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132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

museum.wa.gov.au

51–60 of 108 posts

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#51
Write a note on your iPad. Remove that silly pin number, turn it off. Put it in a bag. Put it in the attic. Live your life and forget all about it.

130 years later, the now obsolete technology is found. Boy they are gonna have a hard time reading that note you left.

This is when we get to appreciate a medium such as text. Our information is becoming more and more complicated to the point that it might become impossible to decipher, or near impossible.

Edit: missing word

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite possibly. The Tokio Express[0] Lego spill[1] has provided some data on ocean currents. There was also a spill of yellow bath ducks that turn up on beaches around the world. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokio_Express#Accident [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28582621 Yaarr!!

The thing that sticks out to me is that they expect lego pieces to hit washington state 23 years after the spill without biodegrading. I hope we're able to fix that someday.

That Lego are durable and don't rot is, I would say, a feature not a bug. (It would be better if they were practically recyclable, OTOH.)

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#53
> " ... The note was damp, rolled tightly and wrapped with string. We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting on it.”

It was damp? How does a slip of paper last 130 years when there's water in the bottle?

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#55

Write a note on your iPad. Remove that silly pin number, turn it off. Put it in a bag. Put it in the attic. Live your life and forget all about it. 130 years later, the now obsolete technology is found. Boy they are gonna have a hard time reading that note you left. This is when we get to appreciate a medium such as text. Our information is becoming more and more complicated to the point that it might become impossib…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#56
post #9

I am really amazed that a ships log from 132 years ago was retained and is still available. Is this a common thing?

Archives of the Royal Navy officers logs seems to date back the 1660s. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/r...

The archives of the Spanish Archive of the Indies are a century older than that, and if the Portuguese Casa da Índia hadn't been destroyed in the great 1755 earthquake we'd have sailing records from the dawn of the Age of Discoveries. The records and maps were national secrets, and for good reason.

You do wonder if the NSA will declassify its records 100 years from now.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#57

Write a note on your iPad. Remove that silly pin number, turn it off. Put it in a bag. Put it in the attic. Live your life and forget all about it. 130 years later, the now obsolete technology is found. Boy they are gonna have a hard time reading that note you left. This is when we get to appreciate a medium such as text. Our information is becoming more and more complicated to the point that it might become impossib…

> 130 years later, the now obsolete technology is found.

... And the NAND flash has long since drained it's charge.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#58
post #9

I am really amazed that a ships log from 132 years ago was retained and is still available. Is this a common thing?

Interesting if digital records will be quite as permanent as paper record; Will the problem of data loss be solved some day? Hard to know.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#59
post #9

I am really amazed that a ships log from 132 years ago was retained and is still available. Is this a common thing?

There are a lot of historical records that you'd never expect to have survived for so long in various archives.

There are massive archives of historical brewing data from various breweries in the UK dating back to the 1800s, this guy has a blog all about old British beer: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com

There are also parish records for births, deaths, and marriages going back centuries in the UK as well as taxation records for centuries.

People love keeping records of things.

If you want to have a look at what weird things we still have records of, have a look at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/, it's a treasure trove of old data.

Re: 132 year old message in a bottle found on West Australian beach

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archives of the Royal Navy officers logs seems to date back the 1660s. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/r...

The archives of the Spanish Archive of the Indies are a century older than that, and if the Portuguese Casa da Índia hadn't been destroyed in the great 1755 earthquake we'd have sailing records from the dawn of the Age of Discoveries. The records and maps were national secrets, and for good reason. You do wonder if the NSA will declassify its records 100 years from now.

They have even older documents in Simancas

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo_General_de_Simancas

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