Ancient Innovations That Were Well Ahead of their Time

hello everybody welcome back to another episode of side projects i as always i'm your host simon and in this one the ancient innovations that were well ahead of their time we're looking at them so let's just jump in when we think about asian civilizations that existed thousands of years ago we imagine primitive people a primitive way of life people didn't have access to the kind of basic amenities that many of us benefit from today such as electricity obviously machinery as well as state-of-the-art plumbing even ancient theaters of war looked very different definitely no superweapons not even any guns but in actuality ancient civilizations were way more advanced than we like to think to the extent that we even fail to appreciate the radical innovations they managed to come up with before such things became the standard you can't help but admire these achievements when taking into account the periods they appeared in and the limits of technology at the time from thousands of years ago in the video today six ancient innovations that were well ahead of their time today sleep experts estimate that around 85 percent of people use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning so the chances are that you probably have an alarm on your mobile phone or an old-fashioned one that rouses you out of bed every day who on earth doesn't use their phone as an alarm so no no i've got one of those ones that rings the two bells no one according to experts the earliest known alarm clock traces back to the 4th century bc in ancient greece and the man behind it happened to be one of the world's most well-known philosophers plato supposedly fed up with students frequently arriving late to the academy where he taught as a result of oversleeping plato made a few modifications to what was already an impressive invention of the ancient world the water clock in an attempt to keep his students from snoozing the day away water clocks measured time by changes in the height of water in a container which funneled slowly out of a tiny hole at the bottom into another container below what plato did was add another set of containers to the bottom of a water clock so that once the water trickled down and filled up those containers it would set off what's believed to have sounded like a whistling kettle which is going to be a pretty startling way to get up but here's what's amazing about it plato came up with the idea long before mass-produced alarm clocks came about in the 1870s and yes he did it all seemingly for the simple and somewhat egotistical reason that he felt his lectures were just too important to miss but he's plato so they probably were the human race has long grappled with natural disasters and in an attempt to reduce their potentially devastating impact on communities sought to learn more about them today scientists use devices called seismographs to measure and record earthquakes moreover we have the rick to scale to help make use of that data these tools helped seismologists measure the largest one on record an earthquake scoring a magnitude of 9.5 that occurred in southern chile on may 22 1960. for a comparison the seismic energy resulting from that earthquake was 20 000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima as a result of this tragic disaster 2 million people were made homeless another 3 000 suffered injuries and approximately 1 655 people died long before the massive earthquake rocked southern chile from 206 to 220 a.d people were already experimenting with ways to detect earthquakes called the golden age of china the han dynasty produced several remarkable inventions such as ship rudders wheelbarrows high quality writing paper and remarkably earthquake detection devices believed to be the first recorded seismoscope in history the whole feng daidong yi could detect earthquakes hundreds of kilometers away shaped like a large urn the device was about two meters in diameter and had eight dragon heads circling the top of it below each dragon head were bronze figures fashioned to look like toads with wide open mouths each dragon head contained bronze ball in its mouth so that when the device picked up an earthquake from far away the dragon head facing the source of the epicenter would drop its ball into the toad's mouth below as a result the device told you whether an earthquake occurred and also the direction from which it originated apparently the device had success early on when it indicated that an earthquake had occurred to the east sure enough days later a rider traveling from that region verified the device's findings were true plus all functions aside the device does look insanely cool and probably seconded as an eye-catching ancient piece of art and certainly a conversation starter at those ancient chinese parties [Music] these days it's easy to take modern technology like automatic doors for granted which slide open whenever you walk into a supermarket or a bank or your ready room you don't even have to worry about walking into a glass door that fails to open although the threat of injury does very much exist after all the u.s consumer product safety administration reports that more than 50 000 people suffer from automatic door and garage door injuries i shouldn't laugh 50 000 people walk into doors i mean or they get trapped inside them really watch out folks the product is you probably haven't considered how long automatic doors have been around you'd probably say something like i don't know around 100 years however automatic doors have existed for thousands of years at least in a very crude form and i mean there's kind of just one the man behind it heron of alexandria was a greek mathematician and inventor from the first century a.d who along with writing 13 books on various subjects designed several mechanical devices such as vending machines steam engines and an automatic door opener with the aim of giving temples a bit of a mystical feel while today's automatic doors use sensors and electricity to operate so it is not really herod of