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The philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford argued that the origin of modern industrial machines goes back further than the Industrial Revolution and Renaissanc

The philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford argued that the origin of modern industrial machines goes back further than the Industrial Revolution and Renaissance, all the way back to the regimented and time-based lives of medieval monks. Knocker uppers seem like a direct obvious example of this phenomenon of humans as proto machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/f/153578/files/2022/08/Mumford-Clock.pdf https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/f/153578/fi... As a funny personal note: one of my ancestors actually had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which I assume means they had a similar sort of job as knocker uppers. I couldn’t find any equivalent last names in English though.

hifromwork 2y ago
>had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which To add to your personal note, this is the modern translation, etymologically this is more like "the one doing the waking" (similarly to how English "computer" used to describe a person).
- keiferski 2y ago
  Yeah I assumed it was more of a description for a person, not a reference to the device. I'm not sure there were even alarm clocks in rural Poland at the time. IIRC a lot of words in French also work this way: simple translations today, but with more elaborate historical etymologies.
beAbU 2y ago
A common surname in South Africa is Klopper, literally Knocker. Probably similar origin.
bloopernova 2y ago
Reading about world war 2 has given me a new appreciation for just how manual everything was. It's amazing that the Allies managed 2 major amphibious landings in June 1944: Normandy was one, Saipan the other. Saipan was about a thousand miles from the nearest Allied forward base, and >3000 miles from Pearl Harbor! All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  don't forget punched cards: https://pattonhq.com/ibm.html https://pattonhq.com/ibm.html https://www.ww2online.org/image/large-replica-punch-cards-bureau-supplies-and-accounts-uses-help-manage-complex-tasks-it https://www.ww2online.org/image/large-replica-punch-cards-bu...
- cen4 2y ago
  Sometimes its a good thing that tools slow you down. People have more time to think about what they can achieve. I vaguely remember Planning for Normandy taking 2 years or something, just cause of all the resources they had to mobilize from around the world. Contrast with today's wars, were all the real time tech in the world is producing lot of half baked outcomes.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    A frequently repeated excuse for WWI germany is that Wilhelm II had expressed desire not to invade the west, but had been told by his military that it was too late to recall the trains. Apparently the guy in charge of the german army's logistics in 1914 wrote a book after the war to explain that not only could he have turned everyone back before the border had he only received a command to do so, but also included appendices with the timetables for doing so. [my book with the reference is currently unavailable, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan#Der_Weltkrieg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan#Der_Weltkrieg suggests it might have been Groener, Das Testament des Grafen Schlieffen: Operativ Studien über den Weltkrieg (1929)]
  - mlyle 2y ago
    Note that we got a lot of half-baked outcomes and military disasters with manual processes, too.
  - aftbit 2y ago
    >Sometimes its a good thing that tools slow you down. This has been a major learning in devops too. Sometimes you want the tool to go slow, at least to start, to give a chance to Ctrl-C when you realize you've made a mistake. A bad deploy that gets replicated to 10% of your fleet could be far better than one that goes to 100%.
animal531 2y ago
Following that train of thought back one can go all the way to the Roman Empire which used slaves as proto machines as you call them. >As a funny personal note: one of my ancestors actually had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which I assume means they had a similar sort of job as knocker uppers. I couldn’t find any equivalent last names in English though. Surnames are funny, I always thought we had a cool one, but apparently it just means someone that lives next to a hedge.
- mglz 2y ago
  > Following that train of thought back one can go all the way to the Roman Empire which used slaves as proto machines as you call them. All the way to the deepest depth of history actually: Sumer and Elam left behind records of slavery and later on in Ur we find laws seting up a framework for slavery.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago
  The "alarm clock" surname is pretty cool though if you know this factoid: the word for waking up in Slavic languages is the same as the Sanskrit root "budh", which also means "to wake". So Buddha is "the one who has awakened".
  - keiferski 2y ago
    That is super cool. Thanks for the factoid!
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
> I couldn’t find any equivalent last names in English though. Since this is somehow 'anglosaxon' I'm pulling thing out of thin air. In German that would be Wecker as in the thing that is waking you. So I'd guess in English that would be anything written like Wake.. or derivative from that. Edit: maybe Whacko ;>
- hcs 2y ago
  I thought of Wake, too, but those seem to be related to keeping watch rather than waking someone.

