Tools never die ... never | Hacker News Reader

Tools never die ... never

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27 pointsjustnearme40 comments

Ballista, scorpio exist only in re-enactments and are far from the functionality of the originals. The originals required human hair, it was the springiest, had to be processed very particularly and it's very labor intensive to recreate, so re-enactors have not. Their historical range is ~400 meters, replicas do ~150.

Complicated specialized tech made in large urban populations is the place to look. Many things went extinct only to be reinvented once large urban populations arose again. But sometimes there was alternative technology, people did not remake the ballista because there were guns by the time urban populations bounced back in Europe.

Greek fire, Roman concrete, Egyptian concrete lost and reinvented. Damascus steel - exact process lost, Japanese made something similar. Egyptian block built ships are lost http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/building-pharaohs-ship.... but ships for the same purpose were reinvented and drastically better. We don't use large wooden ships today, except for re-enactments. Siege towers not used, city walls not built, but we have tanks and trenches.

So it depends on how you categorize it. Functionality of tools remains, but some specifics are drastically different, so it gets subjective.

Ballista, scorpio exist only in re-enactments and are far from the functionality of the originals...Their historical range is ~400 meters, replicas do ~150.

Being gimped is not exactly "going extinct."

Damascus steel - exact process lost

There is now a compelling claim for having found the process again.

Functionality of tools remains, but some specifics are drastically different, so it gets subjective.

That's the thing. It's hard for functionality or the need for it to disappear. And where it's supplanted by superior functionality, there's still reenactment. There is probably technology that has disappeared, but only in the case where we've completely lost all mentions or records of it. That's the only way something can get beyond the reach of the re-enactors. However, by the time something's gotten that obscure, it's been too thoroughly forgotten to be counted.

In other words, we can't find lost technology, because technology is really informational in essence, and if it's lost it's lost from anyone's consciousness or any known record by definition.

I think the more interesting discussion (and where I hopped this was going) was that tools never die, they just evolve.

For all of his examples he was able to come up with some trivial example of some near-extinct culture in some very small part of the world using them. But for instance the chariot wheel EVOLVED into the automobile wheel, hammers evolved into jackhammers and hammerdrills (and just plain hammers), brass helmets into motorcycle helmets.

I think finding a tool that is no longer used and has no "children" would be the truly interesting find. If a tool is used to serve a purpose and solve a problem, are there any categories of problems that we simply don't run into anymore?

And for the people talking about parts for '87 chevy's and IDEs or dead software projects, I think you're taking his point far too literally.

> I think finding a tool that is no longer used and has no "children" would be the truly interesting find.

I'd look at tools used for gas lamps.

Candles are still legitimately used for emergency purposes, but without a gas distribution network using gas lamps is pretty much impossible, given that it's no longer reasonable to keep gas fixtures around as long as electricity works reasonably reliably.

Frankly, gas lamps are the worst of both worlds when compared to candles and electric lighting: They're reliant on complex infrastructure, even if you somehow have your own gas supply, and they're still based on the toxic and fire-hazard-prone technology of burning flammable things. When you factor in the risk of gas leaks, they're actually worse than candles.

There are plenty of gas streetlights burning today in modern American and European cities. They never turn them off since it's cheaper to let them burn than to have someone light them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting#Gas_street_lightin...

In Israel some Jews use gas lamps for lighting on the Sabbath because the electric grid is run by non-religious Jews in violation of the Sabbath, and they don't want to benefit from that. (Before you ask: There is no central gas distribution network in Israel because of the risk of war, so all houses have individual tanks.)

The requirement to avoid the electric grid is disputed, and most religious Jews don't, but some do.

One I remember being fascinated about from Latin class: the Antikythera Mechanism[1].

EDIT: Others include Roman cement, which was masterfully produced by them. It's the reason so many of their structures and amazingly engineered roads are still around today, millenia later.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk

Seems lots of ancient medicines and herbal plants with special effects were lost like Silphium[1] and Nepenthe[2].

Who knows what other amazing things perished with the Library of Alexandria[3], House of Wisdom in Baghdad[4], Library of Pergamum[5], and Imperial Library of Constantinople[6]?

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthe [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Pergamum [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Library_of_Constantino...

My understanding is that we can't rebuild a certain gel that's used in some older nuclear weapons, because we've lost all of the formulas, all of the production processes, and the handful of people who had both the scientific understanding of the stuff and the clearance.

Has anyone else heard this story, and can they back it up with a real source?

It's called fogbank, and the full extent of what happened is unknown due to it's classified nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK

You're thinking of FOGBANK[1], which they apparently had to reverse-engineer the manufacturing process for after, essentially, losing the any documentation of how to make it.

On the subject of the question in the article itself, it seems trivial to come up with technologies that have stopped being made: semaphore towers, metric clocks, lisp machines, and slide rules spring to mind.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK

Slide rules are still made (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...)

Outside of the lisp machine, it was pretty trivial to find examples of those technologies that are still being made and sold.

