Archaeology · Architecture · Science

Lifting devices of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, from levers to the rotating crane

The illustrations of the building of the Aqua Claudia show Roman construction machinery made entirely of wood and driven by human muscle. Sophisticated hoisting machines existed in Ancient Egypt too, though they bore little resemblance to modern cranes, being systems of inclined planes and levers. A crane similar to those

Science · Mores · Humour

Umbrellas and hats with lightning rods in Europe after Franklin's 1752 invention

In the 1770s, Umbrellas and Hats with Lightning Conductors Came into Fashion in Europe. The device invented in America for diverting lightning strikes from houses made a strong impression on the fashionable European public, which promptly wished to secure against atmospheric electricity its own persons as well. Umbrellas with lightning

Archaeology · Geography · Museums · Science

Russia's oldest continuously used road found at Gnezdovo near Smolensk

The Historical Museum has announced the discovery of the oldest continuously used road in Russia. The thousand-year-old road lies in the Smolensk region, 12 kilometres from Smolensk, on the territory of the Gnezdovo archaeological complex, which is also home to the largest Viking Age burial mound cemetery in

Archive · Books · Science · People

Galileo drew the relief of the Moon in 1609 and refuted the idea of a smooth lunar sphere

Galileo Galilei's Sketches of the Moon, Published in 1610. Galileo began sketching the Moon in 1609, using a telescope of his own improvement. The fruit of his researches was a series of drawings of the Moon which were not its first depiction: shortly before, Thomas Harriot had recorded

NB! · Archive · Science

Horses in the service of the French army, 1890s: not only draught animals for guns of various kinds, but also horses whose harness was fitted with firearms

Archive · Books · Monarchies · Science · Nature

Butler's bee hierarchy with a queen at the head, an aristocracy and a plebs

The Hierarchy of Bee Society: An Illustration from The Feminine Monarchie, or The History of Bees, the 1609 Scientific Book by the English Naturalist Charles Butler. That bee society is headed by a queen was news at the time; this fact had been discovered only at the end of the

Archive · Books · Science · Palaeontology · Nature

Adam, Eve and Dinosaurs: The Ascent of Life

and The trumpet of scientific judgement, which raised extinct species from the dead so that they might appear before the tribunal of naturalists - witty illustrations from the astronomer Camille Flammarion's book The World Before the Creation of Man, 1886

Faith · Monarchies · Museums · Science

Walking mechanical monk of the 16th century in the Smithsonian collection

The Getty research and education project tells the story of this unique artefact, created at the meeting point of science, art and religion. An almost supernatural automaton, 40 centimetres tall and 450 years old, in the form of a monk. The walking, gesticulating wooden figure belongs to the collection of

Archive · Observations · Science

A robot pilot over Berlin and an American calculating machine in the 1930s children’s magazine “Yozh”

There is no need to marvel at modern technology, for it was all thought up long before us. As early as 1935 a robot was demonstrating its mastery of aircraft control in the skies above Berlin, while an American mathematical machine coped with the most formidable equations. And already in

Science · People

Spanish sergeant Antonio Chover survived dozens of wounds in June 1809

During the Peninsular War, in June 1809, the Spanish courier, cavalry sergeant Antonio Chover, found himself surrounded by a detachment of Marshal Claude-Victor Perrin, and, contrary to the law, was not taken prisoner but cut down with sabres. In the fight Chover lost his left ear and received dozens

NB! · Archive · Science · People · Humour

Albert Einstein Sunbathing

Observations · Science · People

Stephen Hawking bequeathed that the black hole entropy formula that made him famous be inscribed on his gravestone, just as on the tombstone of Ludwig Boltzmann, the Austrian physicist and one of the fathers of statistical mechanics, there was carved as a

Boltzmann's contribution to the laws of classical thermodynamics was so substantial, and so revolutionary for physics and engineering, that it was even proposed to call the nineteenth century the century of Boltzmann. He modestly replied that he would rather it were called the century of Darwin, whose principle