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This video demonstrates how the Bronze age people of Britain in perhaps 2,000 BCE would have made a sword out of bronze: The following video shows the steps you would take after casting to create a finished sword: Bronze age Britain was an amazing time for human beings, as bronze is hard enough to make [...]
Blast from the past – How the B-17 “Flying Fortress” Worked
by Marshall Brain | March 1, 2011
The B-17 “Flying Fortress”. It is a classic bomber from the World War II era. It was able to carry 4,500 to 8,000 pounds of bombs depending on the distance to the target. Here is a nice introduction: Top Ten Bombers- B-17 Flying Fortress Each B-17 flew with 10 crewmen who worked together as a [...]
Blast from the Past – How Integrated Circuits (chips) Work
by Marshall Brain | January 24, 2011
The following video takes us back to Fairchild Semiconductors in 1967, as the age of integrated circuits is getting underway. It is talking about integrated circuits that contain 20 components (transistors, resistors, etc.), and therefore are far simpler than the billion-transistor chips we see today. It is also an era when the masks used to [...]
The post on bell-mouth spillways mentions a number of dams, and brought to mind one the most impressive dams in the world – the Hoover Dam. This video explains its construction and many of the challenges faced: The first five minutes are a little slow, but then the construction process starts and it is impressive. [...]
Blast from the past – reverse engineering the 6502 microprocessor
by Marshall Brain | January 3, 2011
Back in the early 1980s, the 6502 microprocessor dominated the microprocessor landscape. The 6502 powered everything from the Apple II to the Nintendo NES. It contained just a few thousand transistors (compared to microprocessors today that exceed a billion transistors), but at the time it was quite powerful. Fast forward to today, and there are [...]
Here is an outstanding video that explains how the world’s first transistor works, as well as all subsequent transistors. This invention made possible everything from portable radios to the microprocessors that power modern society: Far more detail on transistors can be found in this lecture: This video demonstrates how transistors are created on chips: For [...]
This is both a fascinating and depressing video. At the beginning of the 20th century there were millions of acres of Redwood forests containing massive trees reaching nearly 400 feet tall at the high end. They could be 20 feet or more in diameter at the base. Native American Indians did not cut them, and there were limits on what settlers could do with them until steam technology and railroads made it technologically possible to cut and move the huge logs. But once the technology was available, it only took a few decades to cut almost all of them down. Here’s how they did it…
How long does a new technology last in the modern world? The CD only lasted (as a mainstream technology) for 2 decades before its replacement (MP3 files) came along. DVDs may have an even shorter life before streaming video replaces them. The analog TV lasted less than a century, as did the CRT screen. They have been replaced by digital TV and a combination of LCD, Plasma, DLP and OLED technologies. The internal combustion engine has had a pretty good run, but keep in mind that the Model T was invented a century ago.
But if you are looking for record breaking runs in the area of technology endurance, it appears that the laced leather shoe is up there near the top of the list, as seen here…
“The Lorax” was first published by Dr. Suess in 1971. This was during the dark ages of environmental protection. Keep in mind that the EPA did not open its doors until December of 1970, and at that point the amount of pollution in the United States was staggering. One of the events that brought the EPA into being was the fire on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio in June of 1969. Yes, an entire river lit on fire, as seen in this video…
If you are a fan of all things NASA, this video is absolutely fascinating. It is 30 seconds of real time from the Apollo 11 Saturn V launch, but it has been extended to over 8 minutes because it was shot at 500 frames per second. And it has a erudite narration that explains what [...]
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