Technical innovations - steam engines, electrical appliances, complex gear mechanisms and other inventions - were introduced into production and transformed the world in a historically very short time - only two or three hundred years. But compared to human history, these few centuries are only an instant. And what inventions were there in ancient times? Where were they used? And why were they forgotten?
Sometimes archaeologists find unusual items, and old documents contain unusual descriptions or drawings.
Let's talk about some of them.
In the late 1930s. The Austrian archaeologist Wilhelm Koenig on excavations near Baghdad found a Parthian jug, 13-15 cm high, with a copper cylinder, inside which an iron rod was inserted. All parts are covered with asphalt. Scientists made the same jug, filled it with wine vinegar, connected a voltmeter and made sure that a voltage of 0.5-2 volts is created between iron and copper. It would be tempting to conclude that since there were such batteries, there must be light bulbs. In Egypt, in Dendera near Luxor, there is a temple of the goddess Hathor, created in 54 BC. e. One of the reliefs inside the temple shows an Egyptian priest holding an oblong object in his hands that resembles the bulb of an electric lamp. A snake wriggles inside the flask; her head is turned towards the sky. Some researchers have suggestedthat these are electric bulbs and they used batteries similar to those in Baghdad.
But for a light bulb with a power of several watts, capable of illuminating the walls of the corridors, forty Baghdad batteries with a total weight of 80 kg would be needed. And about 10 workers worked at each site, the average construction period was two years. During this time, they would have spent hundreds of thousands of batteries, and in fact iron and glass were very expensive in Egypt. For the same reason, large batteries are not possible, not to mention the fact that huge lamps would be very dangerous. And in any case, archaeologists would find many batteries and many lamps. And they find documents where it is recorded how many oil lamps and oil, how many wicks and how long were given to each worker daily. There are images of workers with oil lamps, you can see how they are given wicks and how in the evening the workers return them. There is also soot on the walls and ceilings.
But the most important thing is that there are inscriptions carved next to the reliefs, explaining in detail all the details. The temple was dedicated to the solar cycle. The main theme is the sun, which sets on the last day of the old year and rises on the first morning of the new year.
An oval that looks like a light bulb, inside which is a snake, is the Duat, the afterlife, a space rolled into a ring formed by the bent body of Osiris. Every night the god Ra passed the Duat on his solar barge to reappear on the eastern horizon. "Electric cable" - and there is a solar barge. The snake is one of the hypostases of the solar deity Horus. The "light bulb" -Duat is based on a device in which the advocates of the "electrical" hypothesis see a high-voltage insulator. In fact, this is the Jed, the oldest symbol of Osiris. The "bulb base" is just a lotus flower. There was still no electric lighting in ancient times, but galvanic cells did exist.
But what were the Baghdad batteries used for? Koenig found silvered vases from 2500 BC in the same places. e. and suggested that silver was deposited on their surface using these batteries by electrolysis. During excavations in Egypt, gilded objects were also found. The German Egyptologist Arne Egebrecht confirmed Koenig's hypothesis by experimenting with a figurine of Osiris. After making a copy of the figurine, Egebrecht immersed it in a bath of gold salt solution. Then I connected ten earthenware jars, similar to the Baghdad battery, and connected this power source to the bath. A few hours later, the statuette was covered with an even layer of gold. This is probably what the ancient masters did. Thus, electricity was still used in ancient times, but not for lighting.
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There were other mechanisms and devices as well. One of these mechanisms is eolipil (translated from Greek - wind ball). It was invented by Heron of Alexandria in the 1st century. BC. A wide lead water pot was placed over a heat source such as burning charcoal. As the water boiled in two pipes, in the center of which a ball was rotating, steam rose. Jets of steam shot through two holes in the ball, forcing it to rotate at high speed. This device is sometimes called a steam engine, but according to modern estimates, its efficiency would not exceed 1 percent.
However, Heron could have built a steam engine, because he described all the elements necessary for it (boiler, valves, piston and cylinder). Nevertheless, neither he nor his contemporaries succeeded in uniting them. Another invention of an unknown author did not find its distribution either. This is a mysterious mechanism, the remains of which were discovered in 1902 on an antique ship that sank in the Aegean Sea, near the island of Antikythera. Several bronze gears, fixed in a wooden case, overgrown with limestone over the centuries, immediately suggested some kind of complex mechanism.
A find dated to about 100 BC. e., was truly unique, but it was taken seriously only in 1951, when the English historian of science D. Price first determined
that it is a computing device. Price proposed the first version of the mechanism diagram. For several decades, various scientists have been refining it. In 2008, it was confirmed that using the ancient mechanism of the device, it was possible to perform operations of addition, subtraction and division, predict solar and lunar eclipses, and determine the days of the spring and autumn equinox.
In this case, the elliptical orbits of the Moon and five planets known then were taken into account, the motion of the Sun and the Moon relative to fixed stars was modeled. The astronomical "computer" from Antikythera consisted of more than thirty gears meshing with each other.
Ancient masters used differential transmission, which was patented in Western Europe only in the 19th century. There is no doubt that the knowledge and skills of the ancient masters were great, but they did not find wide application. One answer is the cheapness of slave labor, but most likely the reasons are much more complex.
After all, the area of distribution of ancient civilization was incomparably smaller than the vast world of modern times, where steam, electricity, and many other inventions, which were so closely approached in ancient times, were needed. And some inventions have been replaced by newer ones. For example, Greek fire, weapons of the Middle Ages. For the first time this combustible mixture was used by Kallinnik from Heliopolis (modern Baalbek in Lebanon), a talented engineer who fled to Byzantium from the Arabs who seized Lebanon in 674, when the Arabs approached Constantinople. And he saved the city.
The pots with the mixture played the role of shells, but there was another method - the mixture was heated in a special boiler, where compressed air was then supplied. A jet under air pressure flew out of the nozzle, ignited with a torch, and, falling on the deck of an enemy ship, spread there in sticky burning puddles. The Greek fire could not be extinguished with water. Later it was used by Russians, Polovtsians, Turks, and Western Europeans, who learned the recipe after the conquest of Constantinople in 1 204. It is assumed that this mixture consisted of oil, sulfur, resin and saltpeter. But "sulfur" could mean not only a known element, but also another combustible substance. The secret of the Greek fire was lost in the 16th century with the spread of firearms. However, already in 1758, the French engineer Dupre announced that he had discovered the secret of Greek fire and even conducted successful tests. The wooden sloop was burned,far out on the high seas. The Seven Years' War was going on, and it seemed that Greek fire would find its use in it. But King Louis XV was horrified. He bought all his papers from Dupre and destroyed them. Who knows what he would have done if he hadn't had guns? One way or another, the old secret remained a secret.
