Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#171

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #10

I used to be tempted to think that our modern generations are extra smart because of the cool gadgets we have. Seeing stuff like this, and reading ancient political / philosophical writings, gives me a much-needed reality check.

Many of the cool gadgets are premised, directly or indirectly, on vastly greater energy access.

Prime movers activate transports, lifts, and pumps. Energy and process controls yield more and more uniform or tuned materials. R&D is a phenomenally expensive, but cumulative, process yielding large returns with time.

Precision measurement, coordination, communication, logistics, mamagement, modelling, quality control, and other advances are all based on that initial bolus of energy provided when we realised we could dig and pump up ancient burnable biomass.

Ancient technology was very often no less innovative, only vastly more constrained.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#172

Post by chubot » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

It's interesting that this bridge is still around. It seems like most of that society's energy was concentrated on building this bridge, and physical infrastructure of that nature. Its best minds and hands were at work.

Similarly, in San Francisco, many people live in 100 year old houses. It's not like we discovered better "must have" ways of building houses that made the old ones obsolete.

I honestly think things like the Linux kernel (going on 25 years) and LLVM (going on nearly 20 years) will still be around in 100 or 500 years, and basically nobody will have the time or a reason to rebuild them. Kind of like the PC BIOS is still around.

People won't really be working much in those areas, but rather on top. Just like we kind of build "on top" of houses now. It's infrastructure that we can use to make progress in other areas. It reminds me of "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#173

Post by spenczar5 » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #142

feralimal wrote: post #65

Nice animation, but I bear in mind that stuff that is presented like this is really just hearsay - we don't really know that it was built as presented. It could well have been built as shown - its a plausible hypothesis. But it is also plausible that the bridges were only built in the 18th century. Or maybe they were built 100's of years earlier. With any historical claims, we should have access to the source to be a…

> This exact time was very important to the Holy Roman Emperor because he was a strong believer in numerology and felt that this specific time, which formed a palindrome (1357 9, 7 5:31), was a numerical bridge, and would imbue Charles Bridge with additional strength. This smells like horse manure, not just because it's unlikely anyone measured time that precisely in 1357, but also the Y/D/M date notation looks disti…

Even more smelly is the precision of “5:31 AM.” I am not sure hour:minute was a clear and universal concept in 1357. At the time, “canonical hours” were used (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours ); they corresponded to night watches and bell tolling times, and certainly weren’t notated like “5:31.”

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#174

Post by irrational » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

The one thing I don't understand is how the original posts were driven into the river bed. You have to deal with the current, deal with the fact that wood floats, deal with a long post, have to have a means of driving it down far enough, etc. I imagine that nowadays they'd use a pile driver on a huge barge with engines that can automatically compensate for the current, but I can't imagine what the equivalent was back then.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#175

Post by strken » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #34

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #10

I used to be tempted to think that our modern generations are extra smart because of the cool gadgets we have. Seeing stuff like this, and reading ancient political / philosophical writings, gives me a much-needed reality check.

There is absolutely no difference between a human from 6000 years ago and one today. You could be an Einstein level genius back then, and likely unable to use any of those skills other than for the optimization of your environment. Also, you likely would not be able to use the bulk of it because your education would be non-existent, so your IQ compared to someone today would be much lower even though your raw intelli…

Nutrition, disease load, epigenetics.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#176

Post by stainforth » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #98

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As _Microft says, the gif is making rounds on the Internet (I've seen it last night on Mastodon). And to be honest, I'm not surprised that it beats the video - it communicates the exact same information, and the same sense of awe as the original video, but in a much more time-efficient manner. Watching the original now, I can't shake the feeling of how boringly slow it is.

If you think the 3-minute video was slow, the actual original took 45 years.

I know some of the bureaucracy and economics that go into infrastructure today, but I feel like the decision to commit to a 45 year bridge must've been a whole different consideration for them back then. But then again, they spent much labor and resources creating tombs like the Pyramids.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#177

Post by baq » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #174

The one thing I don't understand is how the original posts were driven into the river bed. You have to deal with the current, deal with the fact that wood floats, deal with a long post, have to have a means of driving it down far enough, etc. I imagine that nowadays they'd use a pile driver on a huge barge with engines that can automatically compensate for the current, but I can't imagine what the equivalent was back…

The thread mentions wooden piers and low tech pile drivers.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#178

Post by messe » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

chubot wrote: post #172

It's interesting that this bridge is still around. It seems like most of that society's energy was concentrated on building this bridge, and physical infrastructure of that nature. Its best minds and hands were at work. Similarly, in San Francisco, many people live in 100 year old houses. It's not like we discovered better "must have" ways of building houses that made the old ones obsolete. I honestly think things li…

> Kind of like the PC BIOS is still around.

Not any more. The BIOS has been replaced with UEFI on most new machines for about a decade now.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#179

Post by jcranmer » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

rocketmaster1 wrote: post #153

inglor_cz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be negative, but 1871-1914 was fairly peaceful in Europe and North America as well. There were Balkan wars and there were Indian wars, but the vast majority of Western population never served in combat. And people started thinking that this is how it is going to be forever.

That period only seems peaceful because the French had just been massively humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War [1] in 1870 and the powder keg had just been reset. The people of France were itching to go to war with Prussia/Germany to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine. Which created a massive arms race till WW1. Also, while Japan isn't in Europe, the Russo-Japanese war did happen in 1904 in that period resulting in a majo…

> The people of France were itching to go to war with Prussia/Germany to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine. Which created a massive arms race till WW1.

Eh... not really. Anger at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine peaked in the immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, when France couldn't do anything, but by the 1880s and 1890s, France had resigned itself to the loss. The massive divisions in French society under the Third Republic meant that it was in no position to do anything to reclaim it. A parallel might well be drawn to Finland's position today over Karelia: they'd certainly like it back, but they're not about to fight for it. It wasn't until World War I broke out that restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule really became feasible, and hence it became a major war aim, but it wasn't a factor until after war had already broken out.

The arms race in question is the naval arms race between Britain and Germany, which itself subsided in 1912 because Germany couldn't afford to keep up.

Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]

#180

Post by ssully » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #146

simias wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that the latest trend on social networks is to have ultra-sped up mini-videos, I think because it's popular on Instagram or TikTok (or both?). It's as if our entire civilization had suddenly caught ADHD. Frankly maybe I'm old school but I found the Youtube version a lot more palatable, I could understand what was going on much butter, take a few seconds to understand the how the contraptions worked. When…

The case study of the ADHD trend in general population is Mission Impossible IV. It is filmed by shoulder cameras and the mounter is just playing piano on the console: there isn’t a shot longer than 4s in the entire movie, and the average of changing camera angle is 0,7s. All you can get is an impression of the main character on any given image, but you can’t rest and you can’t contemplate. This is especially comical…

I honestly don't think it makes a good case study to be honest. Assuming what you say is true, I would still chalk up the shots/cuts to the artistic direction of the director/crew over anything to do with ADHD.

I think this falls apart even more when you compare Ghost Protocol to the most recent MI film, Fallout, which is the highest rated and grossing MI movie in the series. Just from an artistic perspective, it's shot very differently than Ghost Protocol.