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 Bill Gates steal the GUI concept from Steve Jobs?
The Jobs movie alleged that Bill Gates swiped the idea of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on a personal computer (PC) from Steve Jobs. Can anyone explain to me the exact story on what happened in a ...
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How accurate or supported is Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"?
Jared Diamond wrote a fascinating book that purports to explain, in a very broad way, the development of civilization. It has several explanations for the development of Eurasian civilization rather ...
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When did bombs actually look like this?
I guess most are familiar with the cartoonish "bomb icon". It is used to warn of metaphorical or literal explosive danger and shows a deep black sphere with a smaller cylinder attached. That is where ...
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How has hearing loss been avoided in war?
Guns are very loud, even in an open field. In a trench or inside a city, I can only imagine they would be louder, and quite capable of causing hearing loss. How have armies ensured that their troops ...
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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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History of scientific regression [closed]
Throughout history, humans have made many subtle and many substantial scientific advancements. Humans have explored, examined, learned, applied and at times seemingly "forgotten" and/or were unable ...
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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 are the factors that caused the new world civilizations to be less technologically advanced than the old world?
Assuming they started at the same point (maybe the split of the continents or the migration of what became the first "Native Americans" to the American continent), why did the Old World end up ...
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When were swords last used in European warfare?
Specifically, I'm interested in the last documented occurrence of swords (of any sort) being used as a primary weapon by infantrymen or cavalrymen in Western warfare. That is, when did any European or ...
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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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Are there any examples of technologies have been lost over time? [closed]
I've read before about various technologies being lost over time, either due to war or famine or just time. I'm interested in knowing more about what sorts of things have been lost, and how.
I've ...
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How serious was Fermat's statement about the ancients?
I am extremely interested in the idea that there was a period in time when, at least in the west, people looked upon the ancients (Romans/Greeks) as possessors of wisdom that had been lost. Fermat ...
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To what extent did Native American cultures develop metalworking for tools and weapons?
When Europeans started showing up in the New World, the native cultures were technologically far behind. Many still used stone tools: North American tribes used flint, while some Mesoamerican cultures ...
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Did Heisenberg undermine the German atomic bomb by deliberately hiding his expertise from the Nazis?
In his massive book Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb, Thomas Powers says that Heisenberg, who never became a Nazi and balked at the immorality of building a bomb for Hitler, did ...
user2237
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Did this "sledge rigged like a sloop" vehicle ever exist, or was it an invention of Jules Verne?
In Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, the main character Phileas Fogg misses his train in the American north and ends up hitching a ride on a curious invention, as described here:
There ...
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Why did the grip-centered viking shield fall out of use relative to the kite shields?
Did Normans have battle advantage with strapped kite shields over Saxons and Vikings with their grip-centered shield style of fighting?
What often comes to my mind are battles like Hastings (1066). ...
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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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When and where did socks become common?
To be clear, I mean the socks you wear on your feet, to insulate you form your shoes/boots/other footwear.
By common, I mean easily available to the masses, rather than just to the rich.
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How much were telegraphists in the 1950s paid?
I'm doing some research for a small project, and am having some difficulty finding information on telegraphists as a whole.
The information I'm trying to find is rather specific, and I can't seem to ...
user8194
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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 did Persia adopt the movable-type printing so late?
According to Iranica, the first books in Persian characters were published in Leiden in 1639, almost 200 years after Gutenberg's invention, and in Asia it was used even before that.
Given that Persia ...
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What evidence is there of the vision aids people used before the invention of eyeglasses in about 1286?
The Wikipedia article on glasses says ‘scattered evidence exists for use of vision aid devices in Greek and Roman times’ but only cites the example of Nero’s emerald. This article on Magnifying ...
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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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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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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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Is there any evidence that the Catholic Church slowed innovation during the Middle Ages?
I often hear that the rate of innovation was very high during ancient times in Greece and the Roman empire. I've also heard that the rate of innovation was reduced once the Catholic Church gained ...
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Why did the Mongols destroy the library during the siege of Baghdad in 1258?
For all what we know the Mongolian Empire was not simply a collection of brainless brutes, but they had intense knowledge of their opponents: descriptions, maps, information about the technology, ...
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How difficult was it to spoof the sender of a telegram in 1890-1920's in USA?
For my current genealogical research, I'm interested in how telegrams were sent inside the USA, in the 1890's through 1920's. I do not have copies of any actual telegrams that were sent or received; ...
