Oh, well - that's the problem with taking state secrets to your grave. Watching an aeolipile do its work was the equivalent of a Netflix binge back in the day. In the Tom Stoppard play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," dimwitted Rosencrantz repeatedly stumbles onto notable scientific and technical discoveries, often via toys (neither he nor Guildenstern grasp what he's done). These droll scenes raise a thorny question: Do you have to recognize a thing's operational principle to lay claim to discovering it? Should we credit the inventor of a steam-driven toy with the discovery of steam power? Whatever your answer, there's no question that the aeolipile, a toy devised in the first century by inventor Heron of Alexandria, was a steam turbine - a device that turns the thermal energy of escaping steam into mechanical energy. As far as we know, Heron's device - a water-fed sphere, mounted on its axis above a heat source, that spun thanks to steam escaping from two bent tubes sticking out from its middle -never attained more than amusement status.
We doubt it. In fact, understanding, as we now do, how Antonio Stradivari brought the violin to its highest form at the turn of the 18th century only elevates our respect for the feat. For Stradivari's contributions extend far beyond the unusual woods or special varnishes to which many credited his instruments' stellar sound; they encompass the evolution of the violin itself. But it's also true that experts no longer consider the chemicals in the varnish - intended to protect the wood from worms - to be the solo contender for explaining the violins' evocative sound. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is apparently no match for a cocktail of onion, wine and cow poop. It's been said that there's a fine line between folk remedy and medicine, but we would argue that the line is in fact quite wide, and it's defined by a simple question: What can be scientifically proven to work? Unfortunately, that proof can take centuries, even millennia, to move beyond mere anecdote. Fast forward to 2015, when an old English recipe for an eye salve began making news for its promise as a weapon against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, aka MRSA, the obstinate scourge of hospitals and nursing homes.
A Roman toilet amid the ruins in Ostia, Italy. The Romans' plumbing technology probably could've come in handy during the Dark Ages. Although certain documentaries are fond of trotting out ancient aliens or other fringe theories to explain our ancestors' advancements, in truth, we need reasons no more far-flung than the fact that ingenuity is humanity's oldest quality. Left to our own devices and allowed to exist without constant fear of death by hunger or violence, we devise some startling stuff - even if some of our better efforts don't outlast our calamities. Then again, sometimes they do. The Western world's progress was knocked back centuries by the Dark Ages, but the Greek and Roman knowledge it lost - some examples of which you'll find in these pages - later found its way back to the Europe via the Islamic world, where in the meantime it had helped spawn a golden age. Conversely, some answers are lost because the relevant question hasn't yet been asked, or because a better answer shoves it into the dustbin of history.
Source:
how to stop ads on microsoft solitaire collection
Tags:
how to stop ads on microsoft solitaire collection
