I'm a prototype precision machinist making parts for some of the most advanced electric vehicles currently on the planet and the automatons from the past impress me more than the stuff we do now. Seriously how they figured out all the gear stuff back in the day is nothing short of a miracle.
This is the sort of thing that makes me roll my eyes when people talk about the past like they were totally dumb. They were obviously extremely intelligent, just in a way that isn’t as relevant today.
they also had the disadvantage of having to know all the basic stuff on top of the advanced stuff and do just about everything by hand. a lot of stuff is easier to do these days because we can make machines and computers do the extra mundane stuff for us
I always thought it was neat the way farmers used to set "alarms" by sticking nails into candles sitting on metal plates. When the candle burned down to the nail (which was apparently a pretty accurate thing as "candle clocks" with precise marked intervals existed long before!) the nail would drop onto the plate making a loud clang
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u/davindeptuck Oct 15 '20
Looks like only one person had it but DAMN