Category
Past Science
25 articles
Science from other eras: forgotten inventions, superseded theories and the experiments that built modern knowledge.
The LaserDisc: The Future That Came Too Early
In 1978 the LaserDisc already offered sharp images, instant access and digital sound — everything DVD would bring twenty years later. It came too early.
The Forgotten War Between VHS and Betamax
Betamax was technically better and still lost. This is the story of the format war between Sony and JVC that decided how we would watch movies at home.
Edison's Phonograph: The First Machine That Talked
In 1877 Thomas Edison built the phonograph, the first machine that could record the human voice and play it back. A machine had finally spoken aloud.
The oldest recorded voice: sound before Edison
In 1860, 17 years before Edison, a French typesetter recorded the oldest human voice we can hear today. This is how we finally heard the past.
The History of Zero: The Number We Took Ages to Accept
The history of zero: from a dot in an Indian manuscript to Brahmagupta's rules and the Florence ban. How we finally learned to write nothing down.
Tires before rubber: the hard history of bumpy travel
Before the air-filled tire, travel meant wooden wheels with iron rims that jolted every bone. This is the story of rubber, from Goodyear to Michelin.
The Antikythera Mechanism: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer
The Antikythera mechanism is the oldest known analog computer: a bronze Greek machine, found in a shipwreck, that could predict eclipses 2,000 years ago.
Archimedes' Death Ray: Myth or Real Weapon?
Did Archimedes really set the Roman fleet ablaze with mirrors at Syracuse? What the ancient sources and the MIT and MythBusters experiments reveal.
The Maya and Aztecs Made Paper Before Columbus
Centuries before Columbus, the Maya and Aztecs were making bark paper: amate, the skin of the codices the conquistadors would later burn.
The origin of the word gas: the alchemist and chaos
The word «gas» was invented by a 17th-century alchemist from the Greek «chaos». How one man single-handedly named an entire state of matter.
David Todd and his tunnel to the top of Chimborazo
In 1922 astronomer David P. Todd proposed boring a tunnel into Chimborazo all the way to the summit to build a pressurized steel observatory inside it.
Isaac Peral's 1888 Electric Submarine (and Its Sad End)
In 1888, Isaac Peral built an electric submarine that sailed underwater and fired torpedoes, yet Spain buried this future in paperwork.
Project Huemul: the secret Argentine experiment that promised to master nuclear fusion
How a physicist convinced Perón he could tame nuclear fusion on a Patagonian island, and how a young Balseiro exposed the spectacular fraud.
The Car That Runs on Firewood: Old Technology Cuba Is Reviving Out of Necessity
A Cuban mechanic runs his Fiat on charcoal, reviving the century-old gasifier that powered half a million cars in WWII, now reborn out of necessity.
The Priest Who Hunted Supernovas
Robert Evans, an Australian priest with a homemade cardboard telescope, spotted more supernovas than anyone, a record astronomers still can't explain.
Who stole Einstein's brain and then walked it around in the trunk of his car?
When Einstein died he asked to be cremated and forgotten, but the pathologist stole his brain and drove it around in his trunk for decades.
The old Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 laptop
The Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 had speed, price, and a 200-hour battery, yet one fatal design flaw doomed it and ended an era for the company.
The First Laptop in History: EPSON HX-20.
Review of the first laptop in history, invented by EPSON. It had a printer included and a battery that gave it incredible autonomy.
When We Brushed Our Teeth with Radioactive Toothpaste and Drank Coca-Cola with Cocaine
From radioactive toothpaste to cocaine-laced Coca-Cola and leaded gas, history is full of everyday products that quietly poisoned us all.
Harvesting energy from radio waves (Energy harvesting). A technology that we already used more than a century ago.
Harvesting energy from radio waves sounds like the future, yet a battery-free crystal radio was already doing it back in the 19th century.
The almost unknown bet that changed the history of humanity.
A 40-shilling bet between Halley, Hooke and Wren one winter night in 1684 pushed a reclusive Newton to unveil gravity and change history forever.
Mysteriously endless experiments. Can they work indefinitely? One of them has been in operation since the 19th century.
A bell ringing nonstop since 1840 and a tar drop falling once a decade: two stubborn experiments that have outlived the scientists who began them.
Who was the true inventor of the telephone? The controversy surrounding Graham Bell.
We credit Graham Bell with the telephone, but Meucci, Bourseul, and Reis got there first in a frantic race that Congress would rule on a century later.
How to Make a Vacuum Tube by Hand!
Can you make a vacuum tube by hand? Watch Claude Paillard craft his own tubes, and even his machines, with astonishing patience and skill.
Electric vehicles, an invention that we forget, because of oil, but they have existed since the 19th century.
Electric cars aren't new: a 1927 guide reveals models from the 1890s with a 100-mile range, an invention oil made the world forget for a century.