Ask HN: What is the go-to reference for human technology?
Just because a technology becomes obsolete (which IMO has a negative connotation) it shouldn't mean it should be forgotten and the principles used in ingenious designs can't be reused elsewhere. Best I can find is museums or history of technology books, but no catalog. Surely there must be some good reference out there?
My first thought was wikipedia, but that is too disorganized in this sense because it encompasses much more than technology. I'm thinking of some sort of outline where one could find collections like [0] in the 'mechanisms' subsection, and possibly comprising of multiple other subsections such as 'electronics', 'agriculture', 'materials', and so on. Perhaps this is too broad and why we have mixed sources like patents/encyclopedias/etc?
[0] http://507movements.com