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

museum.wa.gov.au

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

#91

Post by pjmlp »

ma2rten wrote: post #74
toomanybeersies wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 taxati…

I wonder if in 200 years, they going to have people's browsing and location data from now. If yes that would be an unprecedented amount of records for historians.

Given the way digital storage works, I guess it will be more like us looking at old Egiptian, Mayan, Romman, Greek artifacts while wondering what their purpose was.

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

#92

Post by jusssi »

perilunar wrote: post #84

This is the sort of experiment I'd like to take part in. "Here's a hundred bottles of gin. All you need to do is drink the gin, fill in the form and the log, put the form in the bottle, seal it, and throw the bottle overboard. On second thought, fill in the paperwork before you drink the gin."

The message in the gin bottle says:

"We're out of gin, please send more"

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

#94

Post by sdrothrock »

Kluny wrote: post #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?

The article also mentions that the cork or whatever sealed the bottle was missing, so it sounds like the cork got dislodged when the bottle washed ashore and that's when the contents got damp.

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

#95

Post by StavrosK »

yosito wrote: post #71

I found a message in a bottle in Hamburg. Never did figure out what it says though. If anyone on HN is up for the challenge, here's a photo of it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TximCkxHoliDmnwy1

Judging by the image of the cigarette pack and the handwriting, this is clearly a doctor's prescription.

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

#97

Post by kyle-rb »

s0rce wrote: post #70
orthecreedence wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally not been there, so I remain skeptical. And if I did go to "Australia" who's to say the plane wouldn't just fly in loops for 6 hours and land outside Las Vegas in an elaborately constructed set made to look like this fabled land of giant spiders and marsupials? Seems the people who believe in Australia are the same ones who would blindly accept that the earth is round...

You'd also have to fake the stars in the night sky and trick everyone to not notice the timezone didn't change. Probably easier to fake a moon landing.

Technology has come a long way since we faked the last one.

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

#98

Post by thwd »

yosito wrote: post #71

I found a message in a bottle in Hamburg. Never did figure out what it says though. If anyone on HN is up for the challenge, here's a photo of it: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TximCkxHoliDmnwy1

This looks like the work of a schizophrenic. It sounds demeaning but I've seen similarly "encoded" messages, often around some common item (like a cigarette pack). They write them during psychosis and later find them and obsess over their decryption.

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

#99

Post by maaark »

perilunar wrote: post #80
flashman wrote: post #38

Here's the authentication report: http://museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/sites/defaul...

"Upon his return to Germany and having been appointed as Director of the Deutsche Seewarte, Neumayer conceived and implemented the drift bottle experiment that would last from 1864 to 1933, and include thousands of bottles. Of all these jettisoned bottles only an estimated 8-10% (662 message slips) found their way back to Hamburg" 10% is not bad really. Also, it gives you a rough estimate of the chance of your 'rescu…

Note to self: If lost at sea, do at least 10 message-in-a-bottles.

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

#100

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ma2rten wrote: post #74
toomanybeersies wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 taxati…

I wonder if in 200 years, they going to have people's browsing and location data from now. If yes that would be an unprecedented amount of records for historians.

I don't think so myself tbf, it's not very informative information - unless maybe it's about someone important or influential. I'm sure most of my internet comments I've left behind over the past decade - tens of thousands of them on numerous websites - will hover around for years to come, but I doubt they'd have historical significance unless I become famous somehow. The writings of Aaron Schwarz became eternalised in a way since his death, they're frequently getting "resurrected" on HN for example.
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