Once again we’re near the end of a month with five Wednesdays, and as regular readers of this blog know well, that means that readers got to nominate and vote on the subject of the fifth Wednesday post. This time the theme that won the contest was a glance back over the landscape of rejected and abandoned technologies that still work well, and may be worth bringing back into use as the Long Descent picks up speed.
That’s a controversial topic, of course, because it flies in the face of the modern mythology of progress, the most important religious narrative of our day. I don’t use the word “religious” here as satire or exaggeration, by the way. Most people nowadays believe in progress the way that medieval peasants believed in the wonderworking relics of their local saint. It’s progress that is expected to grant us an ever-increasing cornucopia of blessings, banish all the evils from which our ancestors suffered, and eventually lift up true believers out of their earthly lives and usher us into a heaven decked out with all the features of Tomorrowland. The mere facts that these days, each new round of gimmickry that gets the prized label “progress” tends to generate more downsides than upsides, and that the shining future paradise has been getting visibly further off for decades, has barely begun to dent that touching and childlike faith.
Look away from the mirage of Progress the Great and Powerful and pay attention to the little man behind the curtain, as Dorothy did in The Wizard of Oz, and a very different spectacle meets your view. Every year various technogimmicks get proclaimed by the media as the next grand step in the march of progress. Now and again one of them is genuinely innovative; far more often they’re just excuses to charge more money to provide a good or a service that is no better, and often much worse, than the ones they replace. Even genuine innovations as often as not provide worse quality for a higher price. Calvin Trillin a while back set off nervous laughter by noting that the most frightening word in the English language is “upgrade.” We all know why.
I’m going to turn to a specific example at this point, largely because I just got up a moment ago to replace one black and gleaming disk with another on my version thereof. The electronic stereo playing vinyl records was the standard technology for recorded music at home half a century ago. Due to genuine advances in electronic technology, the art of recording and replaying musical performances reached an extraordinarily high level in the era of the stereo. I’ve found, in fact, that when I have young visitors in my apartment and put a record on, their eyes bug out at the richness and clarity of the sound from my two modest speakers—and thereby hangs a tale.
Vinyl records were replaced with compact disks (CDs) over a short period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The new technology benefited from plenty of high-pressure marketing from big corporations, pushing it as a far better audio technology. Plenty of audiophiles noted that music on CDs sounded flat and tinny; supposed experts were trotted out by the score to insist that the audiophiles were wrong, and must be mishearing the faint hiss of the stereo as musical quality. (You still hear this fib being repeated now and then.) Despite attempts to keep vinyl going in niche markets, the marketing push behind CDs succeeded, and pundits everywhere insisted that the day of the record was over forever.
The audiophiles were right, however. What determines sound quality in a CD is its sampling rate—the number of times per second the software making the recording samples the sound and converts it into digital form. If you have a dense enough sampling rate, you really can make a CD sound very good, but that’s expensive. Record companies accordingly used sampling rates just dense enough to keep most listeners from complaining, and called it good. It was good for their profits, sure, but it made the music sound flat and tinny.
Then came MP3s, digital downloads, and streaming media. Those all have the same problems as CDs, since they all sample sound at intervals, but they have another difficulty as well: the devices used to access them, mostly phones these days, have dismal sound quality. You can improve that somewhat by getting Bluetooth speakers or what have you, but even so, phones are not optimized for reproducing music, and they do a fairly poor job of it.
The official rhetoric has it that the march of progress is unstoppable and we can’t go back to the past. People who care about music haven’t been listening. Vinyl records, consigned to the dustbin of history thirty years ago, were a $1 billion business worldwide last year and are on track to break that figure this year. The used-vinyl market is huge, and manufacturers are also getting back into the business in a big way with a mix of old classics and new releases. For that matter, the lowly cassette tape, consigned just as casually to history’s dustbin, is also in the midst of a lively revival, with plenty of small bands rediscovering the joys of small-batch tape production, and plenty of users relearning the trick of winding a cassette with a #2 pencil.
That’s not the only example of the kind. Another is the Canadian tractor company Ursa Ag, which recently set shockwaves in motion by marketing a line of tractors with no onboard computers at all. Tractors these days are fragile, overpriced monstrosities in which everything is done by computer. They break down constantly because of excessive complexity, and only authorized repair firms are allowed to fix them, at wildly inflated prices and with long delays.
Ursa Ag’s tractors are on the other end of the spectrum. They’re simple, sturdy, easy to repair, and cost a modest fraction of what the big boys are charging. Unsurprisingly, the demand is so high that they’re scrambling to expand production lines, because what they offer is what farmers actually want. It’s also the kind of tractor that was standard on North American farms in 1970 or so. Once again, somebody pushed the rewind button on progress, and the people most directly affected by it couldn’t be happier.
On the off chance that anybody from the Trump administration is reading this, may I offer a suggestion? It would be child’s play to revitalize the US auto industry, set off a huge hiring boom for factory workers, and double or triple the cheering crowds that show up the next time the Orange One holds a rally. All you have to do is get rid of the forest of regulations that keep small to midsized American companies from getting into the auto business and manufacturing the kind of cars people want to drive, which not surprisingly are the kind they drove half a century ago, unburdened with onboard computers and the rest of the garbage with which “progress” has weighed down today’s cars. Yes, I know, those regulations have all sorts of excuses justifying them—safety, environmental concerns, you name it—but the real point of every one of them is to keep auto manufacturing a closed oligopoly in which big car manufacturers can ignore what buyers want. Prune those regulations, and let the market do its magic.
For that matter, if any Ford Motor Company executives happen to read this, I have a helpful suggestion for you, too. Cooperate with the mass pruning of regulations, and then get one of your factories turning out brand new copies of the 1966 Mustang fastback. You’ve still got the plans, right? Don’t change a thing. Leave out all the “improvements,” and sell them at a price that gives you the same profit per vehicle you pocketed back in 1966. Your sales and stock value will take off—well, there’s no other way to put it: like a ‘66 Mustang when the light turns green and the driver floors it. You’re welcome, and you can thank me with a few hundred shares of stock.
These are examples of what I’ve come to think of as the first stage of retrovation. Retrovation? That’s a term I coined a decade ago, a portmanteau of “retro” and “innovation.” It’s the process of searching through the past for technologies that have been discarded by the onward march of soi-disant “progress” but are better suited to current conditions than the things that replaced them. There are a lot of those just now, and people are beginning to catch on to this at all levels of society. Need I mention the world’s intelligence services, many of which have gone back to manual typewriters and locked filing cabinets when handling their most crucial secrets, because those are so much more difficult to hack than anything that makes use of computers?
Again, though, this is just the first stage of retrovation. That’s the stage at which retrovators blow the dust off technologies that were widely used in their day, but got shoved out of use by some supposedly better product. There’s an enormous amount of first-stage retrovation still to be done, and an increasingly large number of people are working hard at it. I expect to see much more of it as we continue lurching unsteadily down the slope of resource depletion, not least because it’s the low-hanging fruit of retrovation.
It’s when we get to the second stage of retrovation that things get both more interesting and more chancy. The second stage involves searching through the past for technologies that were invented but never got a large market share, because the money and the marketing went a different way. There are plenty of those, too, but second-stage retrovation is trickier, because the pluses and minuses of widespread use of these technologies can’t be determined by a glance at what happened a few decades or centuries ago. There are still bugs to be worked out and potential applications yet to be discovered.
One good example is electroculture. Back in the late 19th century, before the chemical industry seized its current stranglehold on agricultural fertilization, scientists ran any number of double-blind controlled experiments showing that a weak direct electric current passing through moist soil makes plants thrive. There’s nothing especially mysterious in this effect—the current ionizes soil nutrients and make them more bioavailable to plant roots. Until the 1940s, electroculture was something that adventurous gardeners and small farmers experimented with, often with very respectable results. It was seen in many circles as the coming trend—as “progress,” in fact.
All that was swept away once the Second World War ended, the chemical industry had to find something new to produce to replace the vast amounts of explosives that padded the profits of chemical firms while the fighting was on. Chemical pesticides got marketed using the same high-pressure tactics that made CDs popular—backed up, of course, by government regulations that favored chemical fertilizers and pesticides over the alternatives—and today’s chemical-soaked agriculture duly followed. You have to do a lot of digging to find out that cancer rates exploded promptly thereafter, or that cancer in children was so rare before then that individual cases got written up in medical journals. Ah, progress!
Old manuals of electroculture can still be found quite easily in online archives, however, and as the petrochemicals needed to manufacture chemical fertilizers become more expensive, it may be worth trying electroculture again, at least in some applications. How well will it work? We don’t know yet. What is it best suited for? Here again, the research still has to be done. What are the long term consequences for soil health? Nobody has the least idea. Retrovators who decide to explore this have plenty of options—just now, at least, photovoltaic panels quite adequate to put that trickle of current through a garden bed are cheap and easy to come by—but detailed notes and a great many tests are needed to find out whether the result is a curiosity or a treasure.
Many of the ecological technologies invented in the 1970s also fall into the realm of second-stage retrovation. I’ve commented before that of all the remarkable innovations in the 1970s appropriate tech movement, the only ones that got picked up by the more recent corporate-funded green movement were the handful that increased individual dependence on big corporations. Most of the discoveries of that era made people more independent, and so were deep-sixed by the minions of corporate pseudoenvironmentalism. A few such technologies, such as fireless cookers and solar water heaters, have a fair track record behind them, but many other creations of the era do not. Retrovators in this field thus have plenty of work to do.
Then we get to the third stage of retrovation, and things get spooky. There are whole families of technologies that were discarded, not because they didn’t work and work well, but because the scientific theories that happen to have become fashionable insist that they can’t work. It so happens that most of the examples I know here have to do with healing, and the most widely practiced of them, back in the day, was homeopathy.
I’m going to focus here on one of the many branches of homeopathic medicine, partly because it’s the one I use and partly because it’s been sedulously ignored by the pseudoskeptics who like to assail anything that doesn’t make profits for Big Pharma. This is biochemic medicine, and its medicines are called cell salts or tissue salts. There are 12 inorganic minerals found in macroscopic quantities in the human body. Take one of them and put it through a specific process of dilution and succussion (rapid shaking) until the resulting medicine has one part per million of the original mineral. You have to do the succussion, by the way, or you don’t get the effect.
And the effect? If you gulp down a significant dose of sodium phosphate dissolved in water, let’s say, it will produce nausea and certain other symptoms. If you feel nausea or one of those other symptoms for some other reason, and you take the diluted, succussed sodium phosphate (Nat. phos. 6x, in homeopathic jargon), it will relieve the nausea. That doesn’t seem to be caused by any physical or chemical process…and this is where things get spooky.
If you read old homeopathic textbooks, you’ll find an explanation that makes perfect sense, so long as you don’t mind flinging down and trampling on the core prejudices of modern thought. According to these sources, there is something—call it Factor X—that is present in sodium phosphate, but can be communicated to other substances by succussion. The body is sensitive to Factor X. When the body senses a lot of Factor X, it braces itself for the arrival of a strong dose of sodium phosphate—but when the sodium phosphate doesn’t arrive, the body’s homeostatic reaction swings it in the other direction, away from (for example) the nausea sodium phosphate would cause. It’s a neat sort of judo move that seems to resolve many health conditions. The problem, of course, is that Factor X doesn’t seem to be a material substance.
Nothing, but nothing, gets the defenders of modern scientific orthodoxy into a towering fury faster than suggesting that something that isn’t material can have material effects. It doesn’t matter that cosmologists have had to admit that around 85% of the mass in the universe isn’t matter as we know it—the phrase “dark matter” is a polite way of saying “it’s there but we have no clue what it is.” It doesn’t matter that nearly every human society in all of history but ours treats the life force, the most likely candidate for Factor X, as an ordinary part of everyday life, and most of them use it on a daily basis for healing among other purposes. It doesn’t matter, either, that there are reams of double-blinded, controlled studies showing that homeopathy does what it claims to do. (Here’s a 231-page bibliography of such studies to get you started.) The invincible ignorance and rigid prejudices central to contemporary scientific thought lead a great many authority figures to reject the whole subject out of hand, typically with an entertaining display of purple-faced, saliva-spraying rage.
The fact that every dollar spent on inexpensive homeopathic medicines deprives pharmaceutical firms of the chance to demand hundreds or thousands of dollars for their overpriced, problem-ridden products doubtless has a lot to do with this. The same thing is true, of course, of most other forms of alternative healing, which are generally much cheaper and have many fewer and less damaging side effects than the quack nostrums being pushed these days by Big Pharma and its enablers in government and the medical industry. Still, the prejudices themselves have power, and that power has to be taken into account as we proceed.
I could go on, but it’s probably best to stop here and glance back over the landscape we’ve traversed. There are literally thousands of technologies, abandoned, forgotten, and accursed, spread across the three stages of retrovation. That’s why I chose to highlight just a few examples in each stage in this post. Anything more comprehensive would require a book—and curiously enough, that’s a book I’m thinking about writing.
Think of it as the Technonomicon, a tome of forbidden technologies dating from eldritch aeons before the dominance of our current heavily marketed suite of energy-gobbling gimmicks and time-wasting trash. I imagine each of the technologies being given a page or two, with a basic description and some references for the curious. The one limitation in the way of this project is that I don’t have the technical expertise to assess more than a modest number of the many available options. What I do have is the best as well as the weirdest commentariat on the internet, packed with people nearly as odd as I am (which of course is saying something) who have studied the most astonishing range of strange subjects and forgotten skills.
Therefore, dear readers, I’m laying down a challenge. Help me with this. I need good solid reading material on abandoned technologies—references to books, whenever possible, with author, title, and publication data. I also need your own experiences with this or that abandoned, forgotten, or accursed technology. Let me know what worked for you and how other people can learn more about it. Little things are as important as big ones, and it doesn’t matter when they dropped out of use, if they ever did find a market.
If this takes off, I’ll put up regular posts on my Dreamwidth journal to provide a venue for continuing discussion. This might just become the Whole Earth Catalog of the Long Descent. Shall we give it a try?
(8/5 edit: This project is now formally under way. I’ve posted something on my Dreamwidth journal here, giving details for how interested readers can help it along.)
Oh! Oh my, this could get really interesting. I’ll toss in an oddball data point for you: handsewing, to go along with antique sewing machines that have been popular the past quarter-century. My mom even bought me an 1895 (had to retype it correctly, because muscle memory went with 1985) handcrank sewing machine as a gift about a decade ago, when we first moved down here to Hurricane state. When I asked her if she had the owners’ manual to it, she told me there are plenty of videos on YouTube for that specific brand. I can personally vouch for good instructional vids for handsewing, and even making lace by hand.
I only had time this morning for a quick read-through, will read it all as it deserves later today. But I wanted to chime in and say how absolutely right you are about the cars. I worked for several years at a large Ford dealership. The principal owner has been telling the Ford execs the same thing: people want simple, affordable cars they can work on themselves. If they would make and market those, they wouldn’t be able to manufacture them fast enough to keep up with demand. With your permission, I’ll share this with them.
JH
Dare I say it? Automatic wringer washers. Lots of folks on social media living simpler lives sing their praises and longevity. Not to mention the superior cleaning quality.
I’ll mention one you already know about – please include slide rules. I dearly wish someone was making them again.
I much prefer them to computerized calculators as you can see the workings and it is much easier to check your results – the calculator is a black box where you can’t see the innards and can’t easily tell if you typed in a wrong number. Computer calculators make you dumber, slide rules make you smarter. (That might be another criterion to consider in weighing up a retro technology – does it make you smarter or dumber, and does it give you more or less control over the process.)
I used a slide rule for an astrology certification test and found it way easier than a handheld calculator – again, because I could easily check my results.
Great examples
Apple brought back the German design schools for their products and rebooted the Rams and Braun vibe.
Re-usability or compartmentalization in product design will hopefully make a comeback. With the first oil shock there was a fast response from the corporate critters to provide economical designs.
No such luck now.
Fat trucks for dolls whose largest haul are shopping bags from the mall – still a top seller.
Only $800 a month.
Automat restaurants haven’t made a comeback despite being very popular up through WW2 – might be worth a modernization attempt.
Healthier than fast food.
Great videos on Automats online.
You could look to Cuba at the present date and see how they are dealing with 30$ a gallon gasoline and very limited electricity.
Discovered DMSO via Midwest doctor 1960 lost to the peasants and making a comeback. My damaged left hand, my broken clavicle and simple skin tags major improvement. During my 2 month bicycle camping across Europe the small simple, cheap like borsh, cars, trucks, put puts i saw were a hoot. And that is due to $3.50 cnd per litre. Nary a Ford F150 to be seen
Love this!
Empathic yes!!!
Living in coastal Maine, my first thoughts drift towards kayaks, tridents, axes, saws, hatchets, and scythes. I will do some research and get back.
So cool.
Scientists do believe in homeopathy though. It’s called vaccination, which is homeopathy with viruses.
And then you end up with a lot of anti-vaccine people who don’t believe in vaccination because it’s homeopathy with viruses.
Instead of using an overpriced, overly complex, fully automatic coffee machine, prepare your coffee the way my grandfather did:
1) Grind coffee beans into powder using a manual grinder
2) Brew with hot water in a porcelain filter
Enthusiasts can even roast green coffee beans themselves in a wok or frying pan. This gives you full control over the roast level.
If you prefer something other than filter coffee, you can also use a stovetop espresso maker to brew a strong, espresso-like coffee:
https://bialetti-shop.de/Espressokocher-Aluminium/Moka-Express.html
Oh, boy this is a topic that’s going to be hot for the next 3 to 5 years. I saw a video on that electro-garden stuff. It was one among 5 gardening practices displaced by the chemical industry after WW2. I remember the video also mentioned Aztec water gardening and a German practice where a pile of sticks and logs was covered with soil and then planted. Apparently as the wood decayed it fertilized the plants on top. US patent 685957 by Nickola Tesla which from the pictures looks like an unusually long flagpole with a generator attached. Apparently it becomes charged like a lightning cloud and you can harvest electricity that way. Stone floor houses with heating underneath the floor has been invented multiple times apparently and is supposedly more fuel efficient. Indiana I think it was had a group dedicated to researching plant based medicines. They were driven out of business by big pharma, but apparently all their notes where kept. Then there are the categories of permaculture grains that don’t need to be replanted every year, and once popular garden plants like the tree tomato that are not commercially viable because the fruit doesn’t ship well but are great for home gardeners because they don’t need a lot of care, don’t need fertilizer and can last for decades.
I hope your project is a success and I will buy the book. I have nothing useful to contribute except a deep non-belief in homeopathy that disappeared when it cured my instant-coffee-allergy rash.
I have never commented before. Breaking my silence to say I would really like this project to exist.
Dear Archdruid: Let me say, one time more, that I think that you are a genius.
JMG
While not a book, I did come across a group of looksmaxxers who had some interesting ideas about male pattern baldness a while back. These “hairmaxxers” are extremely skeptical of the current consensus that male pattern baldness is genetic and instead argue that it is epigenetic. According to them big pharma has already found its perfect solution to hair loss with drugs that have to be taken continuously thus making millions of men permanent customers. For this reason the men have basically been trying to find an alternative solution and while there isn’t an exact consensus they seem to have a general consensus that the mainstream consensus that some men are more genetically prone to have DHT attack their hair is false.
Anyway here is their heretical hairloss/hair regrowth techs
Maintain strong gut health and have a low grain diet (several argue that this alone can prevent hairloss)
Use a water filter for bath/shower
Do not use shampoo when washing hair instead use raw egg (it can be mixed with other natural ingredients for better smell, this was common during the Victorian era)
To regrow hair spend at least 30 minutes a day suspended while upside down (this promotes blood flow to scalp)
Also spend at least 30 minutes a day doing a deep scalp message (preferably done while suspended upside down). According to their research, as the scalp starts balding the skin basically acts like scar tissue which gives it the distinctive shine. A healthy scalp should be malleable whereas an unhealthy scalp is stiff.
There’s a bunch of other smaller stuff but these are the big ones.
While I don’t suffer from baldness, there are a few thousand anecdotal accounts of this working, including a man in his sixties regrowing his hair from the upside down suspension alone. Also as a side note, I think the looksmaxxing trend is proof that the scientific/medical establishment has completely lost control of the narrative. “Experts” are desperate to convince people that certain techniques people do are “pseudoscience” meanwhile people can clearly see the before and after on these guys and ignore them.
Awesome! And very timely. I’ll start thinking about what I can contribute to this project — probably not all that much, but every little bit will surely help.
Hmm…
When it comes to music formats, it’s true that sound quality may have declined. But that’s not the only measure of progress to consider.
Each new format has been easier to carry, easier to duplicate and easier to share (whether for free or not). And given that, at every stage, users still had the option to buy systems that prioritized sound quality, it seems they chose to consistently prioritize convenience instead.
So it’s true that for about 50+ years, the priority was improving sound quality. Then suddenly, from the 90’s onward, it wasn’t so important anymore. Most people started listening to lower and lower quality sound.
The same thing happened with screen size. First, they get bigger an bigger until they get smaller and smaller when people started to want to carry them everywhere.