I'm sure some nerd out there is making a lisp machine in his garage this very moment. :)

Actually, if you follow the references in the wiki article, you'll find that there was lots of documentation on how to make FOGBANK. The actual components were completely known, as well as the manufacturing process, however the specifics of the manufacturing process (-exactly- which machines) were lost. In fact, what you'll find is that when they finally got around to making FOGBANK (albeit at lower yields) the reason the original FOGBANK manufacturing process had such high yields was because the material they were using were actually more impure than the rerun.

FOGBANK is actually one of those materials that relies on impurities for it's qualities, and the original documentation did not note this (probably because they did not know), and it was only with more recent techniques that we were able to establish that.

Anyhow, the FOGBANK stuff is no where as simple as 'uh durr, silly engineers forgot how to make something'.

The best bet would probably be a tool used in a now dead religion. For example, a tool specifically design to force a live fish down the throat of a duck to appease kurlog, god of pond boats.

Maybe the tools Egyptians used to remove internal organs before embalming?

Greek fire (unless you want to count napalm as the same thing).

As well as serpentines and such ancient war machines.

Damascus and bulat steel too. Lots of weapons mentioned here...

Damascus steel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

I'm sure there's tons of tools that are extinct and no surviving record of them exists, so we don't know about them. In that sense, you could say it's all a matter of documentation. If something doesn't exist at a given moment but is documented, it's likely that it will be made again at some point.

I would have gone for something big and expensive, like, say, the lunar module. Is anyone making a new lunar module or a hydrogen dirigible these days?

I was going to suggest the physicians head mirror (the one with a hole), except http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_mirror says "They are still routinely used by otolaryngologists in the clinical setting, particularly for examination and procedures involving the oral cavity."

"I tried ... Paleolithic hammers (still being made) ...". OK this is too good to be true. I googled and it IS available, for $230: http://www.stoneageartifacts.com/html/Artifact-Hand%20Axes.h.... It is mind boggling who buys these things.

I'm currently reading Kevin Kelley's book and am enjoying it, but I find his "technology NEVER dies" conjecture mostly uninteresting. I guess it's a strong enough statement that it begs for disproof, but I haven't heard any interesting conclusions that rely on it.

OK guys, this smells like a challenge. Can anyone think of a tool which has been made extinct?

http://bit.ly/evkm84

At least until John Hammond gets his wish.

I wrote an IDE the other day that nobody uses. Does that count?

Not sure why people are voting you down. I've written quite a few tools for coding that have gone unused, and its exactly where my mind went too.

Your specific implementation of an IDE might be dead. But the concept of an IDE and the use of IDEs lives on.

There are tons. Think of all the things that humankind used to assume worked and now consider completely silly, like divining rods, or some tools related to alchemy such as the aludel. Several awful medical devices from ancient times up to the middle ages are also gone. Many of these didn't evolve. They weren't refined. They were awful ideas and simply died.

Of course divining rods and crystal balls and the like might still have the function of duping "tools"

Thanks to New Agers and such, devices like divining rods are still made and sold.

How about the tool used to weld a metal link around a prisoner or slave's ankle?

I can't imagine anyone still knows how to do that. (But I'm semi expecting to be proved wrong.)

I'm willing to bet money that you will find members of the BDSM community who will know the exact process and are more than willing to hook you up. (So to speak ;)

I heard this on the radio on the way to work this morning. The obvious thing that came to mind was the technology used to build the pyramids.

There is a bit of a survivor bias in this challenge, as the tools that are no longer being made corresponds well to tools which nobody remembers.

The problem here is not asking a clear question. There are millions or billions of tools that are no longer being built today. I made one just now as I was writing this post, it will never be built again.

Yes it is a cute conclusion, it outlines an interesting social phenomenon. But 'Tools never die' is not correct.

Also, Fred's steam engine is no longer built, it was unique, if you show me steam engines, it is not Fred's steam engine.

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/radiumemanator...

I give you the radium emanator, a device used to infuse water with the healthy radiation from radium. From the link, "It appears to have been made from cement mixed with uranium ore."

Needless to say, it was never a good idea, and the use of this tool died out with the end of the radium fad and, presumably, more than a few of the fad's adherents.

I will be very surprised if anyone was still making this or something to do the same thing.

I'm sure that along those same lines there are products that have been discontinued because the long term effects of their use overwhelms the actual benefits. DDT, lead based paint, and asbestos ceiling tiles come to mind.

Williams-Kilburn tubes, which were CRTs with high-persistence phosphor used as memory and display devices beginning in the 1940s. The 'high-persistence' means W-K tubes are the exact opposite of where CRT technology stands today: They're useless for TVs and computer monitors, because the phosphor stays lit too long. However, that's what you want if you're using the phosphor to store bits of data in a vacuum tube computer, or to display the contents of memory in that computer.

Plenty of people are making CRTs today. I doubt anyone is making CRTs that would be useful W-K tubes.

(Another guess might be core memory but, knowing NASA and some of IBM's customers, I have a suspicion someone still has real uses for a few hundred kilobytes of core.)

[as originally posted by me elsewhere]

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