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It seems like only a handful of people ever made them and it probably didn’t even last for very long after Archimedes died. It was essentially an extraordinaril

It seems like only a handful of people ever made them and it probably didn’t even last for very long after Archimedes died. It was essentially an extraordinarily expensive toy.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
It was essentially an extraordinarily expensive toy. So not unlike early cars. By 1900, at least 100 different brands of horseless carriages were being marketed in the United States. Since they were all virtually handmade, the cars were outrageously expensive. Cars were perceived as no more than a high-priced toy for the rich. The early 1900s cars were, to many, a despicable symbol of arrogance and power. https://www.anythingaboutcars.com/early-1900s-cars.html https://www.anythingaboutcars.com/early-1900s-cars.html
sgt101 7y ago
There's good evidence that this kind of thing was made in the Arab world in the "dark ages" and that many of the moving statues in western europe were powered from the same sort of mechanisms in the medeival period. Great listen here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bk1c4d https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bk1c4d
xenadu02 7y ago
Because the design and engineering greatly outstripped the extant methods of manufacturing the devices didn’t actually work that well. It would take another 1000 years of slow incremental improvements in manufacturing to be able to make one of these devices accurate enough to be useful. If you want to make civilization resistant to collapse and increase its ability to recover quickly: bury gear cutters, lathes, magnifying glasses, precision tools, etc. The most difficult part will be bootstrapping the ability to build accurate tools with which to rebuild an industrial society.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  One of the things most interesting to me about the mechanism is that it devotes a lot of gears and hardware to making small corrections which get completely overwhelmed by the inaccuracy of the manufacturing.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  It's actually possible to build a working machine lathe out of the parts of an ordinary car engine. If you really wanted to make society collapse resistant, including a manual about how to do so, a couple of tungsten carbide bits, and a couple of hacksaw blades with every car would probably do the trick. I think everything else you need (welding equipment, drills, etc) would be fairly straightforward to cobble together.

It seems like only a handful of people ever made them and it probably didn’t even last for very long after Archimedes died. It was essentially an extraordinarily expensive toy.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

It was essentially an extraordinarily expensive toy. So not unlike early cars. By 1900, at least 100 different brands of horseless carriages were being marketed in the United States. Since they were all virtually handmade, the cars were outrageously expensive. Cars were perceived as no more than a high-priced toy for the rich. The early 1900s cars were, to many, a despicable symbol of arrogance and power. https://www.anythingaboutcars.com/early-1900s-cars.html https://www.anythingaboutcars.com/early-1900s-cars.html

sgt101 7y ago

There's good evidence that this kind of thing was made in the Arab world in the "dark ages" and that many of the moving statues in western europe were powered from the same sort of mechanisms in the medeival period. Great listen here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bk1c4d https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bk1c4d

xenadu02 7y ago

Because the design and engineering greatly outstripped the extant methods of manufacturing the devices didn’t actually work that well. It would take another 1000 years of slow incremental improvements in manufacturing to be able to make one of these devices accurate enough to be useful. If you want to make civilization resistant to collapse and increase its ability to recover quickly: bury gear cutters, lathes, magnifying glasses, precision tools, etc. The most difficult part will be bootstrapping the ability to build accurate tools with which to rebuild an industrial society.

Rebelgecko 7y ago
One of the things most interesting to me about the mechanism is that it devotes a lot of gears and hardware to making small corrections which get completely overwhelmed by the inaccuracy of the manufacturing.
pasabagi 7y ago
It's actually possible to build a working machine lathe out of the parts of an ordinary car engine. If you really wanted to make society collapse resistant, including a manual about how to do so, a couple of tungsten carbide bits, and a couple of hacksaw blades with every car would probably do the trick. I think everything else you need (welding equipment, drills, etc) would be fairly straightforward to cobble together.