I guess there is something here to think about…
Dearest JMG, yes, let’s give it a try. I’m no techie, just a very old woman who has seen a lot of changes in my life. What you said about the rise of cancer along with the introduction of agro-chemicals (and also the pesticides used for killing lawn weeds). Growing up, I personally knew only one person with cancer. I was in my mid thirties before I knew a second one. If you want to get rid of cancer (and you will never totally get rid of it) get rid of the chemicals first. But it will take decades before everything is cleansed of the toxins.
I just finished re-reading “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter Miller, Jr. I first read it a few years after it came out, when I was in my early twenties. Oh my. That book did not age well.
As far as low tech goes, I miss my solar clothes dryer I had when I still lived in a house, not an apartment now.
A solar clothes dryer is also known as a clothes line.
And wind up clocks.
And more and more that were common when I was young that are no longer around.
@JMG
Thanks for this interesting essay on retrovation! Just a few points:
1. Regarding electroculture, it’s a cool technology not just for improving agricultural yield but also for improving the efficacy of phytoremediation processes. A good starting point to explore is this link: https://libgen.li/ads.php?md5=c68de6e309070b894a9157a1befc62eb&downloadname=10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.04.222
2. I mentioned previously that in a post-fossil world, sailing ships are not going to be the only mode of intercontinental travel. The basic designs of airships have been worked out more than 80 years ago, and the explosive growth of knowledge in materials science and applied chemistry since then can be used to make them more efficient and improve their ranges. In parallel, the vastly-improved understanding of nonlinear dynamical systems since then can be used to design far better mechanical control systems for them as compared to what the ill-fated Hindenburg used.
3. I am somewhat more optimistic about small factories surviving than most proponents of decline are. The reason is that small factories generally tend to use much simpler and energy-efficient equipment, smaller and less-varied material feedstocks, and thus generate much less pollution. Remember, scaling is always nonlinear (actually, superlinear); and since today’s mantra is “Bigger is Better”, the corresponding plants and their equipment tend to be much more complex, resource-hungry and polluting – focus on small factories, and things get much better. While I do think that small factories are an automatic panacea for modern giant industrial plants, I think they’re indeed possible in the far future, in addition to small workshops envisioned by proponents of decline.
4. I expect traditional architecture to make a rebound, with a twist – with what we know about fracture analysis, contact mechanics, non-Newtonian fluids, etc. I expect future buildings to be much more aesthetically in-tune with traditional architecture, but built better and stronger with knowledge from these and other fields.
There are more, but I think these are a good starting point, among others.
Hi JMG,
Now that is a book I will be happy to buy. My personal philosophy is to walk backwards until I hit the 18th century and then stop. We have gone a long way towards this goal. We have a wood cookstove, washing line, composting toilets, barn full of rabbits and another of sheep and a coop of hens. We water-bath can a lot of food as well as drying pickling and so forth. I would love to get a stereo and vinyl records, I play the cello every day. Life is better when you pick your own century.
Maxine
You should go check out Low Tech Magazine. Kris De Decker has been exploring this topic for some time. He used to have a conventional website but now has moved to a solar powered site using all of about 2 Watts (explaining the low resolution of that site), and he sells paper books which archive his old articles. I suppose that’s taking the concept to its logical conclusion.
Davie
Kris De Decker’s Low and No Tech magazines are delightful repositories of the discarded, largely mechanically-oriented past.
Hello Mr. Greer,
For “retro” healing I want to bring into attention the ketogenic diet. Until last Winter I had no idea that it was more than a bodybuilding diet fad. It helped me tremendously with OCD and anxiety. I learned a lot about inflammation, gluten, the intestinal gut and more. I discovered all this from Mikhaila Peterson and her Lion Diet. I’m currently restarting my meat only diet after doing keto on and off. Sometime last Autumn I was wondering, almost like in prayer, how will people with severe mental issues receive help in a post-industrial future where you can no longer produce psychiatric drugs (and that’s good since those produce more harm than good and I almost got on them); shortly afterwards I got my answer. I’m not sure what people from the far past knew about meat only diets, but I hope people from the future know about them.
Regarding audio quality. The sampling rate we have on CDs has no good audio reason. Perversely, the reason we have the sampling rate is because CDs had to be compatible with old fashioned standard quality video. They originally recorded the digital audio signal in the video section of old fashioned video tape. In addition, color video has a strange base frames per second of 29.97 so it could be compatible with black and white 30FPS TVs.
In my opinion, the severe limitations of black vinyl made the process drastically more difficult and forced the recording engineer to LISTEN. We now have the ability to have fidelity far beyond that of human hearing. There are all kinds of chips made for industrial applications that could be put to work, and high fidelity storage is dirt cheap, but years of people listening to poor quality compressed .MP3s on their phone have made listening a lost art.
So no, don’t throw that vinyl away. If that’s the only way to get good sound, so be it.
I always thought that we hit peak usefulness when ever I watched Samantah on Bewitched cooking in her awesome 1960s kitchen, m the only thing missing is a microwave to insta-heat leftovers! You had tv, radio, refrigerators, washing machines and car that you could fix. It’s also fun to look at videos of all the clever storage compartments on old refrigerators. This fall I’m going to put down a grass/clover mix because clover is an excellent nitrogen fixer, and I am getting a new batch of earth worms to chuck into my compost pile because they are pure gold for your garden! I wish I could have ducks where I I am, then all you need is super-easy to grow duckweed that is mild and tasty for humans and high in protein. i also wish instead of nylon and plastic clothes we could have hemp clothes; hemp is super easy, super-fast and low water to grow. It can also be used in building materials, ditto bamboo.
I loved this blog post! My dad’s tractor dated from probably the 1940s, which he got the summer they moved onto the farm, summer of 1953, the year I was born. Even my older sister, when she attained the ripe old age of 9 or 10, could drive it. And we had a root cellar, to store my mom’s canned jars. She worked really hard every summer to can and fill up that root cellar. Which we pronounced “rut”, btw, in a good old rural Washington state accent. I didn’t know we all were mispronouncing that word, and “ruf”, too, for roof, till I was in 1st or 2nd grade., haha!! My dad and grandparents, all WA state born, and raised rural, all talked that way. But I know people still have root cellars.
We had a spring house, too, to hold the run off from our well. I don’t know if people still have spring houses, but us kids loved it, we caught big bull frogs there.
I suggest to all here that it is essential to read today’s short post from Ian Welsh:
https://www.ianwelsh.net/
It speaks for itself; I’ll not try to paraphrase. For all of us, any who own rare or unusual books or other written material, do not discard and make sure your heirs understand the importance of preservation.
Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills
How exciting! I would buy a copy today. For some time now I have been contemplating how to lead a more analog life.
An inclination towards retrovation could explain some of my past book and information collecting. When I was much younger I was fascinated by an electronic home study course from the 1940s my grandfather had shown me. Vacuum tubes might have been involved. It made quite an impression on me.
Feels like a marvelous companion to one’s occult path. And a lot of fun to research!
weaving using rigid heddle looms:
Inventive weaving on a little loom. Discover the Full Potential of the Rigid-Heddle Loom. For beginners and beyond.
Syne Mitchell, 2015 Storey Publishing
This is great for beginners and people who’ve forgotten how to warp the dusty rigid heddle loom hiding in the corner of their bedroom,, but is really unusual in going a lot beyond beginner with information on how to make rigid heddle looms do things they aren’t supposed to be able to do, and produce some truly amazing work., including how to alter rigid heddle looms to this end. Highly recommended; if you use a rigid heddle loom you will find something useful in here even if you think you know everything.
Given that rigid heddle looms are simple, cheap, and often small, they’re a really good way to get into weaving, so this book is extra-valuable.
I use my phone for music because of convienence. My hand eye coordination is also poor enough that I eventually scratch my CDs if I listen to them enough, even though they have much better sound quality.
Also, my father uses a tractor from the early 60s that he could work on himself. He’s not a farmer but he does live on a multi-acre rural property.
Recently heard mention of an early vehicle engine that ran on alcohol. Idea is that a farmer could use old grain to ferment then use that as a fuel. Or convince a neighbor to change the recipe in his still. Usual story of oil industry put a stop to this. Don’t know how factual this is. It is the first thing that came to mind while reading this article.
I think that shakes/shingles, lead lined rooves, and slate roofs, along with thatch, will be making strong comebacks. Please see the Farm Hand Companion show, for a demonstration of shake making with white oak or yellow pine (used in the South). I hear shakes/shingles (wood) are more insulating than conventional roofs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lShZzdfdNVw
My first experiments with this are tentative, I have learned you have to split (with a froe, pronounced FRO) when the wood is green. It seems like a semi-sustainable approach, if combined with planting tree saplings, which will be harvested by the descendents or inheritors, on the land itself. You can replace them steadily, a little at a time, as needed.
traditional plant breeding:
Carol Deppe Breed your own vegetable varieties. The gardeners and farmers guide to plant breeding and seed saving. 2000 Aimed at ambitious home food growers who want to go a bit beyond saving seed, it is also useful for those who simply want to maintain a variety over the long term and get good quality seed.
Plant Breeding for Pest and Disease Resistance Studies in the Agricultural and Food Sector. GE Russel Butterworth and Co, 1978
Fascinating but technical and a bit dry. From the era before GMOs were in style. Better for professionals than amateurs; it’s a bit above my head, and definitely above what I have the ability to put into practice. But there’s so much valuable information.
Seed to Seed Seed Saving and growing techniques for vegetable gardeners. Suzanne Ashworth Seed Savers Exchange 2002
The nitty-gritty of how to save each and every type of food crop, no matter how obscure. Very useful if you want to know what’s required to save good seed of more than just legumes. Lots on cross-pollination likelyhood, problems, isolation distances, inbreeding depression etc, etc, as applied to each and every food crop including many I”ve never heard of. Highly recommended.
Slide rules (as already suggested) and mechanical adding machines, too.
Yes, IMO no real transformational tech change in daily life since 1969 when I was 16. My great grandmother experienced the technological transformation. She was born in 1867 and died in 1964. She saw electrification and electric appliances, the airplane, the automobile, the telephone, space travel, radio, movies, the personal camera, records, antibiotics, the X-Ray, widespread sewerage and clean water systems, thermostat controlled heating and cooling,
refrigerators, mechanized agriculture, frozen foods, clothes washers and dryers, hot and cold running water and more, all the background of modern life we take for granted.. The vaunted smart phone just combined already present technologies, the phone, camera, movie making, sound recording, the encyclopedia, magazines, library, newspapers, radio, the postal system TV , movies, recorded playable music. Amazon? – a revved up Sears catalog – which was the big breakthrough in mail order products.
@Annette2, I dry all my clothes indoors most of the year without using a dryer. I use a clothes rack. I hang bedsheets over doors, since they don’t fit on the rack. It works well, and most clothes racks can be folded up when not in use to save space. I live on Vancouver Island, which is very wet all winter.
My husband Mike built me the solar food dryer in Eben Fodor’s book The Solar Food Dryer: How to Make and Use Your Own High-Performance, Sun-Powered Food Dehydrator. It’s smaller in size than those promoted during the heyday of the appropriate-tech unit, which makes it easier to store, yet it has enough space on two shelves to hold plenty of food. Here’s the post I wrote on it for my blog: https://livinglowinthelou.blogspot.com/2013/09/dehydrating-food-with-solar-food-dryer.html
The appropriate-tech replacement for a string trimmer is a scythe. I have two scythes, one for cutting grass and one for cutting brush, which needs a heavier blade. There are two different books on the scythe; best to read both, in my opinion, as they cover different aspects of using a scythe. The Scythe Book: Mowing Hay, Cutting Weeds, and Harvesting Small Grains with Hand Tools, by David Tresemer (get the second edition with the addendum by Peter Vico); and The Scything Handbook: Learn How to Cut Grass, Mow Meadows, and Harvest Grain with a Scythe, by Ian Miller.
Thanks JMG
One of my mantras is:
A lot of what’s called progress ain’t
Comments of my wife:
1) One advantage aditional of the forgoten technologies is a he absence of programed obsolescence.
2) In old patent sheets could be useful devices, discarted for business purposes.
Great topic – I’ll be excited to see your book when it is finished!
How simple/complex/obscure of technologies are you thinking? Will you include tools that are still in production/use, but less-common to use (at least in North America)? I’m thinking things like spades, scythes, gravity-fed water dispensers, woodworking hand tools, playing cards, clothes lines, spinning wheels, mortar and pestles, sewing forms, mosquito nets, and the like.
As for more obscure technology, in my household, we regularly use a hand-crank cherry pitter (antique from the 1800’s), glass jar lids for canning (though they have more seal failures than the metal lids; the advantage being cost, health implications, and ability to re-use), a ‘China Cap’ tool for making tomatoes and apples into sauce, a steam juicer (I don’t know if this is obscure enough, but it is a simple technology that is hugely useful to me), and a root cellar, amongst other things. I’d be happy to expand on any of these, if it would be useful to you.
My family lives on an acreage in an extremely rural area, and while we do use a lot of modern technology, I have a preference for muscle-powered tools. We manage significant garden without a tiller, for instance, and our primary means of managing brush involves axes and bow saws. I would be happy to provide information about real-life use (including pros and cons) of the manual tools we use (feel free to email me).
For reading material, Eric Sloane’s “A Museum of Early American Tools” (1964, reprinted in 2002 by Dover Publications) might be relevant for your project. I also recommend “The Scythe Book” (David Tresemer, 1981, published by Alan C. Hood & Co; I have the second edition, printed/reprinted in 2001), and “Root Cellaring – Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables” (Mike & Nancy Bubel, 1979, reprinted 1991, Storey Publishing). You may also be interested in the Harrowsmith Readers. Harrowsmith is a Canadian back-to-the-land magazine dating back to the 1970’s, but they’ve published a number of books, as well. I assume you are aware of Low Tech Magazine (online publication, but has published books as well) – but if you hadn’t heard of it, it’s another great resource.
KM, not oddball at all. Those are both core elements of any effective retrovation program in temperate climates, where clothing is a necessity. When this project gets further along I’d like to ask you to write up 500-1000 words on your experiences with the 1895 sewing machine.
Jeff, please do!
Heather, be daring! Have you used one?
Charlie, that’s high on my personal list already, but your experiences will also be a welcome addition to the project.
NA, here’s hoping! For those who don’t know about automat cafés, here’s a picture:
You put in a coin and open the door, and there’s your food. There’s a kitchen in back working 24/7 to keep the thing full.
Bob, that’s not really what I’m looking for. The goal is to find things that work better no matter what gas or electricity costs.
Longsword, that’s a good one. Maybe you can point me to some resources on DMSO.
Nick, excellent. I’ll look forward to it.
Anon, the difference is that vaccination has a plausible biochemical mechanism involving the immune system. Homeopathy doesn’t. Given the choice, I much prefer the spooky stuff, thank you very much!
Grimmelshausen, thanks for this — since I can’t drink coffee (it gives me migraines), I’ll have to rely on the expertise of others. Can you write up 500-1000 words or so on how to do this?
Moonwolf8, the German method is called Hugelkultur and it’s been revived in permaculture circles; it certainly belongs in the Technonomicon, though. Can you suggest some information resources on tree tomatoes and other perennial garden plants?
Mark, that’s usually how people get over their distrust of homeopathy.
Ada, so noted! If there’s anything you can contribute to it, that will certainly help.
Anselmo, thank you, but no — the word you want is “weirdo.” I think of the things that nobody else is odd enough to consider!
Anon, that’s fascinatingly wacky. I imagine these guys hanging upside down like bats while masseuses rub unsalted butter into their scalps — that was once a common baldness cure. I’ll have to look into that — I have zero interest in looksmaxxing for myself, but odd subcultures that challenge the conventional wisdom are always fascinating to me.
Robert, au contraire — you’re old enough to recall a great many technologies that faded out over the course of your lifetime. Which of them do you regret losing?
Tris, nope. Cassette tapes are just as easy to carry and much easier to duplicate than anything that came after them — not least because you can’t put digital protection gimmickry into cassettes. (The cassette manufacturers paid a per-cassette fee to record companies, some of which was distributed among the performers — it was basically licensed piracy, but everyone was cool with it.) Furthermore, users had very little to do with what got pushed at them by the corporations — sure, the older systems could still be purchased, but prices soared out of sight and availability of new recordings dropped sharply, while manipulative saturation advertising influenced the weak-minded. People didn’t want lower quality sound — they just got used to it.
Annette, thanks for this. As you have time, start making a list of all the devices you used to have and wish you could still get. That’ll be a valuable resource!
Viduraawakened, thanks for the heads up about phytoremediation! I consider airships to belong to second stage retrovation, since the bugs never really got worked out of the technology and the various advanced engineering gimmickry you’ve suggested will have to be developed, tested, and applied. As for small factories, of course — the great breakthrough that made factory production an option, the manufacture of interchangeable parts, was launched in the 18th century in gunsmithing, using an assembly line in which every part was still handmade. You can certainly do small factory production using low power methods.
Maxine, if you care to take the time to write up 500 to 1000 words on any of the old technologies you use, that’ll be very helpful. I haven’t yet worked out the mechanics of getting people’s contributions, but that’s the next step.
Davie and Deacon, thank you — I already had De Decker’s work on the list!
Ornifex, fascinating. Do you happen to know anything about the history of the diet?
Bradley, hmm! Interesting. No, I don’t intend to throw away my vinyl — it’s good lovely stuff.
Candy, thanks for this. Old appliances have many virtues:
Heather, if you could take the time sometime to write up an account of how root cellars and spring houses are made and used, that would be very helpful!
Mary, yep. Of course the would-be lords and masters of information are doing that.
Bob, thank you. Now tell me what’s in there that you personally find useful and interesting!
Eric, hmm! Old courses like that could be a major asset…
Pygmycory, thanks for all these!
Patrick, so noted.
Anon, interesting. Has anybody else heard of this, or better still, have information about it?
Celadon, thanks for this. Keep me posted on your experiments!
Pygmycory, I see we’re going to have some long lively conversations about this. Thank you again.
Phutatorius, have you used mechanical adding machines? What are their quirks and capacities?
BeardTree, exactly. My grandparents, born in 1907 and 1909 respectively, grew up in a world of horsedrawn wagons and sailing ships; they watched the first car drive down a plank-paved road in Aberdeen, Washington; they also saw men land on the Moon. I was born in 1962, and nothing in my lifetime has been even remotely as transformative as the things they lived through every decade.
SLClaire, thank you for these!
Raymond, it’s a good mantra. One of mine is:
“Progress” is just a sales pitch. Change is just change.
Anselmo, please thank her for both of these!
JJ, I’ll want a mix of things ranging from simple to complex and from still in use here and there to completely abandoned. All of these are at least worth considering. I still haven’t set up the mechanism for gathering people’s written contributions, but that’s clearly going to be the next step.
Mary Bennet (#27): I suspect that among the commentariat here finding an executioner would not be difficult (raises hand).
My vote for the lost technology that should be brought back (INSERT DRUMROLL HERE): Manual Mimeograph machines/spirit duplicators (MSD’s, for short), especially in education. I am just old enough to remember the dark purple color of my school tests and the sweet alcohol smell associated with piles of such tests.
Not only are they much cheaper than photocopy machines (no small consideration), simpler (and thus easier to fix without tech support) and therefore more reliable, but wherever/whenever electricity blackouts are common, or wherever/whenever getting a spare part for a photocopy machine before the day of an exam is…a problematic enterprise (speaking from experience at multiple educational institutions here), MSD’s get the basic job done far more reliably than any over-computerized photocopy machine can or could.
(And far more discretely! I know for a fact that there exists real self-censorship in higher education surrounding class and exam content on account of the impossibility of knowing which person(s)/institution(s) can access photocopy machine records).
Hmm. This has me thinking: what else would be needed to teach a class if neither computers nor indeed even electricity are available (Or: are too expensive + unreliable to make it prudent to plan a class around their stable presence)? Non-electric typewriters would be a nice extra, but not strictly necessary, I think…would anybody else in the Ed Biz care to chime in?
@JMG (#39):
I’m sure you’re right, not the least because, in the short time since I wrote my previous post, I’ve recalled perhaps a dozen things from my childhood that belong in your book. No doubt there’ll be more of them to come. I’ll get started on writing them up (500-1000 words). From the posts so far, I think you won’t be able to resist the fun of making this book.
Also, I remember the old Automats in New York city in the 1940s. My father, a mechanical engineer and Navy man, would occasionally drive down to the City from Pleasantville to browse through the many war-surplus stores (mostly on Canal Street, if memory serves me right), and he would hake me along. We would always go to an Automat for our lunch. They were beautiful inside, all white marble and polished brass hardware for the glass doors that covered the dishes. You could get the change you needed at a central kiosk. Then you’d walk along the walls with your tray and put coins in the slot to unlock the door(s) you chose and take out your food. The doors were arranged in columns of maybe 6-8 compartments; when most or all of the compartments were empty, the column would suddenly revolve 180 degrees in place for a few minutes, then return with a snap, with all the compartments full of delicious food again. To a small child, it was all fascinating and marvelous. — So thank you for calling up those lovely old memories.
That’s a co-incidence (Jung be damned!). This morning I took delivery of my Diamant-Hogenforst 1888 treadle operated letterpress. It’s around a half ton of cast iron in pieces in my garage at the moment and it will be comissioned within the next few weeks I hope. I still have to arrange some new inking rollers for it. When it was assembled they would have been made of a mix of treacle and gelatine. I imagine this gave printers something to nibble on when business was slow. Silicone rubber is the modern choice – no doubt that’s a downgrade from a taste perspective. It uses no power except leg muscles and the ink is a vegetable oil and pigment mix. Unbelievably, I found it in someone’s kitchen where it has been sitting for the last 40 years; used for personal projects by the husband, annoying the wife, and providing an extremely dangerous toy for the grandkids. They are selling up and moving away. Even the most die hard printer has had to accept that it was time, although even I could see that he was grieving.
It’s the kind where a flywheel slams together two cast iron plates. One of them has the typeface/image in reverse natch. The other has a piece of paper that the printer has to pluck out and replace before the plates slam together again. Get the timing wrong and the best you can hope for is a very badly bruised hand. Naturally we’ve called it Bruce after the shark in finding Nemo (fingers are friends not food), who was named after the shark in Jaws.
Why? Towards the middle of last year I’d decided to give up a half century in the IT business and change to bookbinding. I’d planned a gentle transition but the project I had planned to be my final one was unexpectedly cancelled in an increasingly spiteful atmosphere. I reasoned that it simply wasn’t worth the increasing damage to my physical and mental health to carry on. I quit at the end of March, cashed in my chips, and started upgrading my beginner book arts skills.
I’d pretty much got my workshop as I wanted when life threw another curveball when my kid – who had gone to university to study IT – graduated into a dead job market. The door for very junior developers has slammed shut almost overnight (AI is partly but not the only cause of this). He’s joining me doing bookbinding, leatherwork, and as it turns out, letterpress printing. I’m now having to rebuild my tiny bindery again to accommodate two people instead of one and I’m spending a lot of time teaching which is very, very, slow. I’m working my way down the list of my promises for books going out to various people. That list is diminishing but it’s taking far longer than I’d like and I also have to keep paying customers happy. I feel the delay quite keenly and I appreciate everyone’s patience.
What we have discovered is that there’s no easily accessible market that lets me produce much in the way for readers but there is a market in stationery – blank books, notebooks, especially ruled notebooks, sketchbooks ,and desktop calendars and diaries.
The amount of ruled paper I’m getting through is astronomical and until today the only way I had to produce it was an office printer – quite effective but very expensive ink, or a local printer who charges so much that it doubles the cost of materials. The Victoran era letterpress will let me rule my own paper relatively cheaply and will allow me to do business cards and birthday/Christmas/Easter/Imbolc etc. cards and so forth.
Anyway Letterpress Printing pretty much meets the definition of an undervalued older technology. I suspect it actually has quite a lot to offer in the way of quality although its not going to produce books of the cheapness, absence of quality, and vast quantity that the modern book market seems to demand. I can’t say that I find that a pity. As in so many things, Orwell was correct.
One reservation I would have about reviving cars such as the 1966 Mustang is that automobiles of the sixties were rather less fuel efficient than their successor-models of the later twentieth century. Would it be possible to find a “happy medium” of the increased fuel-efficiencies of later decades without the unnecessary electronic geegaws that make modern cars a pain in the posterior?
Never mind the Mustang. From the point of view of consumer need, the best vehicle for Ford to bring back is the F-150 pickup truck as originally introduced in 1975, which went on to become the biggest selling consumer motor vehicle in the world. A major factor in its popularity is that it’s repairable by any reasonably handy amateur with a few simple tools, and it has real off-road capability, unlike its 21st-century descendant that’s clearly aimed at suburbanites whose practical needs would be better served by one of the bigger hatchbacks but who want a pickup for image reasons.
Second, when it comes to chemical fertilizers, military demand cannot be discounted as a factor. At the end of WWII, the expectation that within a decade we’d be facing another war like it but against the Soviet Union was widespread among both corporate and government leaders. Converting bomb factories to fertilizer factories wasn’t just a profit-seeking move. It was also done (and generously subsidized) so that the factories would be available to reconvert to bomb production on short notice. It’s just like nuclear power: the real point was always to maintain the infrastructure and expertise for building nuclear weapons.
Finally, as far as my own experience goes, I hope my bio-male readers will forgive my plunge into female biology, but this is about menstrual cramps. When I first started having them, more than half a century ago, ibuprofen had yet to be introduced onto the market. When it arrived, it was by prescription only and doctors were generally reluctant to prescribe it for menstrual cramps unless the cramps were so bad the patient fainted or something. What mainstream medicine had to offer the rest of us was a product called Midol, which must do something for somebody because it’s still on the market but it never helped me at all, and the caffeine made my heart race.
But the herbs worked.
I found out about them through certain hippie feminist publications that went beyond the second-wave critique of the neglect of women’s health issues by male-dominated mainstream medicine and did exactly the sort of retrovation you’re talking about, plunging into health care history and coming up with protocols for the use of blue cohosh, cramp bark, red raspberry leaf, and a handful of others that worked better than anything an uninsured teenager could lay hands on at the local pharmacy.
Ibuprofen was reclassified for OTC sale in the mid-1980s. It worked as well as the herbs and the side effects were mild. I was a busy adult by then and the inconvenience of infusing the herbs was a bigger deal than it had been. I used “ibu” for several years and then I ran across, in another one of those hippie feminist publications, an herbal recipe titled “How to Make Your Cramps Go Away Forever.” That turned out to be a bit over-optimistic. After following the months-long protocol detailed in the recipe, my cramps went away for 11 years, and by the time they came back I was nearly to menopause anyway. The pharmaceuticals still can’t do anything like that except by stopping the menstrual cycle altogether with hormonal birth control.
Ah, so this is what your Magic Monday meme is about: paranormalizing technology!
I wish I had something to contribute to your book but, alas. I’ll be interested in seeing what others come up with, however. I’m always open to learning about old tech that works better than contemporary gizmos.
I’m just old enough to remember when appliances could be a bit finicky but got the job done. The new ones will happily work without a hitch — provided you don’t actually want the stains off your dinnerware or your clothes.
rather niche, but if you’re a wargamer, minature painter, scale modeller or roleplaying gamer:
building terrain rather than buying or 3D printing it. Used to be something everyone did to one level or another; now it is something a lot fewer do.
If you use found materials for part of it, it is dirt cheap/near free, and some of the results can be amazing. You can’t buy water terrain pre-built that is as good as I can make without needing expensive resin. Modpodge for still water, painting the bottom of the water body beforehand, with little details like rocks, sticks or waterweeds. Clear silicone sealant can work for flexible modular rivers (wargame terrain needs to be both sturdy and easy to transport).
Dollar store foamboard is really useful. Use water to remove the paper if you can’t find the sort you just peel off. Chipboard (thick card, thicker than cereal box though that has its uses too) is great for making bases any size and shape you could possibly need for any game.
The best place to find out how to do this stuff well is youtube. Blackmagiccraft, Wyloch’s Armoury, The Terrain Tutor, Eric’s Hobby Workshop among others.
If you want more, I can go on and on on this topic. 😉 You have been warned.
Re, mechanical adding machines: yes I used to use them doing traffic studies for the telephone company. I’m referring to the 9 button machines with a hand crank on the side. I got pretty fast at it. The electric ones were nice because you just hit the return key instead of operating the “crank.” But the purely mechanical ones were just as good. I suppose a drawback of the hand cranked ones could be repetitive motion injury from repeatedly pulling that crank back.
And (by association), there used to be screwdrivers that you operated by pushing down on the handle instead of twisting it. I referred to them as “lazy man screwdrivers” but that was before I realized what injuries the repeated twisting motion could inflict.
@ Anonymous # 9
Your post actually does explain something very weird about the pro-vax faith… (which is, essentially, that there exists a class of pharmaceutical products which offers talismanic protection against unknown threats).
And that is a thoroughly unquestioning attitude towards what these pharmaceutical products might actually contain.
To all the pro-vax people that I know, vaccines contain Salvation (“Vaccines Save Lives”), protection (Vaccines Protect the Vulnerable”) and other miraculous abstract concepts which are never allowed to be thought about in connection to anything as concrete as a manufacturing plant and actual pharmaceutical ingredient lists.
I guess if you believe a vaccine is another name for a Factor X which has somehow been succussed and ultradiluted to remove almost all material remnants, so as to produce “homeopathic viruses”… well, yes. I can see this idea working well with the “don’t ask ever ask what’s in it, just get yourself protected and start saving lives” religious movement which has accreted around this class of highly materially dense aggregations of pharmaceutical substances.
Be well, stay free! 🙂
Here’s a book on a very important subject (especially after the age of municipal sewers has passed us by) far too many ignore, and the author presents a relatively simple technological solution to it’s challenges: The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph C. Jenkins. By the end of the book you’ll feel a sense of disgust (I did, at least) that we were ever so wasteful with something so precious as nightsoil, and that we’d added injury to insult by contaminating our waters with it . Contrary to the trend for complex composting flame-powered toilets with a two-part urine diverter, Jenkins’ system works with nothing more than a bucket, some sawdust ( any moistened equivalent source of carbon will do), the sweet heat of the hot compost pile, and time. It works, its simple, best of all it doesn’t stink- even in an enclosed space like a conventional bathroom. On a serious note, this technology has the potential to alleviate a lot of unnecessary death and suffering in the coming long descent by way of disease prevention, and as a cultural sanitary habit it’s simplicity has the potential to survive intact into a dark age. In the deindustrial future we’ll all be using nightsoil anyways, but with this method we can avoid some of the nastier bits that plagued our ancestors, and convinced them they needed to flush it all away in the first place.
Mr. Nobody @ 46: I had three VW Beetles from the 50s and 60s. 36 HP and 40 HP respectively. Reliable 30 miles per gallon with breaker point ignition and a carburator. (Jeez, I can’t even remember how “carburator” is spelled any more.) Yes, they were dangerous in a head-on collision with a pickup truck. Fortunately, I never crashed one. I would swear by an older vintage VW Beetle like that.
Hi JMG,
I too would immediately buy such a book and I feel excited about your willingness to create it. The book Henley’s Formulas comes to mind for the chemistry side of things.
I second the mention of A Midwestern Doctor’s Substack called the Forgotten Side of Medicine. Yes, they have published extensively on DMSO which I have personally found immensely helpful for a variety of things. For those interested their article index is a great place to see the breadth of topics they have discussed:
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/an-index-of-the-forgotten-side-of
I also feel excited about a regular Dreamwidth thread on this topic. I have had a strong urge to personal pursue some forgotten technology in addition to the herbalism I already practice.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I am now wondering if a proper homeopathy vaccine would work. If you got a large quanity of (say) influenza virus particles, put them in water and then did succession and dillution as you would for a homeopathic preparation, would this create a functional vaccine? I’d be surprised if the funding was ever made available for this, and testing it is well beyond what a single person could do; but if it does work, it would be a much safer method, because there would be no need for the toxic adjuvants standard vaccines need to get the immune system to react….
Part of this touches my area of interest a little bit.
Shoot, that sounds almost like the start of a saucy story. No. I mean the part about sound recording and rendering.
I don’t hear the difference in performance between CD and vinyl, but I do hear the difference between those and lower quality encoding mechanisms like cassette and mp3. That’s not to say that the difference isn’t there or to take the digitalist postition about that, I merely say that I personally don’t hear it. I think that’s probably because I’ve had some hearing loss at the higher end for years now. From the mid 80s til a few years ago I lost no opportunity to wage an assault on my ears with headphones, and a lot of that time overlapped with a construction career. And as regards audio recording, I would expect most of the losses with ~40k/sec sampling to occur in the high end. If we take the range of human hearing to be 20-20k Hz, and look at the high end of that to see how well it’s modelling, it models very poorly indeed. A 40k/sec sampler can only render a 20 kHz signal as a square wave because it hasn’t the resolution to do better than that. Even a full octave lower at 10 kHz isn’t much better, and that’s down low enough that most standard EQs will treat with that, no?
You might think it doesn’t matter that much because not much music has chirping noises way up that high and that which does sucks, and yes, the former is correct and I agree with the (technically) subjective latter. That’s not the whole story though. Notes, in fact all sounds, aren’t just their fundamental frequency, they’re a mix of a whole bunch of overtones that can be arbitrarily high, so the lowest string on your upright bass might have an audible >16 kHz component. That’s why different things have different tones. Also, fun fact, way up there is where the consonants in speech live. My old boss had these walkie talkies we never used because -oh, how SMART!- if the signal was diminished by something like a concrete wall, it would still put through a digital signal that contained only the low mids and lows, so you could recognize a voice and tell the mood a person was in, but not get a word he was saying! Thankfully we found that out right after he got back to site with them and not during a concrete pour gone awry or a first aid thing or something like that!
Anyway. I don’t personally hear the difference between vinyl and CD, but because I know all that, I believe people who do. I add without embarrassment that if I didn’t know all that, I’d think the purported difference was a load of horse radish. Why would I not?
I’m making a mental note to look out for retrovatable things. My world is probably a dry well as far as that goes but this sounds like a most fascinating and worthy project!
There’s still people who do totally non-digital short wave and ham radio and so on, right? I don’t know anything about that really but I got the impression from my limited exposure to that world that it’s an enduring subculture. No?
I don’t know if they’re actually old, but spiral sheet hangers, which I discovered last year, have eliminated the last barrier between me and being able to quit using the tumble dryer. Each one holds a full size bedsheet. They are very cheap on Amazon and the only plastic part is the end cap. You can check them out at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=spiral%20sheet%20hanger%20for%20drying. If you need a non-copyrighted photo, I can take a picture of mine and send it to you.
Hi JMG,
This isn’t technically an “abandoned technology,” as it has been in use for at least three-thousand years in the middle east, so I would characterize it as a “traditional technology” instead, and it’s one I think the hotter parts of the U.S. and similar areas worldwide might benefit from. That is wind towers. The book is titled Wind Towers: Architecture, Climate and Sustainability, and the full citation is as follows:
Bahadori, Mehdi N., Alireza Dehghani-sanij, and Ali Sayigh. Wind Towers: Architecture, Climate and Sustainability. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2014.
As far as I can tell, this is the standard English-language book on the subject. It’s pricy, but you should be able to get it through inter-library loan.
Wind towers come in two types, the standard wind tower, which helps to move air through a building, but doesn’t otherwise modify it; and what is known in Persia as the “badgir”, which uses wetted pads, water sprays, and the like to moisten the air and cause evaporative cooling. The badgir are restricted to drier areas because they have diminishing effects the wetter the conditions.
People in the middle east have used wind towers for millennia to keep their homes cool without electricity. There have been some experiments with them in the U.S., but I haven’t heard of any widespread use yet. I’ve been trying to talk these up to everyone I know, as one thing that could greatly reduce energy consumption all across the southern U.S. is needing to use air conditioning less.
Anyway, I hope this is useful.
— C
I guess I’m on a role here. Speaking of older telephone technology, has anyone ever seen a Stromberg-Carlson X-Y telephone exchange? Western Electric made a functionally similar electro-mechanical step-by-step telephone technology that used a different geometry. Siemens made an X-Y switch that was a beautiful thing to behold. I only saw one. Those Germans! (These pre-dated stored-program control telephone technology that began with crossbar and ESS switches, and eventually telephone exchanges turned into big special purpose computers.) Thus, there was no such thing as a “call center.” No such thing as a robo-call!
Hello comentariat,
I’d start with a classic https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
Speaking of records, I stumbled upon Joe’s Record Paradise in the basement of 8700 Georgia Ave. in Silver Spring a couple of months ago. It’s only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but looking through the window it seemed very promising. The website is https://www.joesrecordparadise.com/, in case you hadn’t already discovered it.
Dear JMG,
Of course you wrote quite a bit about this subject in your great book “The Retrofuture”. You included a chapter there about Gustaf Erikson and his fleet of sailing cargo vessels. I think sailing ships, especially the more low tech variation: square rig, gaff rig, timber built, are very high on the list. There are many books of old seamanship who describe the art of building, rigging, managing and handling these vessels. Works written by authors like Henry Dana, but many others as well. Once this was all common knowledge. Although it still works and would make a lot of sense, most people, even from the maritime or traditional sailing industry are not ready to accept that, one day (maybe not even so far ahead), our future of logistics and long distance travel will be with the (wooden) small sailing vessel.
JMG, have you had the opportunity–I have not–to examine or look through Diderot’s Encyclopedia? I understand this monumental work included many technical drawings of various devices then in use. Diderot’s work is surely public domain by now, unless the French govt. were to object to use of French cultural patrimony.
Technologies which I think need to be revived include surveying, cartography and technical drawing. Textbooks and tools are still around.
IMHO vehicle manufacturers would open a new market by trimming all the “style” features of their products such as chromed car badges, trim, exotic body panels, expensive paint, and the rest of the bells and whistles that only add cost without improving the main function of providing efficient and safe transportation. A truly basic model should not only cost much less to produce but not require marketing. Thrifty buyers will find these alternatives in short order as their searches for savings will quickly lead to astute manufacturers. As an EV owner I can prove that simplicity in engineering drastically reduces maintenance and fuel costs. The first to produce first truly no frills vehicle will surely capture this untouched market.
I hate to be the first to quibble– because I agree completely with the meat of this essay–but Ford would probably want to make at least one modification to the 1966 Mustang as I believe it had the same fuel tank setup as the Pinto and would kill you just as dead in a rear collision. I understand that you cannot take an unmodified classic Mustang to any National Hot Rod Association event (aside from static display) because of that.
As for computers in cars– the computers aren’t the problem, it’s how they use them. You could engineer a mechanical system to be byzantine and unrepairable, and they absolutely would if they were doing all-mechanical cars now. Epoxy everything shut or use special wrenches, whatever. You know they would. OTH, there are DIY options for electronic fuel injection, like Microsquirt or Speeduino that are completely open and IMO much easier to fiddle with than a carburetor. It’s the lockdown that’s the issue, not the fact that there’s electronics in the engine. Anybody who wants to go back to carbs or mechanical fuel injection is more than welcome to.
For myself, I am what I believe to be the distinct minority here in that I own a microwave. OTH when the 21st century hunk of junk died off, I got one from a thrift shop older than I am that will, like the refrigerator in the meme, likely outlast me. Its electronics are simple enough I suspect I could sling solder to fix whatever goes bye-bye as well, which was absolutely NOT the case with the newer model.
Also! Re: Airships– the bugs WERE pretty well worked out. Nobody knows about it because the people who did it were the US Navy, and they don’t brag. Back in the 50s they had anti-sub and early warning radar blimps taking off in the teeth of gales and ice that grounded literally all other aircraft. Heck, they were even “hybrid” airships in today’s parlance, in that they kept themselves aloft in part with dynamic lift. Here’s a tragically brief overview of the Navy blimp program:
https://hackaday.com/2026/02/25/what-one-winged-squids-can-teach-the-airship-renaissance/
Of course the Amish are big on retrovation. Hore drawn technology being one of their main focuses. They hold regular “Horse Progress Days”, where the agricultural and wood provessing horse drawn tech on display is pretty mind-blowing:
https://horseprogressdays.com/about-us/
One example that fits your idea of retrovation is the recovery of locally adapted, genetically diverse seed populations. Before industrial agriculture, farmers routinely maintained evolving seed populations that adapted to place. My book Landrace Gardening revisits that tradition and explores how it can be practiced today. If it would help your research for the Technonomicon, I’d be delighted to send you a complimentary copy.
Very exciting topic! The intensive/small farms that produce for Market and CSA have been inovators by need. They have a “commons” to share these ideas (known as hacks) and help others solve problems that corporations feel are not lucrative enough to pursue. See: https://farmhack.org/
Dry beans instead of canned: Soaking beans for 12+ hours in water containing baking soda helps reduce gas, and reduces cooking time drastically compared to dry beans, or even to beans soaked without baking soda. The beans also have a texture I like better.
Quickbreads: if regular bread takes space too long sitting in the fridge for no-knead/requires yeast you don’t have/requires kneading you can’t do, make quickbreads.
basic bread:
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup milk
1 pinch salt.
Bake in oven at 350F for about 20min. Can easily be combined with other items to save energy.
There are also breads that can be made in a frying pan on the stove if you don’t have an oven.
@JMG,
Another example of Retrovation is acoustic detection of drones. You likely know that before radar, listening devices like the famous Japanese “war trumpets” were the best early warning system available against airborne attack.
Well, the little quadcopters don’t have much of a radar signature, but their ‘buzz’ is distinctive enough to pick up and triangulate on; I understand both sides of the Russo-Ukranian war are using acoustic detection to good effect.
@Etienne #43,
It would depend on the level and subject, but go back far enough and the requirements for anything up to university-level were a lecturer who knew his shale, and writing slates. Everything else is bonus.
@SLClaire,
Mostly I see string trimmers used for cutting around buildings and fences and the like where a mower won’t go. This might be a “me” thing, but I’m too far clumsy to use a scythe is such close quarters. If you’re that skilled, please accept my accolades! I’m seriously impressed.
My understanding was that around these parts the tool of choice was a pair of wicked sharp, long scissors/shears to cut with. You can still get shears for trimming grass and weeds, even mounted on long handles for the ever-growing fraction of the population that doesn’t want to get on their hands and knees to do the edges of the yard, like these:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/garden/garden-care/lawn-care/shears/62656-long-handled-grass-shears
Introductory note:
Coffee is a hot beverage prepared in widely varying ways across different cultures. For instance, a traditional Viennese coffee house might offer anywhere from 20 to over 40 different coffee specialties.
I will therefore limit myself to three common variations that can be prepared using very simple equipment.
Variation 1 – Filter coffee (European style; Americans typically use about 50% less coffee in the filter):
You need a coffee filter holder (ideally made of ceramic; plastic ones are suspected of leaching plasticizers into the coffee over time).
You also need a matching paper filter, a carafe, ground coffee (freshly ground is best—a hand grinder is recommended for this, as fresh grounds significantly improve the flavor), and boiling water.
Place the paper filter into the ceramic holder and rinse it with hot water. This removes any papery taste and preheats the carafe. Then, discard the water.
Add approximately 15–18 g of coffee to the filter for every 250 ml of water and shake gently to level the grounds. First, evenly moisten the coffee with about twice the amount of water (approx. 30–40 ml) and let it bloom for 30–45 seconds. This allows carbon dioxide to escape, which improves extraction. Slowly pour the remaining water in a circular motion from the center outward, avoiding direct contact with the paper filter.
Allow the water to drip completely through the coffee into the carafe. The total brewing time should be approximately 2½ to 4 minutes.
Variation 2 – Turkish mocha
For Turkish mocha, only three things are required: a mocha pot (Turkish: *cezve*, also known as an *ibrik*), boiling water, and coffee (ideally freshly ground). To get as close as possible to the original, an Ethiopian coffee bean (e.g., Fructus Jasminum) is recommended; these are always Arabica beans. They are ground very finely—truly fine, like flour.
Two teaspoons of ground coffee are placed in the *mokka* pot. Warm water is then poured into the pot. The pot is heated and removed from the stove only when the water comes to a boil. The foam that has formed on the surface can be skimmed off.
The coffee is then brought to a boil a second time; this allows the grounds to extract further and releases even more aromas.
Once the coffee boils for the second time, the *mokka* is ready.
The coffee is then poured from the pot into the cup, including the grounds from the bottom of the pot (traditionally, these belong in the cup, though they are not consumed).
It is best to wait 1–2 minutes for the grounds to settle at the bottom of the cup and avoid stirring.
Variation 3 – Italian *Mokka* Style
This method requires a Bialetti Moka Express (an espresso maker whose design, according to the manufacturer, has remained virtually unchanged since the early 1930s and has sold over 300 million units worldwide), water, and coffee.
Fill the bottom section with water up to just below the safety valve.
Fill the funnel insert with ground coffee and level it off. Do not tamp down the coffee grounds. Screw the top section on tightly. Place the pot on the stove and heat over medium heat.
The hot water is forced through the coffee grounds by the resulting steam pressure and rises into the top section as finished coffee.
Remove the pot from the stove as soon as a gurgling sound is heard. Stir briefly and serve immediately.
The heliograph:
“Was a communication instrument that used sunlight reflected by a flat mirror. By manipulating the mirror, messages in Morse code could be sent from one high point to another. This type of signal had been used by humans since antiquity, but it was during this period that the system reached its peak development. Many countries established networks of towers that transmitted messages rapidly from one to another, and it was used as a communication system by many armies, including the Spanish in Cuba and Puerto Rico, as seen in this image of the Heliograph Tower of La Trocha in the central part of the island. I have also included some images from the internet of British soldiers using the heliograph in the Boer War, and of the Blue Army in their wars against Native Americans. Its advantages included the fact that the wires could not be cut like those of the telegraph, and its disadvantages included dependence on weather conditions (no messages could be sent at night), and its limited range. It was gradually replaced by the telegraph, but it was even used in World War I.”
Dear JMG,
I am so excited about this book…I don’t think anything gets me as excited as this topic, especially if you’re writing about it!!
A quick question – do you have any book recommendations for cell salts? I’ve been getting some profound results from them and have been reading and learning more, but I would love more reading material.
From what I’ve read of your work, you probably already know about most of what I could share, but here are some ideas anyway:
– Chelsea Green has a great book on koji fermentation, which I have yet to get into but am very impressed by (this gives people an ability to make soy sauce and miso-like products from a wide variety of locally available proteins, and also apparently does wonderful things to sweet food like fruit as well).
– Same publisher (one of my favorites) has a good book called The Art of Natural Cheese making on how to make cheese without any industrial inputs (aka how people used to make it).
– An old-fashioned small scale oil press would allow a household to produce their own oils (from bitternut hickory, hazelnut, acorn, sunflower seeds, etc.).
– Dave Built makes a great nut cracker that allows you to crack gallons of nuts. I have no idea how old of a technology this is, but it’s an essential part of our homestead food system.
– my husband steams milk for coffee with a stove-top (non electric) steamer. Not a necessity, more of a novelty, but a fun call back to his years as a barista (and the drinks he makes with it are amazing!)
– this one is obvious but scythes are way better at clearing areas than electric trimmers or weed whackers
– I volunteer at a place called Tillers where I drive draft donkeys and oxen, and there truly is no easier way to get a log out of a forest if you’re logging on a small and sustainable scale (vs. clear cutting), because the animals can navigate so efficiently in the woods. There are also incredible machines that are powered by the animals turning the wheels (like a manure-spreader or hay collector that has moving parts attached to the turning wheels as the animals pull it). If you’re interested, Tillers has a decent collection of books on animal power: I could ask for some good titles. They also have one of the biggest collections of animal-powered farming technologies in the country, if you want any more specifics.
– Weaving looms are really incredible pieces of technology…I’ve gotten great enjoyment out of a floor loom and a rigid heddle loom. (The Techniques of Rug Weaving, The Weaving, Spinning, and Dyeing Book, and The Hand Weaver’s Pattern Directory are three of my favorite weaving books. The first is for rugs but really covers a ton of weaving techniques, the second includes how to build simple looms and covers a wide range, the last is four 4 shaft looms. The Weaver’s Idea Book is good for rigid heddle looms).
– Coppicing is such a useful technology – I’m sure you already are quite familiar, but my favorite book on it is called Coppice Agroforestry, by Mark Krawczyk
– Acupressure is such a great tool. Acupressure’s Potent Points is a good go to for an at-home guide. Tsubo is a more in-depth book that does something ok by similar.
– Ortho-Bionomy is a great bodywork modality for unwinding constrictions. I’ve found it to be profoundly helpful, receiving it and as a practitioner.
– Body Wisdom is a really accessible book for basic hands on healing. I didn’t use it that much, because I had done in-person training for hand-based energy healing, but when I read it, I thought it felt pretty accessible.
– Facial Diagnosis of Cell Salt Deficiencies is a helpful guide, it gives tongue and face-based diagnoses in addition to descriptions.
– New Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia and Posology gives more specifics on how to make homeopathic preparations from different plants (which the modern books I’ve encountered never do, for some odd reason).
– My guess from reading Green Wizardry is that you have Permaculture totally covered, but there’s so much there…swales and other techniques for eliminating the need for irrigation, for example.
– Manual egg beater – a joy to use, I got one at an antique mall and I use it instead of an electric one every time I need to whip something.
– Mortar and pestle – there are some things that a blender or a spice grinder physically can’t handle that a good mortar and pestle has no issue with. And of course, it’s much more pleasant to use unless we’re grinding larger amounts.
– elimination communication (a decent amount of these are practices, not necessarily physical technologies, so they might not be helpful but I figured I’d still include them) – basically, a way to raise an infant without diapers, or getting out of diapers much sooner. This is of course a very old “technology”, and elimination communication is its modern name in the Western world. A good book on it is Diaper Free.
– I’m not sure what this is exactly what it’s called, but we built an A-frame level that is great at measuring if the ground is level.
– So many good books on herbalism, but I thought I’d offer some that cover specifically useful things – Stephen Harrod Buhner has two called Herbal Antibiotics and Herbal Antivirals that would work as a serious substitute for some types of emergency room visits (they detail which plants could be used for various bacterial and viral infections, including antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections). Herbal Medic is about serious herbal first aid. The Herbal Medicine-Maker’s Handbook is an exceptional guide to making different preparations. There are a lot of books on herbal systems and what various herbs do, but I think the writings of Matthew Wood, Jim McDonald (not yet published into a book, but available online), and David Hoffman do a good job of describing the Western energetic herbal system, which is generally less well known than Ayurveda or TCM.
– We recently hand planed some boards we had paid someone to mill from a few cherry trees that we had to cut down. Some we took to Tillers, the place at which I mentioned above I volunteer, and planed using a machine, and then the rest we hand planed. Once we got better with the hand planes and sharpened them correctly, it took about the same amount of time to use the hand planes and was much more enjoyable and easier on the ears. I’ve felt the same way about properly sharpened chisels and draw knives (especially when used on shave horses).
– hot water bottles…so simple, so effective!
– Low Tech Lab has a lot of ideas that seem to mostly be adapted from the appropriate tech era. A decent amount of their info is in video form, which I don’t like, but you can still browse through their site for ideas. One thing I’ve wanted to build for a while is a multi-use pedal power station, and they have a nice simple one. There was a great older book on pedal power that I can’t find, and it featured models made in the early 20th century (if I’m remembering correctly) that were human pedal powered devices (a lot of them were for woodworking, some sewing machines, that kind of thing).
– When I lived in Colombia, the people in the community where I was staying would put a sort of metal net a little ways up in their chimney, so they could smoke/dehydrate meat while lighting their cooking fire.
I’m very much looking forward to this book! Also, I would give a lot to have a less computerized car…although I’d much rather have light and heavy rail everywhere!
Thanks,
Sama
I’m one of those people that both appreciates the resurgent popularity of vinyl records while also being skeptical that vinyl records inherently sound better, and digital audio inherently sounds worse. I think digital audio can sound great, and the sampling rate we use is fast enough to ensure that our human ears can’t tell the difference. (I also remember learning that studies were conducted to see if anyone could tell the difference between “CD quality” audio and something with an even faster sampling rate, and no one could. I have no references to cite, though.)
I like the explanation Bradley mentioned which was that vinyl necessitated better audio engineering, and so provided an indirect reason why the actual recordings on them were better. A lot of modern audio production is heavily compressed, processed and over-produced, and that trend really started around the same time CDs became dominant. There’s also the fact that vinyl records are simpler and instantly sidestep all of the modern garbage and dark patterns that’s involved in playing digital music, regardless of whether you stream it or still listen to mp3s. They have a lot going for them even if their audio quality is actually worse.
So that gets me wondering: perhaps there’s a more esoteric explanation why people like vinyl records? Vinyl is a much more direct recording of the audio, and is much more tangible. You can actually feel the grooves with your fingers, they’re more delicate, and there’s more of a ritual to using them than CDs, certainly more than mp3s or “streaming”. That tangibility might be part of the appeal, in that we’re creating a deeper connection with the actual object that contains the music. And maybe there are less corporeal qualities that vinyl records can have? At that point I can only speculate as a layman. I imagine you can dig deeper into that than I can, as an accomplished occultist.
JMG,
There is a full website devoted to DMSO.
https://dmso.org
A surgeon from Oregon named Stanley Jacob was the first in America to evangelize its use. In the 1970’s in the Portland area its use became something of a craze, at least among lots of people my father knew ( he was friends with Stanley). Its main purpose seems as a vector to deliver medications, ointments, and just about anything medicinal through the skin.
Eventually the medical establishment turned against it and many papers were published on why it was badity bad. Its mainstream use and acceptance shrunk over time to the present where it is used heavily to heal and medicate race horses.
Heliograph: Didactic example of the principle of working.
https://youtu.be/mfcIF1ekk6w?is=AXhXg-z3q_dMSMtA
Hi JMG,
I normally comment from my phone and this time tried to do it from a computer, in hopes that the line breaks I included would show up, but they seem to have been omitted again! Let me know if my last comment is totally unreadable and I can try again (I typed it out on my phone and then emailed it to myself; it might work better to mess around with it more on a computer before sending).
Thanks,
Sama
I had a cassette tape player in my car back in the day. Its one drawback was the tape getting all tangled up at times, and then it was a bear to get it out and get it fixed.
I had and used a solar clothes dryer off my back deck when I lived in Albuquerque. It works very well in hot, dry weather.
There are things I used to do by hand, but I’m physically unable to do now; when that happened before I moved into this place, was to hire help. It was of wildly varying quality, since I learned the hard way that I am no judge of people.
The management of this place is rapidly automating and digitizing everything they can, and we are told to keep our windows closed and let the a/c do its work.
One thing I did learn, is that someone whose mind is made up on something is as immovable as the Rocky Mountains, and it’s not worth arguing with them. Me from my daughter, who was replacing windows broken in a hurricane, and I suggested energy-efficient windows, “Whatever for?” Her house leaks energy like a colander, and she sees nothing wrong with that at all. Not even if it costs her a lot of money on her utility bills. Some of the residents here – including those on the Green Initiative Committee with me – think the same way.
And I still remember that man who, when he heard I needed to sit down because I had a bad back, said “So do I -that’s why I bought this power chair.” Arrrgh – not while I can still walk at all, I’m not doing so.
I hope your Technonomicon gets into the hands of the younger generations. but like Jenny’s sources of learning sorcery, they’d be best off learning from farmers and sheep herders, garbage collector and table servers and anybody making do with what they have – and who can’t afford big fat books.
Hello JMG and commentarists:
This Wednesday I’d like to comment, like another Wednesdays, current John’s post, and then, what I think they’re the most interesting comments until now.
**************************
“Most people nowadays believe in progress the way that medieval peasants believed in the wonderworking relics of their local saint. It’s progress that is expected to grant us an ever-increasing cornucopia of blessings, banish all the evils”
Last and self-evident example of this religious belief is the blatant and bizarre “AI”(LLM) frenzy, not only its especulative bubble, but I’m also thinking about those naïve believers who give up their ability to think by themselves, and they only copypaste (in another sites) whatever “infallible truths” they find in their favorite LLMs. What could be wrong with this attitude in near future?
******************************************************
“plenty of users relearning the trick of winding a cassette with a #2 pencil.”
I also did that trick during ’80s and ’90s…
*****************************************************
“One good example is electroculture.”
I’ve always thought I had a sound general culture (thanks to be partly self-taught), but I’m sorry: I’ve never had read nor heard about electroculture! I accept I’ve got some holes in my knowings, so thank you for remembering me and others this forgotten technology.
**************************************************
“I know here have to do with healing, and the most widely practiced of them, back in the day, was homeopathy.”
OK, you opened a can of worms for “respectable and educated” audience, which I guess isn’t the case of most commenters in your blog.
By the way, I’m scratching my head after having read that the very inconformist Lionel Shriver believes (in spite of her anti-woke view in her last novel), that there’s a patriarchy in our societies, she’s skeptic about scientifical bases of climate change, and she doesn’t believe homeopathy works, at all. Nobody’s perfect…
**********************************************
“The fact that every dollar spent on inexpensive homeopathic medicines deprives pharmaceutical firms of the chance to demand hundreds or thousands of dollars for their overpriced, problem-ridden products doubtless has a lot to do with this.”
You nailed it. You can also guess doctors, at least across all the Western countries, often are influenced by Big Pharma commercial agents to sell better their products. And don’t forget sometimes medical meetings and conferences are sponsored by…do the math.
********************************************************
“I’m laying down a challenge. Help me with this. I need good solid reading material on abandoned technologies”
Oops, I’m sorry, but now I don’t know any text on abandoned technologies, but if I’d find something interesting in my town main public library tomorrow (maybe in old near discarded book in “deposit” situation), I’d tell you.
There are older technologies/skillsets still being practices in the fringes of society. For example, I have several friends who are in the Society for Creative Anachronism who are excellent sword smiths. They have the knowledge and ability to make anything from a kitchen knife to a broadsword. The SCA is also where I learned to spin and a weave. I need to get back to using those skills. There are chapters of the SCA and other historical reenactment groups worldwide and would be worth checking out.
The tree tomato is also known as a tamarillo. A quick google search for the seeds brings up Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds; Blue Pumpkin Seed Co.; Seedville USA; and Magic Garden Seeds. A look for plants brings up Logee’s Plants; Wanderlust Nursery; and Sow Exotic. The perennial grains are Foxtail Millet(Setaria Parviflora): Meadow Barley (Hordeum brachyantherum); Perennial Ryegrass; Perennial Sorghum (Sorghum Arundinaceum); Wild Rice (that’s the one from the Great Lakes area managed by Native Amerind populations; Perennial Rice; and Kernza Intermediate Wheatgrass. An alternative list of perennial grains adds: Illinois Bundleflower (Desmanthus Illinoensis) available from Prairie Moon Nursery; Maximillian Sunflower (Helianthus Maximiliani) Available from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center; Cowpea which is an annal in most places but can behave like a semi-perennial in warmer climates and is available through Thresh Seed Co.; and Eastern Gamma Grass (Tripsacum Dactyloides) available through Great Basin Seed.
There is no one quite as innovative as a subsistence gardener with minimal cash! All the above mentioned retrovation ideas are wonderful, and I have many suggestions bursting out of me, but I’m wondering if (once again) we are creating solutions for problems that haven’t (quite) arrived yet. As long as electricity is relatively cheap compared to the effort to carry a basket of wet (heavy) laundry outside and hang it on a line (and deal with birds, pollen, dust, getting in in before the rain, etc.) I don’t think people will naturally return to the clothesline from the gas or electric clothes dryer.
However, once electricity is EXPENSIVE (again relatively speaking) and/or electric dryers are unaffordable or unavailable to purchase, THEN clotheslines both outdoor and indoor will spring up everywhere.
I grew up terrified of getting my fingers mashed in the wringer on Mom’s old Maytag, but I loved “helping” hang up clothes on the line and the smell of sheets dried in the sunshine and breeze. When the rains came in the Fall (we lived in the mountains of North Idaho) laundry became a once/week visit to the Laundromat in Sandpoint, which had it’s own charms (pushing my little brother in those wheeled laundry baskets!) and was a socializing opportunity for Mom and us kids. All that activity was/is lost for the dubious convenience of just tossing the clothes from the automatic washer into the automatic dryer.
Clearly, most of us prefer speed and convenience over hours of manual labor as long as we can afford it. But once we CAN’T afford it… ?? We might just find the old ways are not only more affordable/sustainable/sane but also more satisfying and even joyful. Is it really a worthwhile swap to spend family funds on “labor saving” appliances and then on a gym membership to get some of the exercise you just tried to “save” yourself from? What do most people actually DO with the time those expensive, unrepairable appliances “saves” for them?
Another nearly forgotten technique:
Shaving a man’s face using a straight razor or—for the less skilled or less daring—a safety razor. All that is required is the razor (straight or safety), a shaving brush, and some shaving soap.
The industry has created a highly profitable “cult” around shaving. Shaving foam straight from the can, disposable razors with up to five parallel blades—all at exorbitant prices (a five-blade cartridge costs up to 4 euros in Europe, a can of shaving foam up to 4 euros—and the aluminum can ends up as trash)…
Viduraawakened@19, JMG, and all other airship heads: there’s a BIG problem with airships: the lifting gas. Helium is presently undergoing a dramatic shortage, as spelled out in this very detailed article: https://westairgases.com/blog/helium-shortage/
Key phrase there: Strait of Hormuz.
At prices of ‘a while ago’, to fill the Goodyear Zeppelin NT with helium costs somewhere around $84,000 to $300,000. The Zep NT carries 8-12 passengers (two additional pilots required.) To fill an airship the size of the Akron from the 1930s, the ‘while ago’ prices are $1.8 million to $6.5 million.
Once an airship is filled, it has to be constantly “topped up”; helium is a real escape artist.
OK, the ONLY other lifting gas worth considering is our old buddy Hydrogen (H2). It’s presently cheaper than Helium (He), with a fill for the NT costing $3,000-$24,000 depending on sources and various complicated factors, and a fill for the Akron at present H2 prices would be $65,000 to $520,000.
Both H2 and He are presently produced from oil/gas fields; the He is extracted from certain gas fields as a prized contaminant, and the H2 is extracted from various fossil fuels by various means, the most common being cracking methane (CH4).
Helium has to be left in the source gas fields; extract it and it’s escaping from any and all containers at alarming rates, even if liquified.
The USA (as detailed in the linked article above) has about 80 years of helium below-ground at present production rates.
Electrolysis of water to extract H2 is not presently cost-competitive, and all indications are that it will NEVER be cost-competitive, as long as there are any few shreds of fossil fuels remaining.
Need I point out that H2 is wicked-flammable? With care, you can operate a balloon or airship filled with H2 – some enterprising folks recently flew a H2 balloon across the Atlantic – but it’s just not a viable substance for commercial airship travel at any sort of scale.
JMG, I have personal experience long-ago with operating and flying small helium airships, and would be willing to act as a resource regarding same in your upcoming, and highly-anticipated, new book!
This is going to be a fascinating project, and I wish you, and it, every success.
I have been trying to think of technologies I miss from my growing up years, and I think the biggest one is the absence of a technology – which is the ubiquitous surveillance we are currently subject to. I really miss being able to wander within a circle of around 5 miles from my home, visiting and/or hanging out with whoever I liked, tramping through fields, drinking from streams, or playing on the street, without the grownups expressing a single worry about the matter until dinner time – if you did not show up then, well THEN the search posse would go out. But not until then. The long periods of unsupervised time – neither adults, nor electronic supervision – were their own special treasure, now lost to most youngsters, and it is a great pity for them!
In terms of retrovation that I currently use – I would say that 80% of my cooking makes use of my cast iron skillet, and around 20% of my cast iron dutch oven. If I ever have to leave home in a hurry, the cast iron skillet will be grabbed and brought!
There have been several mentions of scythes and I want to mention the Austrian scythe as a specific and technologically sophisticated advance on older one-piece scythes. I bought my first one from Simon Fairlie in the UK. https://thescytheshop.co.uk/index.html
What I love about it is that its various parts can be adjusted in a number of ways to exactly suit one’s size, stance and movement. My scythe fits me like a glove, and when I use it it is like using a longer arm with a blade on it. It is the tool that is most like an extension of me when I use it.
I will say that the kitchens used by both my mother and both my grandmothers resembled the “Bewitched Samantha’s” one mentioned above. They contained good, solid, durable appliances. The one appliance I would love to have now is the stove top percolator my grandmother used for making coffee. It had a little bulb of glass on the lid in which you could see the water slurps pushed up from the bottom to fall onto the coffee. It was all contained in a single large pot. I did go looking for one like that once, but there were no european suppliers selling them. All the european models are in two pieces – top and bottom.
Best wishes! and blessings on the project, if you will have them.
I’m guessing plants are fair game, based on the comments, so two that I’d comment on are Ginger Beer and Osage Orange tree wood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_beer
> Modern ginger beers are often manufactured rather than brewed, frequently with flavour and colour additives, with artificial carbonation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera
> Osage orange wood is more rot-resistant than most, making good fence posts
In both cases, I’d first heard of them from random YT videos, which made the replacement-process, somewhat more conspiratorial that I think is justified. Like ginger-beer, being the original inspiration for carbonated drinks, but once corporations learned how to artificially inject carbon-dioxide into water, they started replacing ginger-beer with it (for a higher price). Yeah, I’m sure people liked the new drinks (plus the convenience of not having to ferment their own ginger-beer), but I don’t think it requires a “conspiracy”.
Same for Osage Orange trees, the video claimed that the government tore up millions of acres of growing trees, in order to grow corn – and that it enabled corporations to sell expensive pesticide-soaked wood, for fence-posts that were originally made of rot-resistant orange-wood. YMMV…
In any case, the older products do seem better. For instance osage-orange wood is rated as stronger than oak wood. And of course, the fermentation of ginger-beer has many benefits.
I was going to mention hemp, but see it’s been covered – but they didn’t say that *Henry Ford* used it for cars! 🙂
https://themeaningofwater.com/2020/10/03/henry-fords-hemp-cars/
> Ford’s 1941 bioplastic Model T was made of hemp, flax, wheat, and spruce pulp, which made the car lighter than fiberglass and ten times tougher than steel, wrote the New York Times on February 2, 1941.
Tougher than steel? We can’t have *that*. 🙂
I’m just remembered in a documentary shot more than 20 years ago about forgotten jobs and old fashioned countryside tasks here, I saw a horse-drawn mower for wheat and another similar grains, and hay. It was interesting it was slower than modern harvesting machines, but quite faster than hand mowing with reap hooks. It was known since the middle of the XIX Century until the ’30s in some Spain rural areas. I’ve got only a complain against it: it seemed too dangerous to ride it, with those sharp blades turning and turning in front of your seat…
Here some information about some horse drawn mowers, but I see they aren’t exactly like the machine I watched in that TV documentary.
https://smallfarmersjournal.com/a-short-history-of-the-horse-drawn-mower/
———————————————————————-
About vinyl discs and another technologies for recorded music:
Do you remember a strange short lived invention names “laserdisc”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc
Here it was barely known and used, (indeed, at home we went from vinyl discs to CDs directly during the early ’90s: a great mistake!), but it didn’t happened the same thing in another countries.
——————————————————-
Etienne # 43:
Wow! When you’ve written about mimeographers, I’ve remembered when I was a student during ’90s, and a teacher told us there were machines used for copies before the photocopier arrived, very desired during last times of Franco dictatorship here to copy and spread forbidden ideas…
———————————————–
Finally, some words about baldness “mystery”:
I can tell you I’ve suffered until relatively recent times from anxiety, but in an amazing way, I still have quite hair in my hair (in spite of being a middle age man). I don’t follow any special diet nowadays, and I wonder why I’m so “lucky” for this. In addition to this, I remember my grandparent (my dad’s dad) was bald from his youth, according some old photos. Maybe my mum ancestors gave me a good hair genetics, though I tend to think genetics don’t explain everything in your body, Who knows?
So I see Frugal Friday has come of age! It would be wonderful to have a handy book that explores all different kinds of taboo and discarded approaches to less-corporately-intermediated living, but I think that may require quite a bit more than just one book. Pretty much everything in the Foxfire series fits in the banished-by-progress category. Then there’s all of Eric Sloane’s illustrated books and all the Old-House Journals and The Woodbutcher’s Art Handbuilt-Houses series. Add to that several centuries of good herbals and wild plant identifiers and natural pest management books. It is actually hard to even conceive of how much skill and knowledge, which everyone naturally took for granted a century or two ago, we have now had quite ruthlessly erased from our awareness. Our corporate handlers have to pump out quite a deluge of distracting drivel to keep us so pathetically clueless about so many worthwhile behaviors and traditions.
As for topics that any book trying to wake people up to the crippling prosthetic dependence that corporations and cheap energy have ensorceled us into, I’m having a hard time thinking of any that don’t fit that bill! Certainly a whole chapter could be dedicated to traditional methods of preserving food, with a healthy emphasis on fermenting foods like miso, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, kefir, and yogurt. Another chapter could be about traditional building techniques like lime plastering, mortise and tenoning, cold cellars, etc. to help us figure out how to make our houses a little less dysfunctional. Also a chapter on safe, cheap, and easy cleaning techniques to dispell the hold that toxic, interchangeable, over-marketed detergents have over us. Baking soda, vinegar, and oil soap will satisfy most of our cleaning needs, with a little turpentine, essential oils, or lye thrown in for really dastardly gunk.
Other worthwhile ways to break the clutches of corporate dependence are hanging laundry out to dry (I use drying racks, since laundry lines are still outlawed within my city limits); making alcohol infusions using fruits, spices, herbs and vegetables, either for medicinal tinctures or to make your own great tasting liqueurs; gardening using hugelkultur for slow-release soil-enrichment; and any of the laying on of hands/ light massage techniques that potently channel healing energy through the fingertips.
Did you know what you were getting into when you announced this project? It could easily turn into a whole encyclopedia of forgotten wisdom.
The used CD (compact disc) market is still holding in there. Apparently people appreciate owning physical copies of things, that they only have to pay for once, and also being able to enjoy them ad-free and service-interruption-free.
I’m not gonna lie, some of those early-2000s digitally-remastered “anniversary editions” and boxed sets do have really great sound, much better than those tinny 80s and 90s discs. Sometimes almost as good as vinyl. I miss my iTunes (never thought I’d say that). Subscription-based models basically are just more convenient, but there’s a loss in quality, user experience, satisfaction and even a sort of autonomy of taste. I don’t want the algorithm to decide everything for me, and I’m probably not alone in this. Our culture is being hijacked by the machine and they want you to believe this will ultimately be a good thing for everyone.
To Chronojourner #58 In my neck of the woods, the South Central Valley of California, a form of electric powered “wind tower” was used prior to widespread AC units – the swamp cooler or evaporative cooler and still is used by a few. Air is blown across water soaked pads into the house. At my current relative humidity of 25% and temperature of 95 a swamp cooler would cool the outside air 15-20 degrees down to 80-75 degrees and blow it inside. If you are in that air stream the cooling effect feels stronger. So that’s where you station your recliner. Unfortunately in our area the humidity can go higher and temps break 100 frequently so at those times swamp coolers can still leave you definitely not as comfortable as AC. The electricity use is far less. With a swamp cooler fans here and there are also part of cooling plan.
Thank you JMG for a very stimulating essay.
One thing that was legislated out of mainstream use and should definitely be encouraged now was widespread hemp production.
Hemp is one of the most useful plants we have and could replace many building materials we use with a much more environmentally friendly alternative. Hemps needs no chemical fertilisers and not much water to produce incredible yields of useful fibre.
Slide rules? Nah, give me log tables and an abacus. I find the physical manipulations of the beads quite satisfying. (Someone who does a lot of trigonometry probably should try slide rules first, though.)
JMG, when you mentioned “accursed technology” I’m unsure if you were referring to present things which have some powerful reasons to be marginalized or abandoned entirely: I speak of so-called “Smart Devices.”
Though your proposed book (BTW, Bravo, I look forward to buying a copy!) will list things we can and should retrovate to, I think at least a little bit of space needs devoting to things we need to abandon post-haste. As you’ve called them previously, Not So Smart Devices deserve dumping in the ashcan of history. For one example, I give you the fiasco involved with certain automobiles whose companies went kaput and subsequently the cars became bricks on wheels: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-10-10-software-based-car-based-37fff5c043c3
There are security problems with “Smart” devices too. This article, though perhaps a bit over-heated, discusses some of them: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/07/23/britains-national-security-must-not-be-sacrificed-to-net-zero/
I personally have a list of devices I’ve owned that have permanently lost some or even all of their functionality because the originating company went belly-up and the apps to access the built-in features aged out. Ear buds, bicycle computer, home battery, electric lantern, and I wonder how much longer other things I own like “Smart Electrical Switches” have to go before they become bricks too. E-waste!
Hi JMG,
I would definitely buy a copy of the Technonomicon!
Another interesting technology that is surprisingly popular again is the VHS tape. Mostly this seems to be a mix of thrift store style retro fun, a sense of nostalgia for, and aura of authenticity from, when it was the most commonly seen format (with all it’s quirks), and a speculative market for rare tapes (until some time in the early to mid 90s the concept of people owning movie collections wasn’t something the public really bought into, so most tapes were sold as rental copies for a lot of money, therefore making the titles hard to come by). I mention this because one of the things about VCRs is that the older models that are purely mechanical are more sought after and rare, I think because they can be coaxed into working again, where their more modern partners tend to just die completely due to some failed computer chip type issue (often requiring you to take the thing apart to get your tape out!). As I remember my dad saying about his car in the 80s, the more automatic parts, the more things there are that will just break.
It’s worth mentioning that this magnetic tape technology is more resilient than many of its replacements. Stories of musicians and other artists who lost huge amounts of work due to computer crashes and hard drive failures are quite common, tapes are fragile, but they seem to stick around – and even when they die, they don’t tend to die all at once like these huge hard drives can do.
Thanks,
Johnny
Re. Anonymous #32 – There is a book I read many years ago called ‘Alcohol Can Be a Gas’ by David Blume that talks about this very thing.
A huge forgotten bit of technology can be found in the work of Luther Burbank. He kicked off a popular wave of crazy hybridisation, demonstrating that the boundaries between scientifically defined species were much more porous than previously thought, and that the hopeful monsters could be moulded into all sorts of new forms and functions under human care. This movement seems to have been destroyed by the world wars, but is showing signs of revival today.
I wonder if the solar still would be something worth including in a book on retro technology. It uses a plastic tarp and tubing, but it can apparently provide a small additional source of fresh water (up to one quart per day) using just a few items from a hardware store. I first learned about it from an article in the inimitable Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series (Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary, page 390).
Hi JMG,
Thinking about vinyl records, the sound quality issue aside, there’s a lot of value in their flaws, like their fragility, their generally cumbersome nature (this discs inside sleeves inside sleeve), and particularly their limited size. Since they only hold about 20 odd minutes of audio per side, they aren’t worth the bother if you aren’t going to actually give the thing proper attention, certainly it’s not often that I put on an album and leave the room the way I might with a CD. Also it’s slightly annoying to play just one song (at least comparitively), so the default way of engaging them tends to be fairly close to the way the artist would have wanted, with the specific songs in a row, and actively paying attention to it, often holding the sleeve or with it near by. The artist too benefited from the limited space, creatively, I think. The reintroduction of more constrained limits, and the subsequent benifits, seems like another aspect of retrovation.
Oh, and I thought of another old tape technology that I was surprised to see coming back (or at least attempting to!): 8 track tapes! I have a player and a handful of releases, but am too young to have any nostalgia for them, I just bought it years ago on a whim because I came across a used one as a teenager. Anyway, a couple times just this past month I’ve seen brand new releases coming out on 8-track! They were very expensive (over $70 Canadian!), and so I didn’t even consider them, but they did make me raise an eyebrow!
Thanks,
Johnny
I see this topic hit something of a live wire. Good! This will be fun.
Etienne, so noted. One of my readers put a couple of years into trying to revive the mimeograph, and ran into hard limits due to the unavailability of some of the supplies. Still, it’s certainly something to look into.
Robert, given the enthusiasm of the response, I’d have to be an idiot to neglect this project! I wish I’d had the chance to get lunch from a genuine Horn & Hardart automat back in the day.
Andy, I’m delighted to hear this! Letterpress printing is a must-save technology — if it’s available through the worst stages of the Long Descent, much more information will get through the bottleneck. (Woodblock printing in east Asia made the last few dark ages there much less dark.) What a wonderful discovery; I look forward to seeing your new family business thrive.
Mister N, no doubt — but there were also cars from that period that had very good fuel mileage. Once retrovation hits the auto industry, plenty of options will open up.
Joan, three excellent points. Thank you. My late wife had severe menstrual cramps, btw, and we learned that deep massage on certain parts of her lower back relieved them very effectively. (Gentlemen, when your wife or lady friend is having cramps, stand face to face with her; have her slump forward against you and put her arms around your neck and shoulders. Put your arms around her at waist level. Use your thumbs to rub downward on her lower back, starting next to the spine on each side and shifting outward from there. Rub slow and deep, but not so hard that it causes pain. When you hit the right points, she’ll let you know.)
Slithy, funny. It’s like those “water conserving” toilets — I have one in my current apartment — that conserve water so well that it takes two or three flushes to do the job.
Pygmycory, so noted! Wargaming will probably get a page — it’s a lot of fun and too many people don’t know that you can do it without a computer — so a brief reference will probably be worth including.
Phutatorius, thanks for this! The screwdrivers still exist, and so does the closely related Yankee push drill, a wonderful little tool everybody should have. (Mine has gotten heavy use for thirty years.)
Al, thank you for this. I’m familiar with Jenkins’ book, and also with composting toilets — the hippie farm I lived on in Bellingham, WA back in the day had one, which worked quite well — but I appreciate the reminder.
Angelica, well, herbalism certainly belongs on the list of forbidden and accursed technologies — I’ve heard plenty of physicians and medical-industry shills consigning it to the outer darkness! — so I hope you’ll contribute some references and ideas once the Dreamwidth discussion gets under way.
Anon, good question. Homeopathy doesn’t usually focus on microbes; it’s a body-centered rather than a pathogen-centered healing method, so the usual approach would be to identify herbs or minerals that cause the symptoms you’re trying to treat, and use those. In biochemic cell salt therapy, for example, Ferrum phos. 6x and Nat. sulph. 6x, one dose of each four times a day or more often if symptoms are acute, is a standard response to flu, and it’s reliably worked for me.
Cynthia, now I’m wondering how many other people who insist there’s no benefit to analog musical formats also have hearing damage! Yes, plenty of ham radio operators use analog gear, and I plan on giving ham radio at least a couple of pages (one for the basic technology, one for lovely variations such as CW (Morse code) and the gloriously named Hellschreiber.
Joan, good heavens. I’d never heard of those, so that’s a definite contribution. Thank you!
Chronojourner, thank you! I’d heard of them but didn’t know about the book. In hot regions, that would be quite a lifesaver.
Phutatorius, fascinating.
Anibal, thank you for this.
Adara, my tai chi class meets in a building in the same block, so yes, I found it quite early on in my time here in Silver Spring, and it’s a delight — a very good selection of all kinds of vinyl, as well as CDs and some cassettes. Rail Records and Books inside Union Station is a lot smaller but still pretty good.
Merman, thanks for this! Yes, that’ll get a page or two; thank you for the link to Dana’s book — his narrative of his time on shipboard, Two Years Before The Mast, is one of the great sea stories and helped me get the details right in my novel A Voyage to Hyperborea.
Mary, yes, though it’s been a while. Thanks for the reminder!
Robert, I think you’re quite right, and it startles me that nobody in the industry has had the brains to head that way yet.
Tyler, so noted about the Mustang! A car with open source software would be another very interesting project, and one that would take off like a rocket if the big corporations weren’t using regulation to keep their stranglehold on the market. Thanks for the heads up on airships — that’s worth knowing, and the article is a good overview.
Free Rain, thanks for this.
Joseph, thank you! I’ll be in touch shortly. That’s exactly the sort of thing I have in mind.
Sandy, many thanks for this. I’ve bookmarked the site.
Pygmycory, we’re definitely going to talk.
Tyler, interesting. I wonder how easy the information on that will be to find.
Grimmelshausen, excellent. Thank you.
Anselmo, it was proposed at one point to use heliographs to try to communicate with the planet Mars. It makes a fine alternative history scenario to imagine if that had happened, and they’d gotten an answer…
Sama, thanks for this! Once I work out the mechanics, if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you to write 500-1000 word discussions of as many of these as you like — they’re all very much grist for the mill, and many of them aren’t things I’m especially familiar with. (And I don’t have a permaculture background, btw — my gardening style is biodynamic-French intensive.) As for cell salt books, the book that got me started was Boericke and Dewey’s The Twelve Tissue Salts of Schussler:
https://archive.org/details/twelvetissuerem00boer/page/n3/mode/2up
Bri, good question. I notice a decided difference in the sound quality, which I tend to think is the distinction between analog and digital recording modes. As for the studies, er, I trust you’re familiar with the replication crisis; studies can be made to give whatever results the funding source wants these days, and generally are.
Clay, thanks for this.
Sama, nah, not to worry. There’s some kind of glitch in the WordPress software that makes it look as though the line breaks have gone missing in action. They came through just fine.
Patricia, if my book sends the younger generation looking for “witches and herb doctors, wandering shepherds and hermits, wizards, blacksmiths, stonemasons, and those whose trade it is to lay out the dead” in search of eldritch and unhallowed knowledge, I’ll be delighted.
Chuaquin, ask your older friends and relatives what technologies they wish they still had. That’ll be one good source of possibilities.
Julie, a very good point! It’s been decades since I had any contact with the SCA, but I remember some very skilled craftspeople in what was then the Principality of An Tir.
Moonwolf8, thanks for this.
Ken, but the information has to get out into circulation before electricity becomes expensive, or it may not get out at all.
Grimmelshausen, good heavens, yes. It’s been more than forty years since I last shaved, but when I did so I used a safety razor, shaving soap, a brush, and freshly boiled water diluted with just enough cold water to avoid burns. It was a much better experience.
Bryan, thank you for this. I’ve seen the occasional article on small hot-air dirigibles; the hot air balloon is a mature technology these days, and so a hot air blimp ought to be possible. Comments?
Scotlyn, thank you — you’ve just suggested three fine technologies: the cast iron skillet, the cast iron Dutch oven, and the one-piece stovetop percolator.
JPC, plants are certainly fair game. Thank you for these!
Chuaquin, most of the big used record stores here sell laser discs!
Christophe, you may well be right. A single book is at least a start, though.
MindMovie, oh, I know. I find CDs less splendid to listen to than vinyl, but I still collect them — some things I like are easier to get in that format.
Alan, no argument there.
Florida, or trig tables — don’t forget those! I see there’ll be a couple of pages on non-electric math. Do you have a book on abaci to recommend?
Bryan, no, I meant it as a joke, in the sense of “accursed according to corporate schlockmongers.” I may give a few paragraphs to that in the intro, but I want to focus on positive choices and benefits, not on the negatives — those will be familiar enough to readers.
Johnny, hmm! I wasn’t aware of the VHS revival — no surprises there, since I’m not much into video, but for those that are, that’s good to hear.
Shane, thanks for this! I know next to nothing about this and should fix that.
Ethan, interesting. That’s worth pondering.
Johnny, I’ve been saying for two years now that if I ever find enough 8 track tapes of music I like to make it worth my while, I’ll get a player for them. Here’s hoping.
The Post Office. It’s disappearing. Some system of relays to deliver a letter anywhere in the world.
Re: Osage Orange aka Bodark (Bois d’Arc) tree – the wood of this tree has some of the highest BTUs when burned of any wood. When we had a wood stove, we were advised not to load it up with only Osage Orange, but to mix a few sticks of it in at a time lest we melt our cast iron stove! Also, this tree grows as VERY thorny scrub, and was closely planted for use as livestock fencing back in the day.
It is native to the streams banks of southern Oklahoma, and was much prized for bow-making (hence the French name Bois d’Arc) in the Ozarks.
SquirrellyJen (native Okie)
Here’s an idea: eliminate state-funded grade-school education. In the 19th century, groups of parents would hire a schoolteacher (who was empowered and expected to discipline his charges, often corporeally) who would follow a well-known curriculum. Pupils advanced at their own pace (albeit with the encouragement of said corporeal discipline), or could drop out if their parents allowed it / lacked tuition money. (Yes, I know, but every system has its casualties.) This system was once standard, but abandoned out of a perception that the Prussian model (with grades) was superior. And of course state funding has corrupted everything.
Today, there’s a thriving home-schooling movement, but there are often legal issues with parents pooling resources to form small schools. The main ways I could see it coming about are if societal collapse, or perhaps some alt-right governor or California initiative, dissolved public education as we know it. Maybe a state could make it illegal to levy taxes in support of education? Parents who preferred the present system could continue it, provided they could raise enough money. (They would quickly identify cost-cutting measures.) Bleeding hearts who care about the poor could organize charity-run schools. (“Sunday school” was originally this.)
Among the rich, there is a long tradition of hiring tutors. This seems a very effective method, at least for some, judging from results.
If I may share it with Mr Greer’s permission, something I’m writing for a local newspaper that publishes every two months, is free, local businesses support it with advertising, and most importantly has zero online presence. It’s called “The Chronicle” and published near Gainesville, FL. If you happen to be in the area, visit me at the Alachua Co. Farmers’ Market any Saturday and I’ll give you an issue. I’m the culinary and medicinal herbs guy.
Message in a Bottle
“I’ll send an S.O.S to the world, I’ll send an S.O.S to the world, I hope that someone finds my message in a bottle…”
The Police, 1979
Primitive humans had no use for communicating with other settlements or wandering tribes. In the struggle for survival, a band of homo sapiens a few miles from them could only mean danger or competition for scarce resources. Besides, for hundreds of thousands of years, our species did not have a language, or a way to put that language onto a scroll, to be read at the other end of a journey.
Civilization, or rather civilizations, appeared only a few thousand years ago. Their main attribute was language. Clans, families, dynastic lines coalesced around language, which created a common identity, which in turn led to a strong ruling class to steer that identity, and in some cases, a merchant class too, to make it wealthy.
Civilization, unlike prehistory, had a use for communication. Many uses. All over Earth, cultures and empires needed to send threats and ultimatums, collect taxes and designate governors deep into the territory, arrange trade deals and propose marriages. Only the powerful could afford and arrange the logistics of sending messages in long journeys by caravan, ship, or armed couriers. Kings, priests, and the rich were the first to write letters, and receive answers to them, months later. But not the common people. Most were illiterate, and couldn’t afford to hire a scribe to write their missive, or secure a spot for it in a mule train traveling to a distant land.
In Europe, England, Portugal and Poland created the first Posts in the 1500’s; by the next century, England had created a General Post Office. An affordable “London Penny Post,” would take your letter anywhere across the Kingdom. In 1775, the Continental Congress created the position of Postmaster General: Benjamin Franklin was the first office holder. As travel became safer and faster in the 19th century, ships and trains could deliver your message beyond national borders too, and bring back an answer within a reasonable timeframe. Air mail started in the early 20th century, almost as soon as aviation emerged.
What I call “The Golden Era of Mail” lasted the roughly 300 years between the early Seventeenth century and the late 1990’s. I miss it enormously.
I was born in 1971. By the time I was 6, I was exchanging letters with my cousins, who lived far away from my city, Buenos Aires, in the countryside. The innocence, the excitement of being a child, narrating childish adventures and thoughts to other children, and in turn reading their own ideas and experiences of being in the world! The convoluted and snail-like cursive, illuminated with crayon vignettes depicting a fishing day or a racecar!
An older relative suggested the hobby of philately (collecting postage stamps,) and one glorious morning my father took me to the grand Palacio de Comunicaciones building and signed me up to find a correspondent, a pen-pal of my own age, anywhere in the world, to exchange stamps and letters with. I chose Poland, I have no idea why. There are many Polish descendants in Argentina, but I wasn’t one. I didn’t speak the language. And Spanish could only be a niche specialty in then-communist, remote Poland.
Yet, some time later, an envelope was waiting when I came home from school. It had colorful stamps with the words “Poczta Polska.” Inside, more stamps, unused, and a letter in English, the world’s Lingua Franca, as Latin or French were once. This very basic and simple English stated how glad this person was to write to me, asked what were my city and my school like, and told me things, like his/her name, Bogumita. My elementary school English wasn’t able to discern whether the writer was a he or a she, but my father took a look and told me it was a she. I was disappointed. But that passed, and over the years we exchanged many happy letters. We never met.
My collection of Polish stamps started growing. Most weekends, I would take the bus to my grandparents’ house, go swimming 32 laps with my grandfather at the Club Italiano’s pool, shower, and walk back to his house, where there was always an excellent lunch prepared by my grandmother waiting for us.
After lunch, my grandparents would retire to take a nap, and I would take my albums and stamp catalogs to a park a few blocks away, where collectors of all ages visited to trade, buy or sell stamps. A wink and a nod were all that was needed, and the men (very few women in that hobby, most stamp hunters were men and boys) would sit in a bench and inspect each other’s albums to barter. My collection became so good that I got to learn a lot about Polish history. You learn through postage stamps. For example, I discovered that during the nazi occupation, the name “Polska” had disappeared from their stamps, replaced by “General Gouverment,” along with strange runes and crosses, and the face of an unsmiling man wearing a small mustache.
In later years, Bogumita explained to me that this mustache man and his followers had intended to erase the name of Poland, along with her population, from history, and almost succeeded.
My childhood came to an end around 12 years of age, with my first cigarette, my first espresso (wasn’t interested in alcohol but if you had the money, age was no obstacle to commerce in my native city) Soon, my first girlfriend, too. Good-bye, innocence. Being a teenager didn’t agree with me. Mercifully, time passed and I found myself in a position, at eighteen or so, to do what I had been wanting to do all through the miserable years of being expelled from schools, bullied and bullying, and generally being a stupid liar, and an ignorant fool: to get out and see the world.
In that, once again, the global mail system, at the very top of its capabilities, was of considerable help. You could get punk rock zines or YMCA guides in the mail anywhere, with ideas for jobs or accommodations. A system existed, called “Poste Restante,” which means “Mail in Wait,” which existed in every country and would hold any letter or parcel directed to your name, without an address, for you to pick up just by showing your passport at the country’s designated post office before 12 months. Funds could be sent or received using travelers’ checks or money orders. It wasn’t legal to mail cash, but it was easy to do and pretty safe, especially for small amounts. One could mail a tab of LSD, but cannabis wasn’t a good idea: too fragrant and likely to be discovered.
I didn’t go out into the world to preach the Gospel, or to be like Siddharta Buddha and find enlightment, although I vaguely hoped I would (I didn’t). What I wanted was to experience the world through a thousands faces, in a thousand places. I also wanted to get laid, “have adventures,” trip on mushrooms watching the moon set on some strange sea, explore archeological ruins, deserts, and old, strange cities. All that, I achieved. I was a construction day laborer, a dishwasher, tended bar and herded sheep, picked crops and mowed lawns. I worked in advertising agencies, newspapers, and the most bizarre occupations: typing Spanish subtitles into pirated American movies in Guadalajara, hawking “ladies drink free” nightclub flyers in Athens.
I was in Chiapas as the Zapatista movement erupted, in the old Yugoslavia right after their civil war, in Israel during one of the dustups at the border. I didn’t travel with a camera. The people I met would mail me photos later, and I would mail something in return. The very thought of traveling to update a social media feed every hour, to gain the interest or envy of an unseen crowd behind some screen would have sounded unreal, ridiculous, in those years. I preferred to write on little notebooks, to correspond with other travelers and friends, to slip mementos such as train tickets, stamps, and beer bottle labels into whatever book was in my backpack to find later (often, the book was Kerouac’s “On the Road.”)
In Mexico, the book was Bernal Diaz’s chronicle of Hernán Cortez’s conquest of the New Spain from the point of view of one of his soldiers, as I followed their route from coastal Veracruz all the way to the Aztec capital, Mexico D.F. today, retracing the steps of those crazy, brave and greedy Spaniards as I read their stories. What I did carry in my travels was a Sony Walkman, and the “waiting mail” would sometimes have surprises for me, Mozart’s “Requiem,” Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged,” some mix a friend thought I’d like, all in cassette tapes. I signed up to work as a sailor in a remote commercial shipping town, amid glaciers in remote Patagonia, and my grandmother would mail me a warm sweater she had knit for me, some jars of “dulce de leche,” the Argie caramel treat, and long, loving letters urging me to “settle down.”
I did eventually, but much later. By the early 2000’s, the postal system as we knew it in the age of resource abundance, sharp and eloquent literacy, and a vibrant, diverse printed media was starting to buckle under pressure. The internet was here, and it would make everything better, more efficient, free, instantaneous. I wasn’t necessarily against it at first. Email and forums of discussion, scholarly papers and photos of topless women, silly games and animations… there could be no harm there, one could book an hour at an internet café and explore without moving, this could be fun. The mail was good for delivering an AOL installation CD every single day to every single household in America, some catalogs, and Aunt Karen’s Christmas card and fruitcake, and little else. “Progress,” you see.
“Progress” has led us to a very bad place. Like everybody else, I must have a “smart” phone in addition to my laptop computer, both of which go through periodic nervous breakdowns where they feel they need to inform me that all my passwords and personal information are compromised and in “known data leaks,” while activating one and a million systems for surveillance, data mining, malicious small print that fails to let me know that the contents of both devices have been uploaded to something called a cloud, to keep them “safe” for me, or installing this or that artificial intelligence, app, or update, and other “services” I never asked for, do not want, and in fact loathe, all to gain the most accurate, detailed, and intrusive knowledge of everything I do, everywhere I go, what I think, whom I vote for and associate with, how much money I have, what’s my health like… and what’s in every email or message I write or read, of course. That had not been a problem with letters and catalogs and bank statements before, but you know… “Go Green” and do it online, that is, replace a renewable, recyclable, compostable method to communicate worldwide via paper and envelopes, to replace it with the very “Green” option of foreign and domestic corporate and intelligence monitoring and mining your every utterance, stored via dystopian, polluting “data centers.”
At the same time, it has become impossible to find good, unbiased material that’s free of “captchas,” “trackers,” “create an account” prompts, junk advertising, phishing and scamming and a million other predatory practices. People cannot write anymore, they send tik-tok links, emojis and LOL’s. They can’t read either, as attention spans dwindle to seconds, while zombies peruse their endless feeds of social media accounts, memes, gambling and porn.
I went to my USPS branch the other day, to mail a letter to Italy. The postal employee, a morbidly obese woman who seemed irritated by my presence, got even more irritated when she saw the letter she was supposed to charge me postage for, and send. Instead, she angrily pronounced that the USPS “does not deliver mail overseas,” only domestically. I told her she was mistaken, and as her anger built up, I had the idea to suggest she asked the artificial intelligence in her phone, which she promptly did. She huffed and puffed looking at her screen, surely looking for a second or third opinion from a different bot. In the end, she had to admit she was wrong, but had no idea of how to actually put the letter on its way to Rome, and it would be better for me to come tomorrow, when the supervisor might be there, and might know how to achieve this unheard-of task: to send a piece of paper with some thoughts written on it to a faraway place, something that we managed to do tolerably well for a few centuries, but cannot anymore, because “progress.”
I walked out with my letter, got into the truck, where my dog Buster had been patiently waiting, and drove back to the farm. I don’t fully know what I want to say with this article, except to share the sense of loss, of sadness about what we once had, and what we stupidly replaced it with. Old Crackers around here say “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken.” It seems to me we had something that didn’t need fixing, so we broke it but can’t fix it, only replace it with something worse. Much worse. As with the mail, with everything else that once worked.
My letter to Rome won’t be delivered: Rome is falling. Brace for impact.
Survivalblog has lots of articles that would apply here (as would many other prepping sources).
A few books of interest for house building:
– The Strawbale House by Athena Swentzell Steen, Bill Steen, David Bainbridge, and David Eisenberg.
– The Rammed Earth House by David Easton.
For beer brewing:
– How to Brew by John Palmer (older edition is available free online at https://howtobrew.com)
– see https://www.brewingnordic.com for guides on old Norwegian farmhouse brewing techniques, including the use of juniper
Hey JMG, nice Challenge! I hope I can contribute, how far along is your reading German? There is a guy (Scheel I think, can get the proper reference next week because of vacation) a German Dr. med IIRC who developed a kind of massage that somehow can apply homeopathic stuff. I got the book from another German Dr. med. Her daughter is a friend of ours.
Best wishes Emily07
To BeardTree #90, regarding my comment #58: That’s a good point. Yes, I have heard of swamp coolers. This is a similar principle, but without the electricity use. And your point is better made than mine about the effects of high humidity. The higher the humidity, the lower the effects of a swamp cooler or badgir in the Persian version.
This conversation has me thinking that what we are really talking about is a whole cooling “eco-system” of which this is only a part. The people in the middle east use the wind towers and badgir in homes that were centered around maintaining comfortable temperatures in often very hot environments. They typically have thick, earthen or brick and plaster walls that hold out the heat for a lot longer than ours do. The wind towers have various designs, depending on their environment and location, which are used to trap and direct breezes for their specific situation. They often direct the winds from the tower to underground spaces, sometimes with water pools, where the air was cooled by the lower temperatures underground, before being directed into the living spaces. And, those spaces were designed to funnel the breeze out of those lower rooms and throughout the house or building. Sometimes they were directed through qanats, which are the underground water supply and irrigation systems developed by the ancient Persians to deliver water from their sources to towns and villages. The homes included sleeping terraces where families would sleep during the cool desert nights. These are similar in purpose to the sleeping porches that older homes in large parts of the United States had until the mid-twentieth century. In the case of the U.S., these were covered in screen wire (once that became available) to keep out insects. Prior to that, the beds themselves had mosquito netting. As an aside, most people today think that “four-poster” beds are for ornamentation, but no, they had definite uses in their day.
So, thanks for bringing up swamp coolers, they’re all part of the mix, and I think it shows how you have to treat complex things like homes as part of an integrated whole that includes and adapts features to work within that whole.
And that said, JMG, what about sleeping porches as an abandoned technology? While I’ve never used them myself, I was told about them in my youth by older people who had and found them quite comfortable. Though that was mostly from people in the northern United States. I wonder whether they would be very functional in the American south during actual high summer. Does anyone have experience with them in a southern climate?
Cheers!
— C
A possible resource: A History of Technology edited by Charles Singer, et al. is a five volume encyclopedic reference organized by time period, running up through its publication date in the 50s through 70s. On the downside, it tends to focus on those technologies that were widely adopted, and of course, mostly follows the narrative of progress (“this technology allowed the emergence of that better technology, which in turn paved the way for this even better one…”). On the plus side, it is very detailed, but still readable by a non-technical layman (I’ve gotten plenty out of it), and it tends to include a good discussion of what other technologies each relied upon by referencing other articles/sections of the book (sometimes you have to piece it together a bit – the relationship between the generation of electricity and the industrial manufacture of wire to the spread of wired telegraphy could have been made clearer, for example). Altogether, likely most useful for “first level retrovation,” if you, JMG, or anyone else here is interested. As a reference book in five volumes, it can be a bit tricky to find, but I found a copy on Alibris for not too much money a year or two ago.
Anyhow, enjoyed the post and hope this comes in handy,
Jeff
I nominate the International Slide Rule Museum and their library of resources for an entry. They offer reprints of manuals and texts. I wonder how hard it would be to get rules and textbooks back into print…
The Foxfire series, the collected works of Roy Underhill, and even the light treatment of Back to Basics all rate your attention. Anything from the Audels Guide series published before 1970 is also worth an entry. (The pre-WWII Millwrights and Mechanics Guide is a good place to start.)
Lehman’s in Kidron, Ohio is a home goods store catering to the Amish. I expect its inventory to become more popular as petroleum moves into the past.
And while the Technonomicon should have pages of vellum suitably bound, we here at the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association Tower 440 would sincerely appreciate that binding being made from something other than lake otters since they are sacred to Erielhonan, the Lady of Lake Erie and we live here on the North Coast.
On the other hand, we wouldn’t mind if you used the prolific Ohio razorback’s hide for both leaves and binding…. not one little bit.
Bring back…
Clocks that tick. While having a Westclox Big Ben round face. While inexpensive.
Five years ago, I had a heck of a time looking for an alarm clock that ticked, had a Big Ben look, and was reasonably priced. I never did find such a clock. I spent DAYS searching.
I am sorry, I was not about to pay $80 (including s/h) (yes, this number does have a zero to the right) for an old-fashioned-styled alarm clock, on eBug. $8 is more like it.
I ended up buying two clocks, both cheap: one that ticks, and another that has a Big Ben face. Both are next to my bed. The Big Ben clock “I see”; the other clock “I hear” (and is located out of sight on a lower shelf). Insane.
I read hundreds of big suth amurican river reviews on all sorts of bedside clocks.
One notable comment was, “I hate ticking clocks. They are so noisy that I can’t sleep. Gonna trash it. Waste of money. Why are they even sold?” Don’t trash it,— donate it; someone will LOVE it!
We elders know that ‘the ticking’ is soothing. Pet-rescuers know to put ticking clocks in the same room (not next to) as puppies and kittens, because ticking simulates “the beating heart of a mother”; the infants have a higher survival rate because they feel more secure.
I can’t sleep WITHOUT ticking. “No ticking” is like trying to sleep “next to an abyss.” Not exaggerating.
The second attribute is the look of a classic Big Ben alarm clock by Westclox. Round; high-contrast numerals vs background; wide, heavy base; wind-up (not electric); font heavy and big, like slab (no part of character is thin); no fancy font; has second hand; no glow-in-the-dark shale (although luminescent might be okay; what is the difference?)
For the record, I loathe digital clocks. At a glance, digital numbers tell me absolutely nothing about what time it is. It is a cultural difference: elders like round clocks; kids like digital clocks.
Bring back the old! Argh!
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
My car is a used BMW import from Japan and has a built-in Sony minidisc player which is absolutely useless now as minidiscs have gone the way of the ark (and were never popular here anyway). At least it has an aux port.
An aside on sound quality: I recall research from the early 90s that a key influence on marriage breakups in farming communities here was that the men had industrial deafness from working with machinery which had eliminated a large part of just those frequencies at which their wives tended to speak and so their wives complained that they weren’t listening when actually they weren’t picking up on the sounds and so did not realise that their wife was speaking to them..
Add my voucher for The Forgotten Side of Medicine by A Midwestern Doctor. Been a subscriber over 3 years now. Great info on many treatments and protocols that have fallen by the wayside because there’s no money to be made by our for profit medical system. His latest entry on how MSM used to actually cover vaccine injuries is very good. 60 Minutes used to be useful!
As for music reproduction I use both analog and digital sources. The mastering and dynamic range that a good engineer creates is the most important part of good playback. I’m biased towards vinyl though because of the mechanical nature of the needle in the groove and the fact I have records over 80 years old that are still playable. Not sure that CDs will hold up that long.
As you know, my pet project has been undertaken to make information about mimeographs, spirit duplicators, and other (ideally) non-electronic duplication methods widely and freely available. I’ve been collecting old documentation for six years now and have amassed a great number of manuals, catalogs, instruction booklets, and advertisements. And I have a lot more waiting to be uploaded.
While I’ve not kept up with the consistent blogging, I continue to post new documents and information, and have recently started a forum so that information that many hobbyists typically post on facebook can have a more permanent and less prone-to-censorship home.
I had hoped to figure out duplicating options for a non-petroleum world, but that’s not happened yet. Mimeographs (stencil duplicators) require stencils and the only option nowadays is a thermal stencil burned on a thermal printer. There appears to be only one factory in the world still making old-school coated impact stencils (in China), but their product is hard to access, and users report toxic smells and questionable quality.
There are “backyard chemists” experimenting with stencil coatings, spirit duplicator fluids (including a less-toxic version using propylene glycol instead of methylated spirits), inks, etc. But still, the processes rely on at least one “thing” that is industrially produced – even the hectograph, a simple jelly-pad made of glycerin and gelatin that works by transferring an original’s image onto a new page, much like a spirit duplicator, requires aniline dyes – and those are a produced from coal tar.
Nonetheless, copying in some way is going to be essential. Also, my “no-industrial-tech” approach is less than helpful in some ways: we’re not expecting the end of industrial civilization or access to petroleum products immediately, so the old technologies can actually be intermediary technologies (until we end up with scribes again, I guess).
If you want to give old duplicators a try, they still exist – and sometimes the old supplies are worth it, though I recommend a visit to the MR forum to read up on how to source supplies that won’t waste your time and money. Those posts are written by my mimeograph friend Kevin, in Canada – he still puts out organizational newsletters by mimeo (including for the Edmonton Trolley Coalition – maybe trolleys are a worthwhile old tech for this project?).
See my site’s resources page (https://www.mimeographrevival.com/resources/) but also the “Resources” drop down menu which links to many things. W. B. Proudfoot’s “The Origin of Stencil Duplicating” is a good history of the method. There’s also “Before Photocopying: The Art and History of Mechanical Copying 1780-1938” by Barbara J. Rhodes and William W. Streeter – a fantastic compendium. Tomoko Kanzaki (https://10-48.net/en/) promotes the use of the Japanese mimeograph (known as gariban, using the “file plate process”) which is even lower-tech than the drum-style mimeographs.
I second the nominations of the work of Kris De Kecker.
And just the other day, after J.L.Mc12 mentioned it and rekindled my latent interest, I came across a shorthand site that has so many resources (like Mimeograph Revival, it’s somebody’s labor of love that collects lots of good info for free distribution): https://www.stenophile.com/.
FWIW, I also recommend the Fux brand of Austrian scythes – great info and purchasing for US users here (https://www.onescytherevolution.com/index.html).
and a little anecdote: I took my(1986) drivers’ license test in a 1965 Mustang fastback (didn’t feel like futzing around with a manual transmission on my test day, and the automatic Mustang, 5 years my senior, seemed like a cool way to do it). My dad promised the car to me “someday” but then sold it before that happened. I was a bit sad about that.
Hi JMG. I loved your article about retrotecnology. I have a good example. For fifty years, I have been spinning wool, cotton, and flax into thread. Usually I spin wool and make socks for the winters here in the Northeast. In the last twenty years, due to a bout with bone cancer and treatment, I have given up the spinning wheel and now only use a spindle. So I am at the lowest technological level for making thread. I thought of this when I read your article. It does take longer, but the quality of the items is much better and long-lasting than the manufactured ones. I also do a lot of mending of things that have been hand spun and hand knit. That is another skill I am still learning. So put this on your list for older skills that skill make sense. Kathy
OMG Mary Bennett #27–
Time is of the essence.
We need to rescue all the old rare books we can now.
AI is even more of a monster than I realized.
Here’s the direct link to the post:
https://www.ianwelsh.net/burning-down-great-library-yet-again/
If we’re talking about bringing back throwback cars, my vote is for an ’89 Honda CRX. Almost as cool as the ’66 fastback Mustang, but far thriftier on fuel. Yes, it has electronics in it, but I really don’t think that’s a big issue – basic electronics like 1980s cars had were rarely the point of failure, and the electronics usually survive a crash, so there’s spares available as the cars age.
On the vinyl debate: I personally cannot hear the difference between vinyl and a sufficiently high bitrate digital format. One thing to consider is that a lot of modern music is produced with the actual median end listener in mind, and is optimized for cheap earbuds rather than proper hi-fi sets. I like vinyl because it is nice to have the music stop periodically, someone step up to select a new record, and put it on, rather than a streaming service or something like iTunes droning on forever. I will offer the theory that vinyl may contain beat frequencies between high frequency sounds that other formats do not.
I’m not sure this qualifies as an abandoned medical technology, but I’ve recently become interested in hypnosis. While reading about it, I discovered that in the past it was used for much more than treating anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, which is what it’s mostly associated with today. There are numerous reports of it being used successfully as both an anesthetic and an analgesic. Some physicians have even described much stranger effects.
A medical approach that combines hypnosis with homeopathy and other techniques seems like it has a lot of potential.
I’m sure someone in the commentariat can recommend some great books on the subject.
Do meta-technologies count? Is there even a difference?
I was just pondering this as it relates to the question of the Great Citrus Blight here in Florida and different approaches to solving/tackling it. The super progressive approach would have you do something like input the list of symptoms into ChatGPT or whatnot, where you would then get a diagnosis, say Worm X, followed by a recommended strategy for killing Worm X based on biomedical journals discussing Worm X. Who knows, one or two of them might even work.
The problem with the Great Citrus Blight is that it’s not being caused by just Worm X or any one factor at all. It’s an over-determined condition with an ever increasing stack of causes, including, funny enough, the recent trend of “polar vortexes” bringing in much colder weather, if only for a day or two, into Central and South Florida (itself likely caused by the ongoing collapse of the polar climate cell). I’ve talked to everyone I know where I live here in Central Florida who has a citrus tree and it seems like everyone has a different story for what is preventing them from reliably getting fruit. Some, however, are fighting the good fight and getting positive results, mostly through guess and check.
Were there some local or state government authority to take peoples’ notes and, say, make a public access library/database while also giving out the seeds of previous successes, it wouldn’t take long before people started noticing trends in terms of what worked. Most states had a system like this in place in varying degrees of sophistication from roughly the Civil War until the end of WW2/the rise of BigAg/Chem. In fact, many still do, and they are usually affiliated with the state uni system and are called cooperative extensions. Wouldn’t take much to harness what is already their and to resurrect the American citizen scientist, not just for purposes of bringing back some level of Florida’s citrus glory days but a host of other lost plant and livestock varieties.
Hello JMG,
Thank you for your great essay – very timely.
I miss seeing wristwatches on people’s wrists. They disappeared in favor of cell phones. Put them back on to mark yourself as an outsider.
I have a story that goes with this proposal. In the late 80s in Poland people protested their communist government by NOT watching the oficial evening news. They would go for a walk outside exactly during the time of the broadcast. To mark themselves they would put their baseball hats backwards. My dad who visited the port city of Gdańsk on multiple occasions during that time told me how suddenly in the evening for 30 minutes the streets would be crowded with people with their baseball hats backwards, just walking. And everybody knew what they were doing.
People, put your wristwatch on. Show the world you are not a cellphone fan!
Many people wish they could go back to a medical system defined by family doctors (rather than insurance). But maybe with fewer pills, and recognizing that smoking is bad for you! Fewer people apply this kind of thinking to dentistry (okay, there’s fluoride skepticism), but it is possible to doubt the long-term benefits of braces e.g., especially as a routine treatment sold to masses of teenagers and their parents.
JMG’s Schüssler salts were invented by a homeopath, but caused controversy within homeopathy due to their being mass-produced.
There are many such alternative / complementary medical systems, which spread in much the same way that religious groups did–through charismatic entrepreneurs and frontier enthusiasms. I’m interested in Edgar Cayce, who recommends all kinds of modalities, including what we would recognize as patent medicines. (The Cayce people have even recreated some old formulae that he mentions.)
Osteopathy and chiropractic are well known, and were once fairly similar, but the osteopaths basically sold out in the 1960s and 1970s–abandoning (mostly) their traditional techniques (Cayce often recommends osteopathic manipulation) and medical models for the sake of acceptance by the medical profession. Sure, there were hold-outs, but not really enough to continue the movement Chiropractors have tended to combine with other health fads (but there have been “straights” and “mixers” in almost every alternative medicinal tradition), often what we would recognize as naturopathy (itself a catch-all).
And then there is “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” I knew a guy who studied it in China. He thought that it lost whatever genuine benefits it had, in the process of being codified by government bureaucracies (with an eye to what might be considered “scientific”–or even better, a native Chinese science). Also, he said there was so much cheating–including by the professors, e.g. for writing papers–that the whole system has to be considered corrupted. Outside of China, TCM practitioners have been known to do things like, mix over-the-counter medicines into their brews, so it’s hard for me to see it as anything more than snake oil.
There other “national” medicines out there, such as Ayurveda and Tibetan medicine. I sometimes wonder why no one has thought to market a Traditional Tennessee Medicine! (It comes in large bottles.)
It sometimes happen that otherwise reasonable people start frothing at the mouth as soon as questions about orthodox vs. alternative medicine are brought up. (My wife and I have ongoing arguments about, for example, whether drinking cold water is bad for you.) Perhaps the believers perceive me as snarly! If this is you, I ask your forbearance. I may be wrong, or you may be wrong, or both of us may be wrong.
Well this is timely. I was actually going to ask if you could recommend a Dangerous Book for Boys-esque catalog of appropriate tech! The Technonomicon will do nicely!
When I moved in with my partner, I inherited a Huegl bed. Most summers since then, it has been covered by a glorious winter squash jungle. It seems to provide a tiny bit of frost protection too.
I too would love more info about tomato trees.
I have been growing Sungold cherry tomatoes for over 30 years. Super sweet, never in the store because they ship quite badly. Unfortunately, they are hybrid and the seeds don’t breed true. (Volunteer plants have proven that time and again.) This year, I found out about non-hybrid seeds for one of the suspected (known?) parent breeds and an attempted dehybridization. I have each growing far from any other tomato plants and will save seeds this year. Thank you to whoever on this blog mentioned Adaptive Seeds. Also for the PNW-friendly okra, the first one I have actually gotten okra from outside the US South.
@Florida Druid, regarding your comment #92, I was going to mention the abacus, but it’s nice to see that you beat me to it. Those were definitely handier for basic calculations in a commercial environment, such as selling things at a farmer’s market, and the like. I never thought of them as good for advanced calculations, defaulting to the slide rule for those. Regardless, there are plenty of online resources as well as old fashion books that teach people how to use them, so I think it’s a great idea.
Automobiles now certainly have far too much extraneous nonsense in them, but I am not sure I would want to go all the way back to the highly polluting gas guzzlers of the 1960s. (Though I am not sure that I will be consulted when the time comes for that choice to be made). I quite like intermittent windshield wipers. On the other hand, a recent rental car had some kind of steering correction. I had thought the slight need to fight the car on curves was a problem with the alignment. Next time, I’ll fight my way through the (poorly designed) screen menu to turn that off.
The automobile technology that I think should have caught on is what is now called reverse hybrid. To put it simply, take an electric vehicle and replace some of the batteries with an internal combustion engine running at steady state as a battery charger. All the advantages of an electric vehicle without the massive battery weight or lithium consumption. Can run whenever there is either fuel or electricity. Would be easy to make the battery charger engine and its fuel tank modular – get larger ones if you need more distance or if fuel is more available than electricity.
If you don’t need to have circuits that play different Beethoven symphonies (ok, rap songs) depending on how hard you press the accelerator or brake pedal, electric vehicles are inherently far simpler than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
“Cassette tapes are just as easy to carry and much easier to duplicate than anything that came after them”
Have to disagree. My phone weighs the same as about two cassettes and right now has about 3200 hours of music/audio books. Duplication is vastly simpler and quicker* and loses no quality. Cassette quality audibly deteriorated from generation to generation. (*My files don’t have “digital rights management [DRM]”)
I will say that the Sony Walkman light-weight personal cassette player was one of the few technologies in my life that when I saw it, I immediately had to have one.* The impression it made was so strong that 46 years later, I can still in my minds eye, see the scene around the table at the restaurant in Bangkok (must have been near the Malaysia Hotel).
If I had had cassettes back n high school when I first became entranced with learning foreign languages….
I loved cassettes in the late 70s and even more in the 1980s with Walkman-type portable players. But I don’t miss having to use the pencil trick, or it being so hard to move from the start of a tape to the end or find a specific spot in the middle, or my Aiwa’s batteries running out, or tapes simply breaking (I did learn to splice but that was never perfect or all that enduring). And starting out on a trip and trying to decide how many and which of my cassettes to bring along. I even tried micro-cassettes, which took low-quality to a new high (or low).
It may be that cassette tapes will be the best portable audio storage solution whose production can endure farther into the long decline** – cassette tapes do seem much lower tech than the silicon chips my music/books are now on (with multiple backups of the entire set). But we will really want good-quality cassettes. When I lived in India in the late 1970s, blank cassettes from the West (including Japan) were greatly sought after. The local ones were a nightmare.
[*Email was another. I was telecommuting between Japan and the US and spending 10-15% of my income on international data calls. Another was the Rollerblade inline skate. I don’t need a rink anymore and I can skate spring through autumn. Wow! Inline skates may be useful in some places if vehicle traffic decreases faster than smooth pavement vanishes. The inverse of enjoying skating on new pavement when the roads have been put in for a big housing development but the houses haven’t been built yet.]
**I believe that even Sony Walkman type cassette players used circuitry that can now be produced by (extremely dedicated) amateurs. It was 1980 tech after all.
Interesting, I would have thought the third category was technologies that could have been invented in a particular era but never were, or were conceived of but never invented (e.g. many of da Vinci’s sketches), or is that just innovation? Are there also different categories of innovation? Some things naturally lead from other things vs completely random (truly innovative)? Also what counts as technology? Writing? Tachygraphy or shorthand? I think it would be good to teach in schools because if you make students write stuff down, it might as well be quick. Is prayer a psychological technology? How to write your own prayers? Are individual beliefs or even whole religions also examples of technology? Kinship and friendship structures? Certain ways of doing things that are hard to put into words like (embodied knowledge). Recipes? Poems as memory tools? Also forgive me, but if nonmaterial things can affect material reality (like homeopathy), is it not possible in theory (even if unlikely) that we could somehow harness large quantities of energy from some nonmaterial source using simple technologies not yet invented or understood?
correction to the basic bread recipe posted earlier: it is 35 to 40 min in the oven if in a loaf pan, not 20. It is 20 minutes if baked as small buns on a cookie sheet.
and less gas with the baking soda beans doesn’t mean none. But it improves matters enough that I can eat beans with a lot less worry that I’ll spend half the night with my innards feeling like they’ve been tied in knots and air forced through them with a bicycle pump. With the result I’m now more willing to eat beans, and eat them more frequently.
Maxine Rogers 20
One thing I would like to see return is women and girls in braids.
And in with women’s once a week hair-washing.
I recall watching PBS TV shows like involved Jane Austin, and the Bronte sisters, set, say, in the 1820s England. Women grew their hair long, and the hairstyles involved braids, all sorts of braids.
I remember the 1960s movie, “The Sound of Music,” set in 1930s Germany. The three-strand braid is gorgeous. Girls wore braids. Born in 1952, the three-strand braid was a favorite braid my mother gave to me. I loved them.
Now we get to female hair-washing. The classic excuse when a boy asked a girl out on a date, if the girl didn’t want to, she would say, “I can’t go out. I will be washing my hair,” or some such thing. I was sort of on the tail-end of this.
Girls did actually take an evening to wash their hair. Only fashionable homes had showers, which ours wasn’t. Growing up in the country, my mother’s family had no shower; my father’s New York City “fancy pants” house had a shower.
Prior to about 1965, those were the days where girls either washed their hair at the kitchen sink, or in the bathtub as part of a bath. Both ways took a couple hours, because “hair washing” also involved drying and, usually, curling.
I remember when there was no such thing as a “blow-dryer.” About 1967, our family’s hairdresser/barber/hair salon acquired a brand-new machine: the handheld blow-dryer (to me, new). The salon people said they paid a fortune for it, what sounded like $1,000 in today’s dollars.
I said, “Aha!” I took my bonnet/hooded hair dryer (one used it sitting down), removed the bonnet, and used the blower-motor and the spiral-hose which had hot air coming out one end; I dried my hair that way.
I was enthralled. I could blow-dry my hair in 15 minutes whereas it used to take two hours (my particular hair-shaft held water and was a biatch to get dry) (I have very oily hair). I suspect the oil trapped the water.
Anyway, in a flash, my hair dried using my makeshift and cheap blow-dryer. As a 15-year old, it changed my life. By 1970, blow-dryers were all over the place, at reasonable prices.
By my mid-teens, I was too old to wear braids. Besides, someone ELSE has to do the braiding, and those people were getting hard to come by (mothers then getting jobs outside the home). I never stopped loving braids. I recently tried to braid my own hair fancy-like; it was a total flop. I could only do pigtails.
Hair-braiding is an art-form. There are dozens of different kinds of braids. There are books on hair-braiding. Braids are relatively easy to learn, but again, one needs a hair-braid-ee (the one receiving the braid) and the hair-braider (the one creating the braid on another person).
I think hair-braiding will return. How can they not? In the hands of a skilled braider, braids can be astonishing.
“Out with” cumbersome, expensive, electricity-based hair styles. “In with” grand braids at reasonable prices, many of which can be done on damp hair.
In the 1960s, my mother went to the beauty salon once a week, when she got a shampoo as well as a store-bought hairdo.
During that time, I remember washing my hair only once a week too. After 1970, like most girls, as affluence set in, we started washing our hair daily, in the shower. I only stopped that habit in the early 2000s. The old typical duration was one week; for oily hair, twice a week.
I prophesy that once a week hair-washing will return.
Mark my words: braiding will return. Sixty-five years later, I still miss braids.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG,
I would make a list of jobs with matching technologies that have lost to the cult of ” labor saving”. The first on my list would be the human operated elevator. I can still remember these in the big old department store in downtown Portland when I was a kid. This could keep elevators going in tall buildings for a few years after microcircuitry is gone. They have many social benefits also. Another one is grocery boys ( or girls) who push the cart of groceries out to your car for you, unload it, and return the cart to the store. Now the carts are stolen, etc. and stupid wheel locks are often used. Another good one is pneumatic tubes for carrying messages and paperwork in buildings or dense urban areas.
Pgymycory #37, I have drying racks but I miss the nice outdoor smell from the clothes line. In the 5 1/2 years I’ve lived here I’ve only used the electric dryer in the laundry room no more than 6 times. I don’t like the way clothes smell from the dryer and I refuse to use dryer sheets.
Maybe a bit off topic, but last post Foxhands (I think) mentioned someone raising rabbits in her basement for meat. We raised rabbits as a side line. They are easy to raise and butcher. If you have a garden, their manure is great fertilizer. I don’t know about raising them in the basement, though. But if anyone is thinking of making some extra money by selling them, don’t sell to a grocery store. We did and it turned into a money loosing business. If you sell, sell only to individuals, not businesses.
Thanks for all the lovely ideas!
I’ve been making a single loaf of sourdough bread per week, it takes relatively little attention at any one time, but bits and pieces of attention over the day. Still baking in an electric oven, though.
Alternate bread (which I’ve not tried to bake) “Salt rising bread” rises at a temp that will kill the yeast, so it uses bacteria to ferment & rise. It is reported to have a complex, cheesy flavor.
Knitting can be done in several levels of automation. Hand knitting, of course. Industrial knitting machines are the most common right now. However, hand-powered knitting machines from the last century have a lot of enthusiasts online, and they are keeping the old machines in operation. A machine shop ( https://erlbacherknitting.com/ ) makes modern reproductions of hand-cranked sock knitting machines.
There seems to be a trade-off between time to create something, and the amount of metal and technology in the tools that create it!
Thank you for this essay, JMG. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, and an optimistic take on the future we may, at least as individuals, enjoy. Might adopting something of the mindset and expectations of many of the people of the past also be viewed as a sort of retrovation? Thinking back to times spent in my grandparents’ home during the 1960s, I remember a one car garage, with a large well-stocked pantry beneath it, attached to a small home with closets that were a fraction of the size of what’s on offer now. “Enough” was about contentment, rather than just a pause before piling on “more”. It could be I’m wearing the proverbial rose-colored glasses, but it does seem that in general people were simply more satisfied with what they had.
OtterGirl
Grimmelshausen says:
“Another nearly forgotten technique:
Shaving a man’s face using a straight razor or—for the less skilled or less daring—a safety razor. All that is required is the razor (straight or safety), a shaving brush, and some shaving soap.”
Or, for the ultimate in simplicity and cost savings, you can do what I’ve done for the last 50+ years: Don’t shave! What a strange custom it is! I know! How about we drag a piece of sharpened steel across our face every morning to hide the fact that we are grown men! I blame the Romans 🙂
Pretty interesting topic. Over the years, I’ve looked for old technical manuals like lineman’s handbooks from the 1940s. There was a guy back in the days of Deseret Publishing named “Kurt Saxon.” He had a series of books called “The Survivalist” and “Granddad’s Wonderful Book of Chemistry.” YOu can find some online, but they are basically reprints of old Popular Mechanics articles from the early 20th century.
@JMG However, I have been a farmer, have a degree in a science and worked as an engineer most of my life. I would have to approach any of this rediscovered technology with the same testing and skepticism that I used working in all of those fields. Not to dismiss, but to keep everyone honest. I know a girl that owns a health food store and she doesn’t even know that fluorine is not a heavy metal
Two data points on “progress”
1. 5 years ago, I bought a new truck, a 2021 Nissan Frontier. I bought it because all of the car magazine reviews said it was behind the times, had a crappy infotainment system. “Best truck of 2010!” they joked. It’s a great truck and it does have a touch screen for the radio and can connect to your cell phone, but otherwise it has a powerful V6 and a transmission WITH ACTUAL GEARS. I don’t like that it has a key fob instead of a physical key (But there is a cutout on the dash with a cover on it where the physical key used to go.)
2. I play guitar so see a lot of guitar videos online. I was watching one from a pure metalhead, a shredder who primarily uses souped up electric guitars for his playing. His video was about the 5 guitar “innovations” he wishes that guitar companies would stop making. One type of guitar is a self contained electric guitar with an amp and speaker built into the guitar body. He said, “We’ve had a portable guitar that can play loudly without needing an amp for 200 years. It’s an acoustic guitar!”
Oh, now that math and games have been added to the mix, maybe I do have something to contribute after all!
Mathematical tables — log tables, trig tables, etc. — have fallen out of favor, except in statistics, but they are very easy to use with a very little practice. What’s more, you can generally make your own tables easily with a spreadsheet program like Excel, LibreOffice Calc, or Google Sheets, and then print them. (Make sure to print them! The whole point is for when you can’t use your computer.)
The Japanese soroban abacus is the most popular, for good reason, but it’s worth mentioning that a child’s abacus that has 10 rows of 10 beads each can be used in the same way, and may be a little less confusing for some people since it lacks the 5-valued beads. One the other end of complexity, the Chinese suanpan abacus is another option, and has the unique feature that it’s capable of doing hexadecimal (base-16) and duodecimal (base-12) arithmetic in addition to normal decimal arithmetic. (Side note: If anyone knows anywhere I could get a reproduction of an ancient Roman abacus, please let me know!)
Tabletop games are another important retrovation. Of course, they’ve never truly gone away, but many modern tabletop games have a number of highly-complex parts that make them heavily-dependent on modern manufacturing technology to make and also harder to preserve. Even roleplaying games get in on that act now, requiring proprietary dice or cards, or even digital apps to play. And unfortunately wargaming is dominated by Warhammer, which requires specially-made figures to play.
