Questions tagged [technology]
Tag for questions on the application of theoretical or scientific knowledge for a practical objective, including methodologies, techniques, or processes.
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Did the Finns have aluminum screw caps in 1939?
I was looking at images from the 1939 Winter War
https://www.rferl.org/a/finlands-winter-war-with-the-soviet-union/30280490.html
and found this interesting one.
source
The Molotov cocktail has an ...
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What percentage of households in Sweden in the 1990s only had over-the-air TV?
I was born in the mid-1980s, so I grew up in Sweden in the 1990s. Our family was not rich, but we somehow did live in a house, as opposed to an apartment/flat.
We only had an antenna on the roof, with ...
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Is there any documentation of the use of scientific knowledge or technology in pagan temples?
One of the great rabbinic scholars from the Geonic period, Rabbi Hai Gaon (939-1038 CE) wrote a responsum wherein he mentions as something "well-known" that that idolatrous temples would set ...
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How did muzzle-loaded rifled artillery solve the problems of the hand-held rifle?
I'm specifically interested in muzzle-loading rifle artillery, so no smoothbores and no breach-loaders. The period I'm interested in is roughly 1820 - 1860, for both the army and navy.
But first I ...
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When did swamp/wetland conversion first begin, and what were the early methods for doing so?
I have been trying to do some research into the early history of humans using wetlands, but haven't had much luck. As I understand it so far, there are a number of methods of "wetland conversion&...
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Did it really take until 1990 for "Europe"/UK to switch from glass bottles of milk to cartons? [closed]
I came across this weird claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_delivery#Europe
By 1975, 94% of milk was in glass bottles, but in 1990, supermarkets started offering plastic and carton containers, ...
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Were primers for pistols in short supply?
I am talking about pre-cartridge pistols which used primers. Gunpowder could be made from fairly available raw materials but primers not only required I think harder-to-come-by elements like mercury ...
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Did soldiers wear helmets in the 19th century? [closed]
When trying to do research in military history, I got interested in 19th century warfare. I know that they wore a lot of hats back then, but did they also wear helmets? I know that helmets existed at ...
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Help understanding exactly the phases of stone tool development during the stone age?
I have been studying how the stone tools evolved for the past few days, and think I am close to understanding roughly what the model is, but after reading a few recent papers, it seems there's a lot ...
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When was the ligature (æ) removed from daemon and replaced with "ae"? [closed]
A lot of older books, white papers, and even kernels used the word dæmon, rather than daemon, but at some point between now and the early 2000s that trend changed. Does anyone know when this trend ...
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Why did water stored on premodern ships "go brackish" or "go bad" while at sea?
I have read in several Napoleonic historical fiction novels that water stored on ships would somehow spoil over time. The water is described as completely unpalatable if not undrinkable, and alcohol (...
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Who was Professor Henri Andre and what did he publish?
Looking at the history of electrochemical batteries, I came across this article from NASA where it says:
In the late 1920s, French Professor Henri André finally made the first practical silver-zinc ...
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When did horseback riding start? Are Doosheh cave petroglyphs authentic and correctly dated?
I am trying to reconcile 3 answers I have got so far. Perhaps there are more. My main question is about when horseback riding started.
In Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK), the information panel in the ...
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Where can I find an historically accurate ordinary items database for dungeon-stocking and art
I swear I had found in the comments of one of Matthew Colville's "stocking the dungeon" videos a link to an enormous database of accurate lists of ordinary items that list REAL items that ...
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Did the Soviet Union or China participate in the light bulb cartel? If not, in what ways did they differ and how long did their bulbs last?
The Phoebus cartel was a well known scheme to fix the standard lifespan of incandescent lightbulbs that arose at the beginning of the 20th century.
See Spectrum.ieee.org.
Although not implemented for ...
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Why do the bases of these pillars have grooves in them?
While exploring the ruins of the city of Perga we saw many things that looked like this:
It looks like the base of a column (though maybe it is a capital?). I am curious why there is a radial groove ...
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Is Jacques Le Goff's statement about medieval labor mechanization not leading to qualitative progress true?
Jacques Le Goff said this in his book "Medieval Civilization 400-1500" on pages 200-201. I would like to know if modern historians agree with these statements of Jacques le Goff and why:
...
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What percentage of US households had electricity and telephones in 1940?
I'm trying to find a published source giving the percent of U.S. households having electricity and percent having telephones in 1940 (+/- a year or two). Not interested in the rural vs city divide per ...
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Origin of barber/surgeons: did it have to do with tools?
Although today it sounds absurd that someone who shaved men and I guess also cut hair would be entrusted to performing medical procedures, is it possible that few people had the tools or the ability ...
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Was "leather" really a technology introduced by Europeans to the Plains Indians?
I was watching a university lecture about the Comanche called "Nomads in the Tribal Zone: Conflict and Compromise in 18th Century New Mexico". The lecturer said that leather was one of the ...
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How to explain the apparent discrepancy in the use of papyrus vs. clay tablets between Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia?
Nowadays, the papyrus plant apparently thrives relatively well in certain sections of the Tigris-Euphrates system. With that in mind, one naturally wonders why in ancient times the Sumerians and ...
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What was the first instance of native Americans using gunpowder weapons in battle and did they ever make their own powder?
I am afraid to ask this question too broadly but I would be very happy to get answers that included conflicts not just in the Americas. For example, India had superior rockets to those of the British ...
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Have there been "mechanical paintings" in real life?
I'm currently playing a delightful little game called "Creaks". In it the there are "mechanical paintings". The idea is that it's like a regular painting, but you can wind it up ...
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What method was used to create book illustrations in late 1800s/early 1900s?
