#medieval technology

[medievalistsnet]

A Medieval Clock Like No Other: Inside Al-Jazari’s Mechanical Marvel

Creating a working clock was a significant challenge in the Middle Ages. But for Ismail al-Jazari, the challenge was to build one—with style!

Find out here

[ziphos123]

I helped make this from dirt

[medievalistsnet]

Medieval people used nanotechnology, researchers find - Medievalists.net

Nanotechnology is typically viewed as something that human beings are only now starting to make use of, and would be considered a technology of the future. However, a team of researchers has discovered that medieval artisans made use of some form of nanotechnology to create ultra-thin gilding material. But they still don't know exactly how they did it.

[medievalhistory]

For much of late Antiquity, the 'mechanical arts' was seen as an activity beneath the attention of the learned. But this view on (what we would today call) technology changed by the late Middle Ages. One symptom of this was the positive correlation between technology and temperance, as exemplified by this sketch from the fifteenth century which shows a woman, representing Temperance, surrounded by technologies: she is sitting on a windmill, she has spurs on her feet, a bridle is in her mouth, she holds eyeglasses in her right hand, and there is a clock on top of her head. All of these juxtapositions would seem to suggest that mechanical instruments were seen as congruous with religious virtue or moderation. The accompanying text reads: "He who is mindful of the clock / Is punctual in all his acts... / He who puts glasses to his eyes / See better what's around him... / The mill which sustains our bodies / Never is immoderate."

Which naturally raises the following questions for us modern people: Does technology make us more moral? Does increased morality make us more open to technology?

Source: Allegory of Temperantia. From De quattuor vertutibus cardinalibus by Pseudo-Seneca. Dresden, Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Ms. Oc. 79, fol. 68 v. Deutsche Fotothek.

[appendixjournal]

Cats and birds with bombs attached to them turn out to have been a surprisingly common trope in early modern texts. Read on here.