alexandria's doors worked a little differently whenever an altar for burning was lit the heat from the fire would funnel down through a tube into a vat of water underground once the vat of water heated expansion would force the water through a separate tube which filled up a bucket with water attached to the bucket's handle was a rope which looped through poles controlling the doors and had a weight attached to the other end as the bucket filled up with water the rope around the poles tightened rotating the spindles to open the doors and here's the really cool part when the altar's fire went out the water siphoned back into the vat and the door shut again magic not magic technology ancient technology heron of alexandria's doors may have depended on several moving pieces to function properly but it did exist two thousand years before two american engineers horace h raymond and sheldon s roby designed an optical device for opening doors in 1931 which would become the early versions of automatic doors that we're all familiar with today it may not be glamorous but this next ancient innovation tackled a problem that's been plaguing humans since the very beginning when human waste isn't disposed of properly people risk exposure to pathogens which can cause all sorts of health problems the greeks must have recognized this problem early on a problem that continues to still affect 2.6 billion people in the world today who still lack ideal sanitation methods leading to more than 200 million tons of human waste going untreated every year by the way quick side note here there's a documentary on netflix called inside bill's brain and it talks a lot about the solution for this sort of unsanitary toilet situation great docu-series worth a watch let's get back to it while the mesopotamians had early and rather primitive examples of toilets which were essentially ceramic cylinders with one meter openings placed in pits about 4.5 meters deep it was the minoans living on the island of crete who introduced the ingenious flushing method traced back to a palace in nosos the largest bronze age archaeological site on crete is what experts believe is the first evidence of a toilet that uses water to wash waste into a sewer system the flushing toilet is described as having large earthenware pans that are hooked up to a water supply with terracotta pipes considering that the greeks constructed the palace of gnasos around 1700 bc this forward-thinking approach to sanitation well preceded anything in europe until about the 16th century the anti-sera mechanism or what's been called the world's first computer boasts an advanced level of technology that far surpasses anything else on this list coming out of ancient greece researchers claimed that the antikythera mechanism was a thousand years ahead of its time and if the device's metal gear technology isn't enough to garner interest the background surrounding its discovery could well make for a compelling adventure movie the history behind it goes as follows in 1900 three divers came across a shipwreck 150 feet below the surface of the aegean sea off the coast of the greek island to antixthira soon after its discovery an expedition was launched to recover various artifacts from the shipwreck including marble pottery glassware jewelry coins and a mysterious wooden box the expedition wasn't without its casualties though for in the summer of 1901 one diver lost his life and two others became paralyzed some experts believe the mechanism itself which is about as large as a shoebox and originally made up of at least 30 interlocking bronze gears dates back at least to 70 bc with a handle placed on the side of the box users could turn the knob and operate the device which experts claim could reveal the timing of eclipses and even chart the movement of celestial bodies such as the moon upon its discovery experts found that the mechanism was composed of 82 fragments four of which contained gears the largest gear is 14 centimeters in diameter and originally had 223 teeth perhaps the most shocking revelation of all however is that the mechanism itself went largely under the radar until 1951 when physicist and historian derek desola price started taking an interest in it compared to the jewellery and other artifacts recovered from the shipwreck this small wooden box just got overlooked in contrast to other innovations we've detailed in today's video which are mostly everyday objects and scientific instruments greek fire served a much different purpose as you can probably tell from the name this was an incendiary weapon of warfare that's been compared to modern napalm which first arrived much much later in 1942 developed by the byzantine empire and first used in 678 a.d greek fire offered an edge in both land and sea battles as it created a sticky fire that attached to everything and it was really difficult to stop not even water could put out the fire serving as a technological advantage for the byzantines and constantinople it remained a dominant weapon for more than 700 years now you might think that experts today know everything there is to know about this ancient weapon but the truth is there's still a lot of mystery surrounding greek fire the byzantines didn't want their enemies to harness this power out of fear that it would be used against them so the recipe was a closely guarded secret that was passed down from emperor to emperor experts don't know what went into producing greek fire but they suspect the chief ingredients were light petroleum or naphtha which may have contained a combination of others such as sulfur bitumen lime and cedar resin so i really hope you found today's video interesting i hope those ancient innovations were new and exciting to you if you did please do smash that thumbs up button below if you've got a suggestion for a future side projects video well let me know in the comments below and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 404,749

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects

Id: qxRjZr_hZnM

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020