principal knowledge and ability had been lost.
All the post-Saturn effort went into the Shuttle. The plans for the Saturn 5 are housed in a set of aircraft hangars in the desert.

"haha what a newfag"

>clickspring
Clickspring is the best channel on youtube. Fite me fgt.

>These are people who were hardly a wink out of the hunter-gatherer stage of humanity
Greeks. They were actually pretty fucking amazing, and not just for the Antikythera. This mechanism only proved that they had much more advanced "engineering" (or rather, craftsmanship) that was initially thought.
Most of what we know about them is from 3rd hand passages of what was lost. Like how almost all of their writings and fine art was lost but it has been noted somewhere.
There is a reason people thought they couldn't best them up until enlightenment era.
>How could this knowledge exist then?
What knowledge? How gears work? They were way beyond that. That was just basic math for them. What's really amazing is that they could do this kind of precision work. And we know they could do even better (picrelated). Imagine what it took to do something like this - you need the right tools (which aren't easy to make either) and skills which were build upon over the generations. You needed bronze (which was fucking expensive, because tin needed for bronze was found in fucking england or turkey) and you had to have the leisure of free time (and a ton of it) to dabble in things like this (which people in ancient times rarely had because of how ineffective everything was). You needed a highly developed culture that supported artists (greeks had a ridiculous amount of artists per citizen) able to do crafts and people that could make it possible and it had to be continuous over centuries (no major wars resetting the whole damn culture to zero). And from the analysis of the Antikythera mechanism we know it was definitely not the first one to be made (it was even miniaturized)
I'm obviously paraphrasing it wrong, but it went along the lines "its not steam engine that brought the age of steam upon us, it's the age of steam that made steam engines possible"

>The biggest question is how that level of knowledge could be lost within just a few decades
imo it depended not just on them, but on the world they lived in. They had an amazing culture, sure, but every culture passes over time. The real question is, if there will be anyone to take it over after you? Ancients had no match and that lost them. Most of what we know about them is only thanks to byzantines and arabs who preserved their culture.
otoh europe prosperity is often attributed to the power balance on the continent. There was never a time when one empire had a total dominance over whole continent. Freethinkers could move from one country to another with ease (borders as we know of today in europe were introduced only after the WWI) if they were somehow persecuted. Scholars often traveled across the continent. Influences spread from one place to another etc.

>I feel like we might do that
BOOM NO JS

Magnetic amplifiers seem pretty interesting, they also had uses in analogue/early digital computers. I wonder how they sound in audio applications?
nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_magnetic_amplifier

>It's not coincidence that middle ages are called "Dark ages".
No, but it's strongly Eurocentric and even in the context of European history is an apocryphal misnomer.

Ok that's really fucking impressive.

/Thread

Can I get a quick rundown

Tell us more techistoryanon

>believing that hunter gatherers did not have technology
>not understanding the true story behind biblical floods
>not knowing that Plato had ancient ancestral knowledge of "atlantis"
check out john hancock fellas

I’m dating someone who unironically believes the biblical flood (which I guess was written about by a few other cultures too, and is even mentioned in the epic of Gilgamesh) wiped out a semi-modern culture similar to our own in both innovation and degeneracy.
I dunno desu, it’s a pretty comfy thought
>when the ice age ended where did the water go

>when the ice age ended where did the water go
You realize europe used to be about twice as large correct?
and that this semi advanced population would live around the shoreline right?
and that the titanic is almost corroded away already?
that an aircraft carrier would only take about 1000 years to dissolve?

Hold me I’m scared

they are watching us user

...

...

What’s this?

It's math & mathematics.
My friend can do an entire wall of numbers and symbols to define what the mechanism of cellular energy conversion is.. like fuck if I know what it all means; just because 99.99% of the population of the time couldn't count past their finger digits, doesn't mean the 0.01% couldn't.

Linux tech tips is

youtu.be/0OrrcsYk22Q?t=25

No you idiot, it's not just math. Look at these concentric tubes. Figuring it out on paper is one thing, but to actually create such a device is extraordinary.

...

Are you sure that not just a lawnmower left outside to rot?

>I wonder how they lost the knowledge.
Islam came up around anno 700

ancient egyptian fleshlight?

crusades lmao

Accurate. Lisps thould entail automatic death thententh.

The only educated europeans in the "Dark Ages" were priests.
Weak bait.

such a shame....

So we would have been enslaved by machines sooner if the dark ages didn't happened?

Wot, no mention of Ada Lovelace?

It is a battery called the Baghdad battery used in ancient Egypt.

I would like to purchase a quality finger box. Where would I procure one?

/x/ pls go. Somebody may believe you.

There is a theory that the dark ages never existed and some early historians just fucked up the dates.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but that description is pretty close.

...

They don’t mention her on his section of the “Computer” wiki page either
I was surprised, I thought not giving credit to women was a meme
Everyone gets upset when you don’t mention the men who worked on Grace Hopper’s team too, it’s pretty ironic desu

>Gear/computing technology of this caliber wasn’t developed for the next 1500 years
But it obviously was.

Many things the Antikythera Mechanism did are still in use and are always been in use, just that nobody made anything particular like that anymore.

Actually, Erathostenes' theories were widely accepted through the ancient and medieval world, it's a myth that they believed in a flat Earth. According to Dante, the Purgatory was located at Jerusalem's antipodes, and the reason why nobody wanted to fund Columbus' travels wasn't that they believed the Earth was flat, it was that they were perfectly aware of the true size of the world and believed he couldn't travel that far and would have died in the sea, which he would have if America didn't exist. Columbus himself believed dumb theories about the Earth being pear shaped which were in no way mainstream.

>It's a bit more complicated than that
OK, go on...

>gear from the Antikythera mechanism that’s older than Jesus, 100 BC
pfffft I have a MiniScribe model 6085, 68mb, 7 pound hard disk from God knows when

Here's a screw embedded in a 300 million year old piece of rock

Some belive that almost 300 years of the "Dark ages" are an entire fabrication by a pope and some roman emperor to support his claim to the throne of thr roman empire through some obscure numerology relating to the year 1000ad.

The apparently fictionalised the entire carolingian period and possibly charlamagne.

The whole idea is based on the lack of evidence and artifacts for the period of AD 614-911.

Oh shit can we get some back story

...

youtu.be/ZR86JqKP8BQ
1/2 million year old spark plug

mathematical history, by some russian who basically found out that charlemagne never even existed and that it's all memes

Calculated to be 100% correct