An interesting example of "ancient" technology being superior to modern alternatives. In essence, it is the block of code that was commented "do not delete, I don't know what it does but everything breaks if deleted", except this is physical.
Now all the fictions about old civilizations having the better tech than their descendants make sense. But then the trope "reverse engineering" is ruined...
Not a great example, it was recognised as an orrery almost immediately which laid open a myriad of possibilities as to how it might be geared and what it might track.
It took from 1901 (discovery) to 2008 for it be scanned using x-ray tomography and digital reconstruction algorithms for it to be certain (well, almost completely) what the gear trains actually were - it was so corroded and encrusted it sat on a shelf for a century and deemed impossible to deconstruct without actual destruction and no guarantee of gaining information.
This isn't an example of an ancient device that defied modern understanding for a century, it's an example of an archealogical find that took a century for technology to advance to where it could be scanned.
Right now there are many sites in the UK, for example, that are "preserved" until such time as they can properly scanned and dealt with.
This article is so confusing to read. It keeps repeating itself, and interrupting its own one-sentence paragraphs with off-topic reminders about how powerful the F1 engine was, in case you forgot that you read the same thing two paragraphs ago.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 24.5 ms ] threadNow all the fictions about old civilizations having the better tech than their descendants make sense. But then the trope "reverse engineering" is ruined...
How long did it take to figure out the workings of the Antikythera mechanism? Roughly a century?
It took from 1901 (discovery) to 2008 for it be scanned using x-ray tomography and digital reconstruction algorithms for it to be certain (well, almost completely) what the gear trains actually were - it was so corroded and encrusted it sat on a shelf for a century and deemed impossible to deconstruct without actual destruction and no guarantee of gaining information.
This isn't an example of an ancient device that defied modern understanding for a century, it's an example of an archealogical find that took a century for technology to advance to where it could be scanned.
Right now there are many sites in the UK, for example, that are "preserved" until such time as they can properly scanned and dealt with.
I didn't say it wasn't recognized, I said it took a while to understand the mechanisms.
It feels like ingesting pure SEO distillate.