Advanced For Its Age - They Had That Then?
09/03/2015
A miscellany of mechanisms developed perhaps earlier than you would think.
The Huffy Radio Bike manufactured in 1955 and 1956 by the Huffman Manufacturing Co. of Dayton Ohio.
Three vacuum tube radio, battery pack located on the rear carrier. The antenna was clamped to the down tube of the bike. The radio could tune the entire AM band. The radio bike was available as a single speed (Model 2612) or could be equipped with a Bendix two speed rear hub with coaster brake (Model 2610) as an option. |
Casa Mañana Theatre, in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. An outdoor amphitheater, Casa opened in 1936 as part of the official Texas Centennial Celebration. Built by famed Broadway producer Billy Rose, Casa Mañana featured the world's largest revolving stage surrounded by a moat. Fountains shot a water wall, which acted as a curtain for the stage. Combined with a restaurant, the complex sat 4,000 people for dinner and a show. The theatre closed after a 100-day run, and though it was set to open again the following year for another 100 days, cost overruns and the looming threat of World War II prevented it from ever re-opening. |
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The Antikythera mechanism was found in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea.
This astronomical calculator was about 1300 years ahead of its time, as described at Wikipedia: - The artifact was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. Believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientists, the instrument has been dated either between 150 to 100 BCE, or, according to a more recent view, at 205 BCE. After the knowledge of this technology was lost at some point in Antiquity, technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again in Europe until the development of mechanical astronomical clocks in the fourteenth century. The action of turning the hand crank would also cause all interlocked gears within the mechanism to rotate, resulting in the simultaneous calculation of the position of the Sun and Moon, the moon phase, eclipse, and calendar cycles, and perhaps the locations of planets. It also showed the occurrences of the Olympic Games. |
Hearth Toaster, c. 1800. Bread was placed between the arches; when one side was browned, the toaster was rotated to brown the other side. See it in use here.
The toaster can't be called "the best thing since sliced bread", because sliced bread wasn't invented until 1928, when even electric toasters had already been invented. |
2000-year-old Odometer
The odometer was already known around 0 BC, though the inventor may have been Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC). The mechanism was used to measure distance, and Wikipedia says the distances reported by later Greek and Roman historians of the travels of Alexander the Great are far too accurate to have been measured by the previous best method of professional step-counters, called Bematists. |
1952 - 3D Movies. "Bwana Devil" was the first commercially successful 3D movie. It was in colour too.
If, as I do, you have some blue/red glasses, you can watch a short trailer here on YouTube. (2D Colour version here, looks corny as!) There was a craze for 3D then, and about 50 were released, but the system wasn't perfect and projection difficulties eventually overcame the successes. There were even earlier systems not as successful, notably in 1922. YouTube has a short history here. |
2000 years ago a Chinese Han Dynasty man invented a seismograph.
It indicated the occurrence and direction of an earthquake by noisily dropping a ball from one of eight directional dragons' mouths into the mouth of a frog below. Short vid on the reconstruction here. Sceptical article here. |
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1902 Oldest known colour film.
It always amuses me the way people add unwarranted certainty by saying oldest, when they mean oldest known. In History and Archaeology, there is always room for further discoveries. This video looks dead but it does play. |
First Century BC. mechanical pipes
A fragmentary hydraulis with 19 bronze tubes from this date was recovered by Greek archaeologists in 1992 at the Greek city of Dion. This musical instrument powered by water and noted at the time for its powerful sound was invented even earlier, in the 3rd century BC, by Ctesibius of Alexandria. The design led to later air-driven models using a bellows, popular with the Romans, and through them to the Catholic church and church organs. The Dion discovery has been reconstructed as a playable instrument. There is a 10 minute video with the sound of it here at the Archaeology Channel website. More at Wikipedia |
Third century BC Mechanical washstand
"...described by the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium (3rd century BC) in his technical treatise Pneumatics (chapter 31) as part of a washstand. A counterweighted spoon, supplied by a water tank, tips over in a basin when full, releasing a spherical piece of pumice in the process. Once the spoon has emptied, it is pulled up again by the counterweight, closing the door on the pumice by the tightening string. Remarkably, Philo's comment that "its construction is similar to that of clocks" indicates that such escapement mechanisms were already integrated in ancient water clocks. Ref Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapement#History |
1939 Philco "Mystery" Radio Remote Control
This battery-powered remote control unit for a domestic radio contained a small single-valve radio transmitter with a range of 25 feet (7.6m), and featured a rotary dial to select stations, change volume, and turn off. Mystery Controls were sold with a dozen different Philco radios from 1939-1942. Details at antiqueradio.org |