Ancient Technology that may or may not be Ahead of its Time, or Even True

[TIN_MAN]

The Houfeng Didong Yi

Engineered during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD) by Zhang Heng, a distinguished astronomer, cartographer, mathematician, poet, painter, and inventor (78 to 139 AD).

Guess what it is.

-Will

It's an earthquake detector.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Seismoscope. I remember reading about it when I was a child.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Seismoscope. I remember reading about it when I was a child.

That's pretty damn cool. I still thought I had a good guess till the reveal

 

[Will The Serious]

It told the direction of the earthquake center by dropping a ball into one of the frogs' mouths. Genius.

-Will

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

It told the direction of the earthquake center by dropping a ball into one of the frogs' mouths. Genius.

-Will

pretty damn genius yes

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Hey not ancient, ancient but 1960s Nixie calculators

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[publiusr]

CRTs are actually still available

A CRT Display For Retro Weather Forecasting

It would be hard to find any electronics still in production which use CRT displays, but for some inscrutable reason it’s easy to find cheap 4-inch CRTs on AliExpress. Not that we’re complaining, o…

hackaday.com

The Land Camera returns

In Film, What’s Old May Still Be New Again

We recently published an affectionate look at a Polaroid Land camera, whose peel-apart instant film is long out of production except for a very few single exposure packs form a boutique manufacture…

hackaday.com

The coolest slide rule

Slide Rule By Helix

It is no secret that we like slide rules around the Hackaday bunker, and among our favorites are the cylindrical slide rules. [Chris Staecker] likes them, too, and recently even 3D printed a versio…

hackaday.com

The CRT would be great for the tiny box at Spock’s TOS station