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> To create his photograph, Niépce treated a heated pewter plate with bitumen of Judea, or Syrian asphalt, a naturally occurring asphalt with light-sensitive pr
by bambax 3y ago
> To create his photograph, Niépce treated a heated pewter plate with bitumen of Judea, or Syrian asphalt, a naturally occurring asphalt with light-sensitive properties.
> Historians suspect Neolithic peoples used the camera obscura effect in some of their monuments. The Ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi (470 to 390 BCE) made the earliest known written reference to the camera obscura
A box with a small hole in one side, that has been known since pre-historic times, and a naturally occurring substance that's relatively easy to collect: that's all it takes to make a "photograph". But it was first tried in 1827.
I often wonder how many inventions could have been made way earlier than they were, and why. Is it possible that they were, in fact, made, but simply didn't catch on? Or did catch on but were then completely forgotten?
Many people think the Antikythera wasn't a one-of-a-kind but in fact a product, for example (probably made in the 2nd century BC).
And the Pascaline, the calculator that Pascal invented in 1642 and actually made to work in 1645, was never commercially successful. The first calculator that enjoyed a modicum of commercial success appeared only in 1851, two hundred years later.
Yet the people who had the scientific knowledge and manufacturing skills to build the Antikythera could have made the Pascaline (probably better, even).
It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it.
- flipthefrog 3y agoThe principles of photography were known earlier - Niepce's breakthrough was managing to fix the image so that it didnt fade. Photography could have existed much earlier if someone had figured out how to make fix
- aloe_falsa 3y agoThe telescope could have been invented thousands of years ago - ancient Egyptians could polish lenses. Ditto for the sextant, optical telegraph, the printing press... > It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it. Or the modern era with inventions that are due to appear in thousands of years, but which we could easily replicate if we only knew where to look.
- OJFord 3y agoYou'd be quite unlikely to stumble across this one though wouldn't you? I assume the theory came first in this case - and that may have built on centuries of study.
- zimpenfish 3y ago> Is it possible that they were, in fact, made, but simply didn't catch on? There's probably a few like that but it's probably just more simply "people didn't have the spare time to be sitting around thinking and inventing unless it impacted on improving food access, etc. until society started to get easier."
- NoraCodes 3y agoI dunno, the ancients did an awful lot of sitting around. At least the rich ones.
- ben_w 3y agoYeah, but there weren't very many of them. Each level of the office building I'm in right now is about half the Parthenon's floor area… and when the Parthenon was new, Athens was about a quarter million people of whom only about 10% were "free".
- Towaway69 3y ago> It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it. In a thousand or so years we will be that antiquity. Reading the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, it is easy to believe that had the Romans survived another 100 years they would have invented the car. Our profit oriented focus will cause many uninventions (inventions that weren't invented because they weren't profitable).
- pragma_x 3y agoI can only speak to this anecdotally, but I brush up against the "uninvention" concept all the time. In the kitchen. These days, the thought experiment of "should I cook this" has shifted to "can I buy this?" There are a lot of worthwhile things to make in the kitchen that are economically infeasible due to shelf life, availability of ingredients, or preparation steps that don't automate well. Making anything out of regionally available fruit with a small ripeness window comes to mind. Anyway, this is why I'm hopeful for DIY and Open-source community goings on. You never know what's going to crop up.
- Towaway69 3y agoOpen source and DIY ideas applied in politics and Big finance, what a pleasant world that could be. Imagine lawyers sharing their ideas as open source developers do! Pull requests with open discussion for statutes and laws and all things political. We have the technology.
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- thechao 3y agoRelays were first built in 1835, and were patented & ready for mass production in 1840. You can build electromechanical computers out of them: https://m.youtube.com/@ClicketyClack https://m.youtube.com/@ClicketyClack
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