The ancient engineers
This book is about those whose genius enabled the Egyptians to build their pyramids, the Phoenicians to cross stormy seas, the Romans to erect magnificent public buildings--that this carefully researched and fascinatingly written account of the advance of early technology has been written.Mr. de Camp describes the methods used by early irrigators, architects, and military engineers to build and maintain structures to serve their rulers' wants. He tells, for example, how the Pharaohs erected obelisks and pyramids, how Nebuchadnezzar fortified Babylon, how Dionysios' ordnance department invented the catapult, how the Chinese built the Great Wall, and how the Romans fashioned their roads, baths, sewers, and aqueducts. He recounts many intriguing anecdotes: an Assyrian king putting up no-parking signs in Nineveh; Plato inventing a water clock with an alarm to signal the start of his classes; Heron of Alexandria designing a coin-operated holy-water fountain; a Chinese emperor composing a poem to be inscribed on a clock invented by one of his civil servants.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
6mentions
2people
2014–2024years
83% recommend17% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- You might want to read the book The Ancient Engineers
- 1) A2K Handbook, free online, http://a2knetwork.org/handbook
"Access to Knowledge (A2K) is the umbrella term for a movement that aims to create more equitable public access to the products of human culture and learning. The ultimate objective of the movement is to create a world in which educational and cultural works are accessible to all, and in which consumers and creators alike participate in a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and creativity."
2) Sci-Fi author L. Sprague de Camp's 1963 book, "The Ancient Engineers", covers the period from early Egyptian engineering up to Galileo. http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Engineers-L-Sprague-Camp/dp/03...
“History, technology, culture, finance, and sociology intersect here. It’s not history from the top (kings and such, which some say is dry), nor history from the bottom (average people, which is necessarily endless and perhaps not very revealing). It’s history from the nuts-and-bolts middle – how structures were built, how materials were transported, how wars were fought. When you know this sort of foundational information, everything else becomes more real.”
3) Paul Calter, "Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art & Architecture", http://www.amazon.com/Squaring-Circle-Geometry-Art-Architect...
"the combination of the subject knowledge of design, architecture, art, geometry, philospohy, music theory, and mathematics ... Calter includes the basic lessons and explanations of a regular Geometry course in his book, but then he interweaves an integrated classical curriculum (based on deductive reasoning)"
4) Georges Ifrah, "Universal History of Numbers", http://www.amazon.com/Universal-History-Numbers-Prehistory-I...
"the first complete account of the invention and evolution of numbers the world over ... Dubbed the "Indiana Jones of numbers," Georges Ifrah traveled all over the world for ten years to uncover the little-known details of this amazing story. From India to China, and from Egypt to Chile, Ifrah talked to mathematicians, historians, archaeologists, and philosophers."
- Pick a random interesting page from a reference below, then use a search engine to find and connect with people who care about the topic:
Harper's dictionary of classical literature and antiquities, https://archive.org/details/harpersdictiona00peckgoog
David Rumsey Map Collection (includes old "maps" of human knowledge, today could be called infographics), http://www.davidrumsey.com
The Ancient Engineers, by L. Sprague de Camp, http://www.amazon.com/The-Ancient-Engineers-Sprague-Camp/dp/...
Oxford English Dictionary, 1888 Edition, 15000 searchable pages as a Windows app, https://archive.org/details/oed11_201407
- Sci-Fi author L. Sprague de Camp's 1963 book, "The Ancient Engineers", is also worth a look, from early Egyptian engineering up to Galileo. From an Amazon review: “History, technology, culture, finance, and sociology intersect here. It’s not history from the top (kings and such, which some say is dry), nor history from the bottom (average people, which is necessarily endless and perhaps not very revealing). It’s history from the nuts-and-bolts middle–how structures were built, how materials were transported, how wars were fought. When you know this sort of foundational information, everything else becomes more real.”
Review: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/l-sprague-de-camp...
Preview: http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Engineers-L-Sprague-Camp/dp/03...
Excerpt: "Everybody has heard of Julius Caesar - but who knows about his contemporary Sergius Orata, the Roman building contractor who invented central indirect house heating? Yet Orata has affected our daily lives far more than Caesar ever did." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergius_Orata)
- > it requires understanding political, historical, and social issues
A good primer on the social context of engineering is L. Sprague de Camp's "The Ancient Engineers", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158385
"The first engineers were irrigators, architects, and military engineers. The same man was usually expected to be an expert at all three kinds of work. This was still the case thousands of years later, in the Renaissance, when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Durer were not only all-round engineers but outstanding artists as well. Specialization within the engineering profession has developed only in the last two or three centuries."
- The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague de Camp (1963), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158385
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