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Why didn't the Black Death result in favorable results for surviving peasants in China?
The Black Death affected Europe and China alike.
In Europe, the Black Death resulted in increased social mobility for the peasants and, as a result, labor-saving innovations were introduced. All ...
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Is there an accepted explanation for multiple independent "cradles of civilization"?
Human history begins with millions of years of hunter-gathering and lithic technology:
The Paleolithic ... is ... distinguished by the development of the
most primitive stone tools ... and covers ...
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Why did quill pens persist until the early 19th century despite the capacity to make metal dip pens?
I recently toured Jefferson's Monticello and I was struck during the tour of the library by the description of some of the challenges that Jefferson faced using quill pens.
This seemed particularly ...
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What is the name of the theory that says an early discovery can stop technological development?
Some time ago I read a claim that an early discovery can lead to a great scientific stagnation. The example given was the Chinese porcelain, that resolved all the known problems, and stopped the ...
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Is there any evidence to support the claim that the US Strategic Defense Initiative played any significant role in undermining the USSR?
I have been reading Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, and one of the things that stuck me was a quote by Soviet hydrogen bomb creator Andrei Sakharov who was released from political imprisonment ...
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How did the monks whose job was to copy books react to Gutenberg's printing press?
It's typical to see people whose job it is to perform a manual task to - collectively - object when a new technology is introduced which makes their job obsolete (as the quintessential example, see ...
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How come all the major WW1 rifles were bolt action?
The main disadvantage of bolt action is that one has to remove the right hand from the trigger which leads to slower rate of fire.
Neither lever nor pump have this problem.
Rate of fire was viewed as ...
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Why was decimal time unsuccessful?
Under the metric system (and later SI), units of weight can be related to each other based on multiples of ten (e.g. 1 metric tonne = 1,000 kg = 1,000 × 1,000 g). Likewise with length (e.g. 1 ...
user3521
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How do Tamahagane, Damascus, and Toledo Steel compare?
Has a comparison been made of the qualities of Samurai (Tamahagane), Damascus and Toledo steel (rather than the swords)? I've seen claims for each being better than the others.
If it's on topic, I'm ...
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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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Why didn't the Persians make and use ballistas and other kinds of artillery?
In 1980 E.P.Thompson published an interesting paper called *Barbarian Invaders and Roman Collaborators *. Among other subjects he consdiers there the leakage from Rome to its enemies of technical ...
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Are steam engines still in regular use anywhere in the world?
Are there any countries in which steam engines have a regular purpose, or are still dominant on the railway? When did they officially fade out of use in the western world?
In Australia at least, they ...
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How accurate and detailed were geographical maps created and updated by the Romans?
Knowledge is power, and having superior geographical knowledge vs. your imperialistic enemies and competitors was probably a big advantage in the middle ages. Some specific examples would be knowledge ...
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What was "Greek fire"?
What was Greek fire?
I read in my history book that it was a flamethrower. But in certain fantasy movies it's been portrayed as something similar to dynamite. What was it dynamite or what? Did it ...
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Intersection Between Computer Science and History?
I am a computer science undergrad with a great interest in history. Lately I have been asking myself if there are general aspects or specialities of computer science which lend themselves to the ...
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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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When and how did the West lose its dependency on the USSR for Titanium?
This question was prompted by another one.
A long time ago, before I well-documented my internet research, I looked into the history of Titanium, its procurement, refinement, and work-ability. I ...
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Apart from the Inuit, and candlefish on the northwest coast, did pre-Columbian America have lamps or candles?
Lamps have been around in the Old World since the Palaeolithic (one was found in the Lascaux cave). Candles are thought to have originated in the Bronze Age, but were certainly used by ancient Greeks, ...
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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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Why wasn't there more use of wind power in antiquity?
Wind power [was never] taken seriously in the ancient world [...]
though Hero of Alexandria described a windmill connected to an air
pump designed to blow an organ, there is no evidence for the ...
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When did steel first appear? [closed]
When in history do we first have record of steel being used as a material? I am also interested in both its initial purpose and when it was first used in weapon making.
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Why didn't the Incan Empire use iron?
They could mine copper and silver, but not iron. Was there a reason to not use such materials to build advanced mining tools to work with Iron? What was their main limitation? Couldn't they build ...
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