hifromwork 2y ago

>had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which To add to your personal note, this is the modern translation, etymologically this is more like "the one doing the waking" (similarly to how English "computer" used to describe a person).

keiferski 2y ago
Yeah I assumed it was more of a description for a person, not a reference to the device. I'm not sure there were even alarm clocks in rural Poland at the time. IIRC a lot of words in French also work this way: simple translations today, but with more elaborate historical etymologies.

beAbU 2y ago

A common surname in South Africa is Klopper, literally Knocker. Probably similar origin.

bloopernova 2y ago

Reading about world war 2 has given me a new appreciation for just how manual everything was. It's amazing that the Allies managed 2 major amphibious landings in June 1944: Normandy was one, Saipan the other. Saipan was about a thousand miles from the nearest Allied forward base, and >3000 miles from Pearl Harbor! All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.

082349872349872 2y ago
don't forget punched cards: https://pattonhq.com/ibm.html https://pattonhq.com/ibm.html https://www.ww2online.org/image/large-replica-punch-cards-bureau-supplies-and-accounts-uses-help-manage-complex-tasks-it https://www.ww2online.org/image/large-replica-punch-cards-bu...
cen4 2y ago
Sometimes its a good thing that tools slow you down. People have more time to think about what they can achieve. I vaguely remember Planning for Normandy taking 2 years or something, just cause of all the resources they had to mobilize from around the world. Contrast with today's wars, were all the real time tech in the world is producing lot of half baked outcomes.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  A frequently repeated excuse for WWI germany is that Wilhelm II had expressed desire not to invade the west, but had been told by his military that it was too late to recall the trains. Apparently the guy in charge of the german army's logistics in 1914 wrote a book after the war to explain that not only could he have turned everyone back before the border had he only received a command to do so, but also included appendices with the timetables for doing so. [my book with the reference is currently unavailable, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan#Der_Weltkrieg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan#Der_Weltkrieg suggests it might have been Groener, Das Testament des Grafen Schlieffen: Operativ Studien über den Weltkrieg (1929)]
- mlyle 2y ago
  Note that we got a lot of half-baked outcomes and military disasters with manual processes, too.
- aftbit 2y ago
  >Sometimes its a good thing that tools slow you down. This has been a major learning in devops too. Sometimes you want the tool to go slow, at least to start, to give a chance to Ctrl-C when you realize you've made a mistake. A bad deploy that gets replicated to 10% of your fleet could be far better than one that goes to 100%.

animal531 2y ago

Following that train of thought back one can go all the way to the Roman Empire which used slaves as proto machines as you call them. >As a funny personal note: one of my ancestors actually had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which I assume means they had a similar sort of job as knocker uppers. I couldn’t find any equivalent last names in English though. Surnames are funny, I always thought we had a cool one, but apparently it just means someone that lives next to a hedge.

mglz 2y ago
> Following that train of thought back one can go all the way to the Roman Empire which used slaves as proto machines as you call them. All the way to the deepest depth of history actually: Sumer and Elam left behind records of slavery and later on in Ur we find laws seting up a framework for slavery.
riehwvfbk 2y ago
The "alarm clock" surname is pretty cool though if you know this factoid: the word for waking up in Slavic languages is the same as the Sanskrit root "budh", which also means "to wake". So Buddha is "the one who has awakened".
- keiferski 2y ago
  That is super cool. Thanks for the factoid!

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago

> I couldn’t find any equivalent last names in English though. Since this is somehow 'anglosaxon' I'm pulling thing out of thin air. In German that would be Wecker as in the thing that is waking you. So I'd guess in English that would be anything written like Wake.. or derivative from that. Edit: maybe Whacko ;>

hcs 2y ago
I thought of Wake, too, but those seem to be related to keeping watch rather than waking someone.