There were (and are) many processes for producing printed images that were used in the 1800s, mostly variants of engraving, etching and lithography.
Early books used woodcut images, which are usually ...
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Were there clay printing presses in the bronze age?
I'm no lithographer, but it seems to me that making a die cast out of metal, wood or stone, which could be pressed in to clay tablets to produce copies of its textual contents, would be easier than ...
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What key technologies allowed construction of the Gutenberg printing press?
First, what are the key technologies required in the construction of the Gutenberg printing press? According to Wikipedia, the key technology necessary is the screw press
Given the answer to the above,...
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When did fluorescent lights become common in Europe?
In the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual, one suggestion for interfering with radio transmissions in occupied Europe is:
Damaging insulation on any electrical equipment tends to create radio ...
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What was the device that general Birdwood was using in the "Gallipoli" TV series?
Since this is a question about historical detail, I think it suits more this site than Movies SE.
The miniseries Gallipoli tells the story of the invasion on that peninsula during the Great War. I ...
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Why didn't Chiang mention technological self-reliance?
In China's Destiny & Chinese Economic Theory, Chiang Kai-Shek wrote that:
The two most important ways to understand and utilize man's nature are: First, to preserve the inherited ethics of the ...
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Were blue-tinted glasses prevalent in Victorian England and, if so, why?
Whenever I happen to read Chesterton, Conan-Doyle or some other British writers of the era, there will occasionally be mentioned people wearing blue-tinted spectacles.
Chesterton especially, in his ...
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When did households become electrified?
The first households were supplied with electricity in the 1880s (from wikipedia). I think by around 1950 most urban households in the US had electricity. Rural households got there a few years later? ...
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What fueled the street lights in 13th-century Cordoba?
Córdoba, Spain is often said to have had street lights in its Muslim period, which ended in 1236. How did those street lights work?
In Lawrence of Arabia, Prince Faisal was dramatized as having said ...
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Why did mass production have to wait until the Industrial Revolution?
We're generally told that mass production and the Industrial Revolution go hand in hand, that the Industrial Revolution gave us the miracle of complex tools made of identical, interchangeable parts ...
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Who was responsible for the correct production of a Mesopotamian 'cubit rod' and whose fingers where used as the standard?
Who was responsible for the correct production of a Mesopotamian 'cubit rod' and whose fingers where used as the standard?
Wikipedia notes that the standards changed but gives no source of these ...
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Where did the archived discussions in Google Groups come from?
I was sifting through old messages in the Google Groups rec.games.chess when a thought popped up-where did all of these messages, from the '80s and '90s, come from? To be specific, the question is ...
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Why does the US have many top-level web domains? [closed]
Why does the US have top-level domains like .gov, .mil and others, while other nations can only use second level domains for their government agencies? It might seem an easy question, but I think it ...
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When was the first full length book sent over telegraph?
When was the first full length book sent over telegraph?
or
What was the longest message sent over telecommunications before 1900?
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What kind of suspension did Roman carrucae have?
The German Wikipedia on post coaches states that the Roman carrucae (there described as a Reisewagen, something like travelling vehicle) already had suspension and a passenger cabin. I tried to find ...
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What did people do about kerosene lamp fires?
In the late nineteenth century, kerosene lamps were widely used for illumination. They were effective and affordable, though had the nontrivial disadvantage of being a significant fire hazard; a lamp ...
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Did the 1st Marine Division use the M3 carbine on Okinawa?
I wanted to know if the 1st Marine Division used the M3 infrared sniper carbine on Okinawa during World War II.
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Before television sets became commonplace, did people generally watch movies only once?
As I understand it, home television sets first became commercially available in the US in 1938 and grew in popularity throughout the 40s and 50s. Before people had televisions, did they have a way of ...
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What do the phone number suffixes J, M, R, W in 1940 New York phone book mean?
Browsing through the Staten Island, NY telephone directory of January 1940, I found that certain phone numbers were printed with a suffix J, M, R or W. What do these mean? I've marked a few of them in ...
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What is Charles Babbage referring to when he talks about the 'College of Laputa'?
In On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, what is Charles Babbage referring to when talking about the College of Laputa in the following extract:
...Nor has the wild imagination of the ...
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What made California Indian baskets so good?
"California Indians were among the world's most sophisticated basket makers", according to Steven Hackel in Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis. Descriptions of the baskets emphasize the ...
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What triggered the acceleration in human advancement? [closed]
If you look back 100,000+ years humans were living in caves. They lived in caves for millennia. They used the same stone tools for millennia. They painted the same wall paintings for millennia.
The ...
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Did the Nazi Army have a telephone conversation pattern?
The film "Valkyrie" (2008) depicts that while Stauffenberg was on his way to Berlin, Friedrich Fromm called Keitel to ask him about the rumors circulating in Berlin about Hitler's death.
Fromm to ...
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How can there be a "final edition" of a morning paper, in the morning?
A US television episode from 1957 has the following scene, set in a hotel restaurant in what is clearly the morning, as he is eating breakfast and it looks brightly lit:
Person: "The morning paper, ...
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Why did the Germans use the Enigma machine rather than the far superior "Lorenz" cipher machine?
Basically, the only good thing about the "Enigma" cipher machine was its name. Other than that, it was grossly inferior to the "Lorenz" one, apparently only used by some of the main, top-ranking ...
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Did anyone interweave blue and red threads in order to give the illusion of purple cloth before purple dye became cheap?
The wikipedia article on purple contains nothing on this.
Also, why did the ancients not simply mix red and blue dye together to make purple?
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When was the first electrical intra-battlefield communication?
When was the first time a commander used, for example, the telegraph to communicate with and coordinate different parts of the same battlefield?
I know that the telegraph was used extensively for ...
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