351–360 of 583 posts
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Bicycles may seem simple but took many decades to get it right. Your comment also reminded me of this gallery of drawings from people attempting to create a bicycle from memory which is pretty funny https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw...
What a frustrating article, they say its missing a key component but doesn't say what.
The humble ball point pen. People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive. I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and just stash them everywhere I want
How do you learn writing? In Germany, as far as I know, everyone learns writing with foundation pens. You can search for images with „Schreiblernfüller“ to get an idea how they look.
I'm American and have lived in Germany a lot. In the 1970's in California, we learned to write with pencils.
By the time I was in high school and used pens (mostly ballpoints, some felt-tipped) and also typewriters, I thought of myself as a pretty serious stationery nerd.
Then I went to Germany and everybody at school used fountain pens, which I didn't even know how to fill! People probably thought I was an absolute barbarian, sticking to my ball-points.
Then came university: in America, at the end of the 80's, you would be considered rather unserious if you didn't at least type up your assignments. Computers were an option but the minimum effort was to type things, libraries had lovely quiet-ish electronic typewriters for that purpose.
And back I went to Germany, where -- at University! -- everybody was writing everything with those same damned Füller!
And now, in 2020, at least the kids still are. Drop into any McPaper[0] and you will see a ton of cheap plastic fountain pens for the school kids. (Fortunately for me, the roller ball has also taken pretty firm hold, and people don't look at you funny anymore for not carrying around an ink bottle.)
I have a really nice fountain pen, a Pelikan[1], and I almost never use it because I can't commit to thinking about the ink that much. In the end, the Germans out-nerded me.
[0]: Really, there's a chain called McPaper: http://www.mcpaper.de
[1]: https://www.pelikan.com/pulse/Pulsar/en_US_INTL.Core.display...
Silage
Pads/Tampons
Wearable Pedometers and Heart Rate sensors
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They didn't believe him in part because he was a notorious asshole, and in part because he was insistent on a root cause analysis of hand-washing that was clearly false. He also didn't "invent" handwashing, which was already the normal protocol by the time he began practicing; rather, his contribution was a particular antiseptic handwashing protocol (chlorinated lime).
How do you figure it was “clearly false”? Once his protocol was implemented, mortality rates from childbed fever plummeted. It turned out the reason so many people had been dying from it was that obstetricians were performing pathological observations on mothers who had died from it and then gone straight to delivering babies without disinfecting in between. This is readily available info on his wikipedia but also re…
Semmelweis is, to me, an interesting story about how it's not all that useful to be right if you're unable to persuade, and Semmelweis' difficulties with persuasion have little to do with his adversaries bloody-mindedness and much to do with his.
3D printing. I know, I know - overhyped. But you know what's a funny thing? It's incredibly basic tech. Stepper motors and thermoplastic. We could have had something like it at pretty much any time over the past century, and in its modern form from about 1960 or so. It has unquestionably revolutionized prototyping and short-run manufacturing, and we just didn't think of it . The idea was just too zany and expensive -…
I respectfully disagree. 3D printing has not lived up to its hype or potential. The process is slow and sensitive to conditions. The commercial applications are relatively limited. It has radically transformed rapid prototyping, which is very important. But it's hard to compare it to the ubiquitous daily utility of paperclips or even velcro. I have much more hope for the next generation of 3D printing, whatever that…
For me: Electric Kettle, Umbrella and Bicycle. I have used them for the last 45 years in the same shape and form. If you gave me any of the "older" models from 40 years ago, the utility value will be similar to what I buy from the store today.
The bicycle is only debatably simple, considering that it's the culmination of quite a few relatively-advanced technologies and processes: steelmaking, pneumatic tires, interchangeable parts, ball bearings, bowden cables, etc.
Hand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline magic. Hand-washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and disease preventing invention in modern times. Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized, unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of materials science advances. Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough real-world minecrafting…
Three better alternatives: the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube, the Boy Scouts Handbook, and Wikipedia, which you can download as .zim files for offline reference. Other relevant YouTube channels include AvE, CodysLab, and Applied Science; in more specific areas you have NileRed, Abom79, Ben Eater, EEVblog, This Old Tony, GreatScott, ElectroBOOM, and NurdRage. Unlike the book you're recommending, they are by people who know how to do the things they are explaining, show their errors, and include the relevant calculations. There are other channels like How To Make Everything and King of Random which do not; they are entertaining but deadly.
General-purpose know-how books have gone out of fashion, though we still have the CRC Handbook and the Machinery's Handbook. In the 19th century there were a bunch of books like Dick's Encyclopedia of practical receipts and processes (ripped off, I think, from Cooley’s, or possibly vice versa) which covers a wide range of topics at a level sufficient to enable you to practice them; you could probably build a fair bit of Victorian technology from the recipes in Dick’s. (You aren't going to get a loom out of it, though; for that, see The Mechanism of Weaving, but YouTube is far superior.) I think the equivalent is more difficult to-day.
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How do you learn writing? In Germany, as far as I know, everyone learns writing with foundation pens. You can search for images with „Schreiblernfüller“ to get an idea how they look.
In the US ive never used or even seen anyone use a fountain pen, although ive heard of enthusiasts for them here.
You'd be amazed. One guy I heard of -- not-famous founder of a very famous brand -- was so into it he'd spent tens of millions building his collection, but outside the world of serious pen enthusiasts it wasn't "worth" anything near that much.
A lot of the pens one collects are very limited editions but otherwise unremarkable: say a really good pen that would cost $500 but in a different color and they only make a thousand of them in that color and it costs $10,000. (Made-up numbers but $10K is not that much in the pen-collecting world.)
Pads and tampons. Some argue these are environmentally unfriendly and produce too much waste, but you have to think, not everyone is privileged enough to own a washing machine in their own home, particularly those in 2nd and 3rd world countries. I genuinely believed pads and tampons allowed women to be more productive in the work force and eventually lead to more equality, just hearing my mom and grandma's story of h…
I agree with pads & tampons being a great invention. Can we however please finally stop referring to "2nd and 3rd world" countries. Get on a plane - things are more similar than different in most parts of the world, stop perpetuating dated notions.
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"The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon." [1] Soap is not a modern invention and its usefulness in cleaning was recognized way before modern knowledge about diseases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Ancient_Middle_East
And arguably, soaps available in shops are getting worse with every iteration. Enter a big store in most of the developed world, and you can hardly find a regular soap bar anymore (only liquids, "hydrating bars", etc.). Craft markets still have them luckily.
I hate moisturizers and greasy bullshit or whatever else in soap though which is a lot of liquid soaps.