this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
372 points (96.0% liked)
Technology
59390 readers
2569 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wow, thanks for the link.
The older I get, the more I appreciate things like this, what is basically 19th century mechanical engineering, and what those geniuses were able to do with it. Like fly planes through WWII.
Yeh, it's crazy right?
This is all just fancy wheels, turned around, odd shaped, made to fit together better.
And the understanding of mathematics, geometry and mechanics makes this massive apparatus of intricately connected pieces - which are relatively easy to understand in isolation - into this thing that can point a gun to be able to hit a moving target.
World War 2 was horrendous. But some of the tech developed is jaw-dropping.
Since then, it's grown exponentially. We are standing on the shoulders of giants!
The craziest thing to me is they didn't have any sort of CAD, 3d printing or other rapid prototyping tech. Most of these things wouldn't work if made from a cheap sample material either, due to the torque they needed to handle. So really the only option was to put a ton of effort into design, make a few prototypes and start manufacturing. Iterative design could take years to get results back from users.
The classic example to me is the square bale knotter. A collection of cast iron sector gears, cams, jackshafts, blades and hooks with grippers, flung through their complex cycle in 1/4 second in dirty field conditions. Using arbitrary twine and tension, variable drive speed and a product that can vary from 10lbs to 80lbs per volume. For tens of thousands of cycles with minimal maintenance aside from pumping grease into the grease points.
And mine is still working perfectly today after 60 years or more! This year it didn't miss one single knot of thousands. Incredible engineering.
Oh yeh, things like old looms? That ran on punch cards to program the pattern?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
First prototyped in 15th century.
And all the iterations on it in the 18th and 19th century. Very cool tech