65
votes
Accepted
Why was uranium mined in the 1500s, but only "discovered" in 1789?
Uranium oxide in the form of the mineral pitchblende was known and mined - as the Wikipedia article says. So the short answer is that as far as anyone in the 1500s was concerned, they were mining ...
- 9,112
59
votes
Accepted
Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?
The Chinese designed the wall to be an effective barrier; that was the goal. To answer your question, we need to ask: what land barrier stopped foreign troops the best?
The answer in China, and ...
- 7,477
46
votes
Accepted
How were medieval castles built in swamps or marshes without draining them?
As noted, this type of castle was extremely common.
Harburg (Horeburg/near Hamburg), the first castle at Danzig are perhaps the most famous of these. They were most often built along the Northern ...
- 80.8k
37
votes
Accepted
How were horses disembarked from sail ships?
Basically three options:
1. Ramp or gangway:
The easiest and most preferable way. Might require specialised or retrofitted ships:
(extreme left, vertically centered, click to enlarge)
(Ottomans ...
- 80.8k
30
votes
Accepted
When did horseback riding start? Are Doosheh cave petroglyphs authentic and correctly dated?
There seems to be something going on of the quite unreliable kind. The generally accepted 'history' and dates of horse domestication and riding practices are quite at odds with the dates for cave ...
- 80.8k
28
votes
What is this old farm "combine"?
The machine the tractor is pulling is a grain reaper-binder, possibly a McCormick-Deering.
The reaper-binder, or binder, is a farm implement that improved upon the simple reaper. The binder was ...
- 1,126
20
votes
Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?
The Great Wall of China:
It is the longest man-made construction in the world. In the old times, it was of great military importance of preventing the enemies' intrusion and was regarded as the '...
- 1,900
17
votes
Accepted
How did lecturers magnify their voice in the days before amplification?
From my knowledge as a theatre historian and speech coach, I would say, it is probably a combination of:
Projection and enunciation. Not only speaking loudly, but speaking clearly and probably a bit ...
- 1,503
16
votes
What is this old farm "combine"?
The "contraption"
looks like a
Reaper-binder
A Massey-Harris reaper-binder pulled by a tractor (Rutland, England, 2008)
The reaper-binder, or binder, is a farm implement that improved ...
- 80.8k
15
votes
Accepted
How was body temperature checked before thermometers?
Adding to the previous answers regarding the use of the hand to assess body temperature, there have been several works which are quite suited to answer this question, which I hope to summarise here.
...
15
votes
Accepted
Study of causal structures and dynamics in history?
There is an emerging trans-disciplinary field called cliodynamics which studies these ideas. There's an open access journal, Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution, a ...
- 31.4k
11
votes
Did anyone interweave blue and red threads in order to give the illusion of purple cloth before purple dye became cheap?
Speaking as a lazy crochet artist and textile enthusiast, most people have pointed out the dye aspects regarding purple colors very well.
Meanwhile, I'll just point out that weaving blue and red ...
- 464
10
votes
How were horses disembarked from sail ships?
As noted in a comment there's a section of the Bayeux tapestry that depicts a horse being transported and another being led out of the water. Digging a bit deeper though, it looks like there was a bit ...
- 23.2k
9
votes
How was body temperature checked before thermometers?
Avicenna (980–1037) said that fever was the increased temperature of the heart (Canon I, part 4), so he checked the temperature by touching the chest over the heart with the hand.
This system was ...
- 1,900
9
votes
How did lecturers magnify their voice in the days before amplification?
Project with a full lung Filling your lungs forces the air out more effortlessly and with more volume
The Amphitheater The Amphitheater was designed to create a natural amplification of voices on ...
- 391
8
votes
Accepted
What was the source for Adam's children in the endnotes to Josephus' "The Antiquities of the Jews"?
The footnotes on this (and other editions of Josephus) seem to be referring to pages in A Collection of Authentick Records Belonging to the Old and New Testament by William Whiston.
In this case, ...
- 77.4k
8
votes
When did horseback riding start? Are Doosheh cave petroglyphs authentic and correctly dated?
Farsi wikipedia gives a number of different ages for those paintings (please note that my Farsi is not particularly good and English is just my second language, so the translation is probably ...
- 8,382
7
votes
How were medieval castles built in swamps or marshes without draining them?
Calvörde Castle in Saxony-Anhalt is an example of a rather common (to my great surprise) phenomena - the Marsh Castle. It guarded transportation routes between Brandenburg, Brunswick, and Magdeburg.
- 72.3k
6
votes
Accepted
How long did it take to bind a book in 13th century England?
My grandfather was a antiquarian book store owner in 1920s, in Kiev (Ukraine), and he bound books
(I possess some books bound by him). With all ingredients ready he was able to bind 2-3 books per day,...
- 38.5k
6
votes
Did anyone interweave blue and red threads in order to give the illusion of purple cloth before purple dye became cheap?
Short answer — frame challenge:
Of course 'someone' did that, perhaps quite early on, we can quite safely assume. Although hard evidence for that is scarce and presented here only with one concrete ...
- 80.8k
6
votes
Is there a name for the critical method of assessing historical narratives via the consultation of primary sources?
Historians agree that historiographic reading of the documentary record of the past, may produce sustainable historical accounts.
They disagree on:
what constitutes the documentary record of the ...
- 14.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Why were type bar designs so popular compared to type ball/wheel designs for manual typewriters?
As @jamesqf comments above, what appears to be the case is that manual type wheel and similar designs require more effort to operate, which translates into slower typing. When you think about it that ...
- 311
5
votes
Study of causal structures and dynamics in history?
You may find the field of "big history" relevant to your interests. David Christian's book Maps of Time is an excellent introduction. This work isn't as quantitatively oriented as what you are looking ...
- 18.9k
5
votes
How was body temperature checked before thermometers?
The standard way to check it is to touch one's forehead with your hand or better with your lips. You immediately detect whether the temperature of the patient is higher or lower than your own. This ...
- 38.5k
5
votes
Why were type bar designs so popular compared to type ball/wheel designs for manual typewriters?
As your typing speed increases, you require a typewriter that does not jam as you type. The IBM Selectric met this need, and thus was widely adopted by any business or government agency which could ...
- 6,799
5
votes
When did spotlights begin to be used at lectures?
Before electrical lighting, there was gas lighting. One type of gas operated light is the limelight, where a piece of quicklime is heated white hot in a flame of hydrogen burning with pure oxygen. ...
- 311
5
votes
How were medieval castles built in swamps or marshes without draining them?
While I absolutely agree with @LangLangC's answer and especially his quoting of Turnbull for turning towards the castles in Eastern Europe, I think there is potentially too much emphasis on the ...
- 10.8k
5
votes
Any examples when one civilization/country got technology from another and after due to lack of knowledge lost it
Roman concrete:
The strength and longevity of Roman marine concrete is understood to benefit from a reaction of seawater with a mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime to create a rare crystal called ...
- 72.3k
5
votes
What made California Indian baskets so good?
It looks to me as if there are clearly differentiable technologies at use in these lands. Primarily, I understand, we are interested in those which did not use tar for waterproofing and instead ...
- 10.8k
4
votes
When did leaf springs appear in vehicles?
To answer the question in the title, apparently the leaf spring was invented in 1804 by Obadiah Elliott, a carriage builder in London, who was granted a patent for his leaf-spring-suspension vehicle ...
- 77.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible