The Greatest Mechanical invention

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

Posted by Durhambuilder on 11/10/2012 17:37:46:

Nobody has mentioned the dynamo / generator yet, think of the world without electricity……

Well it would certainly be different!

It would still exist though but we would have found different ways of doing things. Maybe supercars would still do 200MPH catalytic ignition with Acetelene headlamps! There are probably lots of technologies that were never developed to their potential because something else came along.

Nowadays new ways of doing things are described as being a 'disruptive' technology.

Ian P

[david lockwoodParticipant @davidlockwood10028]

I was going to say that i vote for the water wheel while i was thinking of Sheffield’s steel industry which i am told once produced a quarter of the worlds stainless steel this industry grew in Sheffield because the city has several streams running through it which were used to drive grind stones sharpening cutlery this of course grew into a very large industry over time. but then i thought the knife, how could we ever have got this far without it , can anyone think of a civilisation that didn't use the knife?

In a bare bones survival courses you may well be instructed on how to survive with only a knife but not many will give alternatives you just have to have one

Used for making shelter cutting and gathering food and of course defence from wild beasties I know I still use them every day

The other really good one is the water container if that can be called mechanical. If we had had to spend all our time hanging around watering holes ( where the beasties wait for you) we might never have got out of Africa in the first place

[SpringbokParticipant @springbok]

Why such a question it is not ME and is only down to the person that thinks it relevant.

Bob

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I wonder if Graham read my comment on the display of cultivation technologies at the science museum?

My initial thought was the basic flint scraper, the first tool that, allowed proto-humans to maximise the energy they could get out of their food by pre-processing it. This meant more time – the space in which cuture could develop.

But then I read the complaints about hand tools (although a scraper is a clear example of a lever, which is a mechanism in my book) – in which case the spear-thrower, which predates the bow and arrow and is clearly mechanical. This too had a huge impact on our ability to efficiently gather food.

Similarly the quern (simple millstone) might be a contender.

Neil

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Springbok on 11/10/2012 19:55:55:

Why such a question it is not ME and is only down to the person that thinks it relevant.

Bob

Bob,

I really think it is time we saw your definition of ME

[… I presume that you mean Model Engineering.]

Please feel free to define each word sepearately, or the phrase as a whole.

The rest of us seem to be enjoying the discussion.

MichaelG.

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Maybe the most important "invention" mechanical or otherwise is the tea break! Where else is better for discussions of this sort – and discussion is the best way to explore a range of ideas and to access the various skills and knowledge of all to apply to the solution of problems.

Just think – how many problems real or imaginary, trivial or important have you solved over tea and can you imagine a world where such an " institution" had never existed? We would all have to go along each re-inventing the wheel over and over again.

(For those of you of a more serious demeanour perhaps I am saying that the most important "invention(s)" are the various means by which we can communicate ideas and knowledge to harness the power of the many to solve problems.)

Regards

Norman

 

Ps

Tea break over – get back out in yer sheds!

 

Edited By NJH on 11/10/2012 23:59:30

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Nicely put, Norman

MichaelG.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

As we are going back to the beginning of human occupation of the earth then we must include in the mechanical inventions Animal traps ! Man did not live unless he hunted and foraged but could not do all at the same time so animal traps were important and then the flint edge to process skins and flesh. It is important to remember that to live one has to forage for food and this can take a lot of the day just to accumulate enough to survive. Fishing is time and the idea of a fish trap is important and then traps on animal trails which work when you are not around.

The basic things are important.

Clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 12/10/2012 08:08:23

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

as an ecologist, it's interesting that several of us have identified things that made food gathering more effcient.

Another interesting observation is that, in very broad terms, the few hunter-gatherer societies work no harder than modern folks, perhaps even less. Farming meant you could produce more grain and store it up, but then it just meant you had more time to make pyramids for the local pharoah…

Yes the Antikythera mechanism is another fascinating example. If there was to be a co-operative project on this forum, I would love it to be working upa design for a working model of the mechanism. If it could function with hand-filed gears such a thing should be within the compass of any competent model engineer.

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 12/10/2012 21:25:55

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

Hi,

The Antikythera mechanism is interesting as a historical object but was essentially a dead end in it's day. Apart from the unexpected use of gears it is really is just an early orrery There appears to have been no development from it as our mechanisms came from other sources.

As for a model, it's been done:

Regards

Terry

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Terry and Neil, that must have been the mechanism they dubbed the 2000 year old computer on a Horizon programme I watched a couple of weeks or so ago. I think they said it was descoverd in in the first part of the 1900's. The Greeks won't let the remains out of their museum, so a spceial X-ray machine was built and shipped over to take internal images of it.

Regards Nick.

P.S. A chap who was building one (don't know if it was the same person in your link Terry) demonstrated how to mark out odd numbered gear teeth with a pair of divdiders and then file them all by hand, just like the Greeks had to do over 2000 years ago.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 12/10/2012 23:33:12

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

(1)

Lever , effective cutting tools and management of fire are quick answers but none of these would have got anywhere if it had not been for some fortuitous developments in human culture .

(a) Somewhere along the line man became both inquisitive and inventive – without these two traits nothing much would ever have happened .

(b) Also , probably very gradually , the concepts of both collective action and of the individual specialist evolved . Both of these ideas together allowed complex problems to be solved and complex hardware to be built .

(c) The later concept of education meant that skills were not lost as each individual died but were both passed on and added to by successive generations .

(2)

Very few inventions taken individually have actually changed industrial development much by themselves . What actually happens is that a succession of inventions comes along until one more ' pivotal' invention allows all the others to gel together into one technological leap .

As an example – just think how many different things had to be invented before the steam engine became possible – there are many obvious ones and probably hundreds in total .

Regards ,

Michael Williams .

 

Edited By MICHAEL WILLIAMS on 12/10/2012 23:33:55

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

More :

Scientific research and development and sometimes just plodding technical evolution have in many cases played a more important role in industrial development that the really quite rare 'brilliant invention'

Edited By MICHAEL WILLIAMS on 12/10/2012 23:44:17

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Michael, when as a young lad I asked my farther how someone thought how to make machines, he told me that it probably started from simple things, and others thought of ways to improve or adapt and often add other concepts and so end up with a complex piece of kit. So your number 2 point, I believe is correct. In fact very often when at work and a problem arises, descussions take place and a sloution develops which can only be described as a team effort.

Regards Nick.

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

Hi Graham,

A gear wheel is simply a given number of levers arranged in a circle.

Regards

Terry

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Unfortunately the chap (who was in the documentary) doesn't seem to have published his design!

The Greeks had many other mecahnical marvels, often powered by steam or water pressure – they even invented the vending machine. Heron of Alexandria described many of them.- altears taht opened doors when a fire was lit under them, or poured wine, basic automata.

They weren't 'dead ends' in the sense they had no-where to go, only in the sense that the Romans seem to have had no time for such silliness and we had to wait for a thousand years for them to be picked up again.

Neil

[SkarvenParticipant @skarven]

If you consider only how complex a mechanical device is it there are many canidates. Lathes , Steam Engines ….

Now, if you consider the magnitude of invention and ingenuity, I think there is nothing competing with the BOW and ARROW!

While you could look at the spear as an advanced stone throwing thing and the throwing stick (is that the right term?) as an arm lengthening thing as just developments of the same thing, the BOW and ARROW stands out. It takes a lot of thought and invention to actually bend a stick, hold it with some rope, and then use it to throw arrows at distances no man could throw a spear. This would get food at the homestead and more time for thought!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Stub Mandrel on 13/10/2012 18:08:59:

Unfortunately the chap (who was in the documentary) doesn't seem to have published his design!

Neil

Neil,

There are some useful references in this paper

The Horological Journal articles were fairly detailed.

MichaelG.

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Interesting. Wikipedia has three articles Atalatl, Spear Thrower and Woomera. the first two are very similar, while the third claims: "The extra energy gained from the woomera's use has been calculated as four times that from a compound bow"

The distance record for an atalatl approaches 260m. For hunting (rather than war)the certainty of a kill matters more than range or accuracy o the ability to accurately throw a spear with great force that can kil a deer or antelope instamntly may be more effective than a bow that would probably just injure the target leading to a long and perhaps unproductive chase/trailing of the target.

Which reminds me – most folks think humans are generalists with big brains, not much good at anything else. In fact, we are highly specialised for endurance – a human can outdistance a horse, because the human just keeps going. This was demonstrate ina documentary where two Kalahari Bushmen succesfully hunted down an antelope, just by following it and disturbing it every time it rested. After several hours they just walked up to the anetelope, already dying of heat exhaustion, and cut its throat. They did not seem even a little fatigued.

Neil

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

One has to consider that the, 'Old' people had little concept of time and lived day by day and only experienced the seasonal changes and as such saw the migrations of animals and maybe followed them to take them as food.

In the same period the ice age occured and it was only when the ice age retreated that mankind flourished. During this time they no doubt domesticated several feral animals such as cattle, dogs and anything that took their fancy, goats ?. Like today with Reindeer in Lapland.

it does not take much imagination to see that they would then use the larger animals as pack animals like the nomads do today. The dogs would help in hunting to distract the prey as it would be despatched.

Doing all this they had to create shelter, perhaps caves, (wall paintings) and perhaps clothing and create weapons like the bow and spear(Shown in the wall paintings), fire was essential as seasonal weather would curtail hunting and of course fire can help with food preservation and cooking.

so, one of the first devices may have been a rotated stick in a piece of wood to make fire.

It is clamed that the birth place of modern man (Homo Erectus) was in the Olduvai gorge in the Northern Frontier District in Kenya where Prof. Leakey found the bones and skulls of ancient man. mankind were few and far between in those times and there were no massive populations like now. In those days you could live off the land and comfortably. Animals abound and the lakes are full of fish, I know, I have been there and it is wild, hot and rugged with hot streams bursting from underground. You would not go hungry but you would need shelter as in the day it reaches 40C.I understand that in those days the land was forested. Like many parts of the world that are now desert that were once wild Oasis

Clive

[Steve GarnettParticipant @stevegarnett62550]

Typewriter. Okay, it ultimately gave way to the keyboard, on which you lot are typing all this crap instead of doing something useful…!

[julian atkinsParticipant @julianatkins58923]

not necessarily the 'greatest mechanical invention',

but hidden away and often overlooked and still in regular use are quite a large number of church bells cast as long ago as the 13th century in the UK.

the process used in their manufacture in the medieval times was an incredible art, and by far the largest manufacturing process at the time and for many centuries until the industrial revolution.

that so many ancient church bells remain in regular use is to my mind truly remarkable.

later the same process was used to make bronze cannons.

there was quite a debate in the later part of the 19th century and early 20th century as to whether 'modern' bells' had the same tonal characteristics as their medieval counterparts. and a lot of modern rings of bells incorporate medieval bell metal.

imagine witnessing a half ton bell being cast in 1280! what magic that must have seemed!

have a look at the medieval stained glass windows on the north side of the chancel in York Minster which show how these early bells were cast!

cheers,

julian

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

Posted by Steve Garnett on 13/10/2012 21:27:14:

Typewriter. Okay, it ultimately gave way to the keyboard, on which you lot are typing all this crap instead of doing something useful…!

 

I always thought that spreading knowledge and discussion is useful. I beleived that the ability to reflect, reason analyse and act as well as being able to pass on knowledge is what distinguished mankind from the animal kingdom Now I know it's crap Hmmmmmm…………..

Must go and sit on my own in isolation and cut bits of metal as a penance.  Or   — I could get on with writing crap and those who wish to do something useful could ignore it and not waste their time reading and commenting.

Terry

Edited By Terryd on 14/10/2012 09:18:31

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Hi Julian

"not necessarily the 'greatest mechanical invention',

but hidden away and often overlooked and still in regular use are quite a large number of church bells cast as long ago as the 13th century in the UK."

I certainly agree with the first bit!

We live in a village right next to the church and "benefit" from a regular "entertainment" on Sunday mornings (no lie-ins here!) and weekly practice evenings. We have to keep our dog indoors as if she goes into the garden when the bells are ringing she just sits and howls. On the plus side we don't have any trouble with the "neighbours" – they are always deadly quiet!

Regards

Norman

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Most Victorian inventions.

If it wasn't for the Victorians we would be in the shìt – literally as they designed and build most of our sewerage systems in this country and some are of immense proportions.

John S.

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