It’ll be important to get back to board and card games that can be manufactured with 1800’s technology at latest, and RPG and wargames that can be played with small booklets, a handful of dice, and whatever tokens you can scrounge up.
Charlie Obert #4
I have a slide rule! Wish I knew how to use it. One thing that always fascinated me about the Dune series of books was the Mentat schools and training a person’s mind to be able to calculate like a computer. I think it is possible as I pretty much had to do mental math all my life.
Anonymous #15
Just shave it if you start to go bald. People with either respect you like Captain Picard or like some badass biker you don’t want to mess with.
@Northwind Grandma,
I wear my hair in a couple of braids quite a lot when it is long. Prevents it from getting tangled, and I can do it myself in a few minutes. I don’t understand why a basic braid would require someone to do it for you, absent issues with raising one’s arms above shoulder level or severe wrist movement restrictions or something of that sort. I have trouble on bad hand days, but normally it isn’t hard for me.
I feel like I’m missing something here. By pigtails do you mean twin braids like I’m talking about? I normally think of pig tails as one pony tail on each side.
JMG,
I would be delighted to offer information on herbalism. While there are many books I value and use as resources, a lot of what I have learned that I find most valuable has been transmitted to me verbally from dear teachers I have studied with over the last twenty years. For example, I studied with a couple of women who taught us how to make our own mushroom tinctures which are profoundly healing and that’s a craft I rarely encounter anywhere else. So I hope there is a way to contribute knowledge more traditionally learned. 😀
for aquariums:
filtration:
air pumps that power a sponge filter. You don’t need to keep buying filter inserts, and you never have to junk a filter because the store stopped selling the right filter inserts. Also, air pumps use tiny amounts of electricity, and have been quite quiet for decades now.
temperature:
old-fashioned thermometers. More accurate, and don’t die nearly as fast as the color changing stick on ones. Vastly cheaper than digital thermometers, too.
I do like the LED lights though. They grow plants well, use very little energy and don’t produce a lot of heat. Much, much better than the old incandescents. Now if only they were better made and didn’t die so fast…
I love this book idea, and plan on pre-ordering as soon as feasible.
Regarding use of manure, Gene Logsdon’s book “Holy Shit” is entertaining, informative and useful. He covers collection and use of almost every type, including practical and health issues, with real life considerations.
Another topic is preventative health, the basics. Consider giving tips on listening to your body, with common sense food, activity, sleep and social/resilience guidelines. I have not found such a book, as the professionals tend to fall into corporate mode, and most of the others end up selling the perfect one-size-fits-all diet, supplement, detailed exercise program and/or monitoring service. In Outlive (Peter Attia’s book) regarding nutrition, he highlights starting with where you are: over or under nourished (calories/weight), undermuscled or adequate?, metabolically healthy ( insulin resistant, most Americans). Other chapters get into (IMO) overly- aggressive monitoring..
https://robertlustig.com/fat-chance-cookbook/ free download, has an accurate yet somewhat detailed explanation about insulin resistance, followed by low-cost recipe and cooking ideas for those raised on packaged foods. Instead of selling some expensive product, Lustig is actively working for better food for local kids (and others) in his retirement.
A more general book is Matthew Stein’s “When Technology Fails”, maybe for ideas. Some sections are more helpful/accurate than others, IMO, but it would likely give you some ideas about where/how to focus efforts.
JMG: Cool! I’ll look forward to reading that. As to the other thing, I’d say that’s a pretty reasonable inference. I don’t see why either those who hear the difference or those who don’t would report otherwise, that’d just be silly. Another thing that might explain it is, you know how sometimes you hear a familar thing but it’s off, like a voice you know has a bit of reverb as through a culvert or something? And your brain shortly gets used to it because you know how that voice is supposed to sound? Well I think there may be a thing like that going on below the level of awareness for some of those that don’t hear the digital loss. Like, you know what a cello is supposed to sound like, so when your brain hears the lows, mids, and the lower highs, it goes, “oh, it’s this sound – present *this* to the awareness” and it corrects all those overtones that are getting increasingly square the higher they get. So, your ear hears the mistakes, but you have a codec that fixes it for you. I think that might be going on with some people.
> You can improve that somewhat by getting Bluetooth speakers or what have you, but even so, phones are not optimized for reproducing music, and they do a fairly poor job of it.
I would go so far as to say that modern phones not optimized for being phones. My first cell phone was a Nokia 1100, which I got as a “gift” for getting into university. It lasted me nearly five years, and was replaced by a Nokia 1208, which was essentially the same thing but with a color screen and improved navigation. Both of these phones had very good sound quality, both on the speaker and the microphone, and could connect calls pretty well even with relatively bad signal levels. The battery lasted a whole week assuming I wasn’t talking on it all day, and the T9 predictive text on the “Filipino” setting captured casual “Taglish” (Tagalog+English) surprisingly well.
In 2014, I upgraded to a “Smartphone” and the experience of using a phone qua phone has become noticeably degraded. You almost need full signal bars and be standing next to the cell tower for you and the other side to hear each other properly. This meant they had to introduce tricks like VoLTE and Voice-over-Wifi so your calls can go over the internet if signal is bad, at which point you’re then at the mercy of your local internet connectivity. Which is still worse than having a mediocre 2G signal.
Then, for typing, you’ve seen all the memes involving autocomplete; for some reason it’s never as good as my old Nokias’ T9 predictive text no matter which keyboard app I use or language pack I download or whether I let Google or Microsoft harvest all my emails and texts for “improved prediction”. I mean, guys, the Nokias only had nine keys to work with and you have a full qwerty keyboard on screen, what the heck…
And of course modern phones are heavier, bulkier, and generally more cumbersome. Also, a battery life that goes beyond a bit more than a day is now considered “heavy duty” and “rugged”, lol.
Not surprisingly, feature phones have made a bit of a comeback. Many of them are directly inspired by the legendary Nokias, too. I will probably give my kids one when they get into university.
> On the off chance that anybody from the Trump administration is reading this, may I offer a suggestion? It would be child’s play to revitalize the US auto industry, set off a huge hiring boom for factory workers, and double or triple the cheering crowds that show up the next time the Orange One holds a rally. All you have to do is get rid of the forest of regulations that keep small to midsized American companies from getting into the auto business and manufacturing the kind of cars people want to drive, which not surprisingly are the kind they drove half a century ago, unburdened with onboard computers and the rest of the garbage with which “progress” has weighed down today’s cars.
Apparently, Orange Man _has_ claimed to have done this already: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/trump-demands-tiny-little-tiny-cars-at-gm-proving-grounds-move-over-mega-trucks/
I’m sure he noticed all the cute cars in Japan, not to mention how old imported kei trucks and vans have become quite popular with rural folks in America. Let’s see how this goes.
> For that matter, if any Ford Motor Company executives happen to read this, I have a helpful suggestion for you, too. Cooperate with the mass pruning of regulations, and then get one of your factories turning out brand new copies of the 1966 Mustang fastback. You’ve still got the plans, right? Don’t change a thing. Leave out all the “improvements,” and sell them at a price that gives you the same profit per vehicle you pocketed back in 1966. Your sales and stock value will take off—well, there’s no other way to put it: like a ‘66 Mustang when the light turns green and the driver floors it. You’re welcome, and you can thank me with a few hundred shares of stock.
I would suggest a couple of very light tech upgrades for the ’66 ‘stang: 1) powered brakes with front discs as standard, 2) radial tires as standard, and 3) basic electronic fuel injection. The sort of things that made the FoMoCo’s exec’s dad reach for the keys of his mom’s 1990 Toyota Previa when it was a little too hot or a little too cold and the ‘stang just refuses to start, and even if it did it wouldn’t stop if you hit the brakes if it was a little too wet outside.
I have a Toyota Revo which is a car built in this spirit. It’s a 90s parts-bin special designed for Southeast Asia, India, and South Africa, a truck-based* van which does a little bit of everything – school/grocery run, cargo hauling, people hauling, you name it, and not need too much maintenance in the process. It’s no longer produced in the name of (yep) safety and emissions regulations, but whenever people see mine and how well kept it is, I would get stories about how they/their parents used to have one and how they wish they never sold theirs!
*Specifically, it’s based on the Hilux. Yes, that infamously indestructible thing that terrorists and irregular armies use to routinely kick the butts of armies with much better resources and tech.
Etienne 43
>This has me thinking: what else would be needed to teach a class if neither computers nor indeed even electricity are available
You are in “one-room schoolhouse” territory. Large front horizontal blackboard. Teacher’s wooden desk, with an apple. Wood-burning stove in the center of the room. (I suspect parents of the kids furnished the cut-wood.) Simple wooden desk and bench for each kid, sometimes doubled-up (seats two kids). Whatever it takes’ timing so that kids could walk to school, and walk back home to do (farm) chores before dark. Kids brought their lunch in metal pails from home, (what did they use for pail covers?) (I assume mothers made the lunches.) Two doors, a number of windows, wooden floor. Mothers made sure their kids wore clean clothes. A school bell. Kids arrived on time. Kids were respectful.
The community pitched in to pay for the one-room school building. The community build the physical building, and all its accoutrements. The school board was largely made up of parents. The teacher could be a former pupil of said school. The older kids helped the younger kids with studies (like English and arithmetic), also known as free assistant-teacher labor. Grades typically went only through 8th grade.
In the 1960s, I remember my family doing weekend outings visiting a number of existent one-room schoolhouses in upstate New York. The buildings had good vibes. Each was different. Wood everywhere; no plastic.
Some one-room schoolhouses shut down fairly late, like the 1950s. Lots of them were still in use in the 1930s. It depends on the state a school was in, how rural the area, and lots of peculiarities of a particular location; most were strictly local. Parents supported their own settlement’s one-room schoolhouse, but the next town over, they instituted their own. Essentially, if parents were not involved in supporting the local one-room schoolhouse, their kids didn’t get educated, and a lot of parents had a big issue with the prospect of raising kids who had little, or no, education.
Some Wisconsin one-room schoolhouses still exist, and one can visit them. I suspect several other USA states have existing such schools one can visit.
One-room schoolhouses happen to be one of my interests. I have several books on the subject. Fascinating subject. One-room schoolhouses will return, possibly melded with current homeschooling.
New subject
As for mimeograph smell, I remember that too. I loved the smell. Some months ago, the subject of mimeographs came up, where I inquired whether mimeograph machines were still being made, to which the answer was, “No.”
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Et All – Back when I was in the book biz, I’d get occasional requests for “Henley’s Formulas for Home and Workshop.” It went through many editions, with slight variations of the title. Anytime I’d run across a copy, I’d add it to stock. Never lasted very long.
Another perennial best seller was “The Machinery’s Handbook.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinery's_Handbook
If you can’t find copies of these books, they can be printed off the internet, being in public domain. Use it (the internet) before we lose it. Lew
JMG- the Factor X you mention might actually have a physical explanation. I wish I could remember where I saw this, because I know I won’t explain it right. The idea is that when atoms touch each other with their electrons, they have a sort of ‘memory’. A water molecule that touches sodium phosphate during succussion will have a kind of trace or imprint, ‘remembering’ the contact. The mechanism is quantum mechanics based. Some part of the water and the sodium phosphate come into resonance with each other through the quantum level interaction. I can’t dredge up any more than that, but its an intersting concept, anyway.
KM Gunn Art #1
All-metal vintage sewing machines for the win! I have a small collection, a dozen or so machines from 1902 to 1965. All of them can be switched to treadle operation with no difficulty. These machines wear like the iron they are made from; can be passed down for many generations. There is a vibrant community working hard to keep these machines out of the landfills and working. There’s a great forum at http://www.victoriansweatshop.com for anyone interested in finding out more.
Jeff Huggins #2
To the best of my knowledge you can’t even get new cars with manual transmissions anymore. They no longer make all-mechanical automatic transmissions- they all have computers running them. I want a car with no electronics at all.
Heather #3
Any washing machine that is all mechanical, no electronics at all. I have one of the last all mechanical machines Kenmore made. It is now 26 years old and still running like a champ. For that matter, even dryers that are all mechanical are far superior to computerized ones on longevity. My dryer is from the 1980s and still runs just fine.
Annette #18
Wind up clocks, yes! And wind up watches too. Those are so expensive now, if you can find them at all.
Phutatorious #35
I would also suggest the most crucial mechanical adding machine of them all: the mechanical cash register, so stores can ring up their customers’ purchases. I am just barely old enough to remember the last store in a rural area that had one.
Etienne #43
Great big slate blackboards, equipped with sticks of chalk and erasers. No power necessary. Actual paper textbooks, ditto.
Al #52
The Humanure Handbook should be required reading for everyone. Sewer system outages happen, sometimes long term, like after that big earthquake down in Venezuela. Knowing what to do saves lives.
Phutatorious #53
I loved my 1968 VW bus. I remember how horrified I was the first time I ran across a car that you couldn’t adjust the valves on. Adjusted the ones on that bus every 1500 miles just like the book said, and it ran forever.
Florida, I should specify that I’m looking for technologies that individuals and families can put to work in their own lives. A functioning postal system is on an entirely different scale!
Squirrellyjen, hmm! That’s good to hear. I bet it would make fantastic charcoal for smelting metal ores.
Ambrose, home schooling is certainly something to consider, but again, I’m not looking for grand society-wide plans here.
Florida, thanks for this.
KAN, many thanks for the resources!
Emily07, unfortunately probably not good enough yet. I know people in the US who combine homeopathy with other healing modalities, however — I’ll see if any of them know of a cell salt massage.
Chronojourner, that’s certainly worth considering.
Jeff, interesting. Thanks for this.
Rhydlyd, vellum made from otter skin would be far too fragile to last long, so the otters are safe from me. Pigskin, on the other hand, is very robust — specialty binderies use it to this day for book covers because it’s so sturdy and resistant to wear — so the razorbacks had better watch out for rogue bookbinders armed with boar spears. 😉
Northwind, so noted!
Temporary, delighted to know that the project is still ongoing! I wonder if anybody’s looked into the cyclostyle, a Victorian-era duplicating machine which used a waxed paper stencil. As for trolleys, those are at the far end of complexity since it’s kind of hard to make and use them on a household level! Still, they’re probably worth a mention.
Katherine, that’s a fine example. My late wife was a spinner, and use drop spindles to make yarn for knitting and crocheting.
Justin, I think that the beat frequencies are certainly part of it; so are overtones and other complex acoustic phenomena.
Cesar, it’s certainly worth considering, so thank you.
Christopher, hmm! That’s an interesting question. How would I get information about how those used to work?
Inna, fair enough! If I wear a wristwatch it stops; I’m considering trying pocket watches.
Ambrose, yeah, the other thing that made cell salts threatening to classical homeopaths is that they’re so easy to use most people stopped seeing homeopaths and just learned how to repertorize their own conditions and prescribe for themselves. (That’s what I did, for whatever that’s worth.) I haven’t looked into the Cayce remedies but I should probably do so.
Mark, maybe you can help create it!
Jessica, good. The point of this project is to expand the range of available choices, not to force some sort of one size fits all scheme on everyone.
MD, the problem with technologies that nobody got around to inventing is precisely that nobody got around to inventing them, and so trying to invent them now is innovation, not retrovation. The point to retrovation is that you’re not flying blind — there’s at least something to work with. As for the definition of technology, I’m going to smile and encourage everyone to come up with their own. With regard to getting energy from the nonmaterial, so far, at least, what seems to pass from the nonmaterial to the material is information, not energy; I don’t know enough to draw a hard and fast line, but I’d have to see some evidence first that energy can make that leap.
Clay, fun. Some of those might be worth including.
Annette2, bunnies for meat probably belongs on the list as well — and the warning about grocery stores is valid, of course. They’re not in the business of making money for you…
Sylvia, thanks for these!
Ottergirl, I don’t think you’re mistaken, for what it’s worth. As a general rule, for most people, life sucks worse than it did then.
Watchflinger, of course! All this stuff needs testing. The first step is letting people know that it’s there to be tested.
Slithy, excellent. All these are good.
Watchflinger (if I may):
https://archive.org/details/easyintroduction00isaa
https://archive.org/details/sliderulesimplif00coha
https://archive.org/details/programmedsequen00euge
Old slide rule manuals aren’t too hard to find. Here are three of them, starting with one written by Isaac Asimov.
Angelica, there is indeed. I’ll look forward to your contributions.
Lazy, thank you for these.
Cynthia, hmm. Yes, I could see that.
Carlos, I’m all the happier now that I don’t use cell phones. Thanks for the rest of this!
Lew, so noted and thank you.
@JMG #42 and Ornifex #23 re: History of the Ketogenic Diet
If I may, I’ve read that the ketogenic diet was originally developed to treat diabetes before insulin became widely available. By bypassing the starch -> glycogen pathway that the body prefers for energy production, it greatly stabilizes blood sugar and minimizes production and use of insulin. Interestingly, before it took off as a fitness strategy, it was also explored for treating epilepsy, though as far as I know, the mechanism was not as well understood (though it does appear to help).
I’ve also read reports (though only anecdotal, as far as I know, no studies have been done) from folks who claim it has helped mitigate the long term effects of Lyme Disease (mental fog especially) and possibly also unwanted side effects from intensive rounds of antibiotics (in both cases, I’ve seen it hypothesized that it has something to do with helping the gut microbiome recover). I’ve done nothing to verify any of this, of course, and am not offering any advice.
From my own personal experience, I’d point out that like any other specialist diet, different folks respond to the ketogenic diet differently. I followed a ketogenic diet pretty strictly for a little over a year, and then again for ~6 months. My main goal was weight loss, which worked well for me to get rid of the last stubborn 10-15 pounds I didn’t want, but I was intrigued by the reports of some about increased energy, mental clarity, and so forth. I saw some slight improvements in those areas, but it was more like the floor was higher – being tired wasn’t as debilitating, I didn’t have noticeable slumps in energy in the afternoon, and the like. I ended up getting a health-related genetic screening that suggested I might not be particularly great at ketogenesis.
All of which is to say, I think it’s definitely an option worth having in the collective discourse for folks that it can help, but would encourage anyone considering it to pay attention to how it affects them and to explore multiple options.
Cheers,
Jeff
Little addendum to the previous – my own brain does that with guitar tones. There’s all sorts of effects and woods and hardware differences and doodads and this and that and the other thing that some says is some really drastic thing that evokes this or that tone, and I just don’t know the difference between any of them unless I hear them directly contrasted to each other. In my own gear I know if something’s really lacking, but honestly I’m quite baffled by a lot of guitar gear talk. I don’t get how it’ll be so much better if it’s just so or if the knob is 7.29 instead of 7.28 or any of that stuff. I can’t even tell single coil vs humbucker unless it’s just the bare guitar not mixed with anything, and ….
Well anyway enough about it. The point is, that’s why I think some people’s brains might be tossing out digital imperfections in favour of their definitive idea of the sound they’re hearing. Because my own brain tosses out differences in guitar tones in a similar way, in favour of my definitive idea of what a guitar is.
Andy 45
> cast iron
I love cast iron. I collect cast iron pots. I love the way cast iron feels when I take a smidgen of cooking oil and rub it into the pot or pan; I could do it all day. Last I counted, I have over thirty pots of cast iron. I love the way, when one cooks on/in cast iron, the digestible iron sloughs off into the food, and is exceptionally healthy. Cast iron cooking is one of the best sources of nutritional iron, I hear, better than pills.
On a cast iron printing press, is it appropriate to use cooking oil?
The rubbing, really just wiping and distributing, is an art in itself. One doesn’t need a lot of oil. Just a little bit. It takes time to distribute the oil so there is an ever-so-slight film of oil. Over years and decades, one no longer needs to oil the pots, because oils from different-timed-rubbings mesh with the iron, then dry.
Or does your printing press already have decades of patina? What kind of oil was used, do you know? Curious.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
To paraphrase President Reagan: “I’m from Microsoft and I’m here to upgrade you.”
‘
The most comprehensive collection of Appropriate Technology books that I’m aware of is:
https://villageearth.org/home/appropriate-technology-library/
1050 books on appropriate technology. Lots of 70’s classics and more.
I like books that are about building technologies starting with very limited means. In some cases nothing, in others cases with things you find at the junk yard.
https://cavemanchemistry.com/
Caveman Chemistry: 28 Projects to create materials from Glass, to Mead, to Plastic. Each material has a character and each chapter is taught from the perspective of the 4 classical elements and the 3 alchemical principles: Mercury, Sulfur, Salt.
The Barefoot Architecture by Johan van Lengen: Build for any climate starting with practically nothing. Just the materials on hand and stuff you would find in a dump.
https://gingerybookstore.com/MetalWorkingShopFromScrapSeries.html
Build Your Own Metal Shop: a series of books to make your own Metal Shop starting with a crucible to make a lathe, and then using the lathe to make a better lathe and adding machines which allows you to make the next set of machines. He starts the series with something to the effect of, “I’ve always tried to
A group current innovator is 123HomeFree. https://123homefree.org/
He’s an inventor who lives in a trailer pulled by his sheep and is creating an alternative to being homeless in an urban area. He has a lot of great, very practical and cheap inventions and practices.
The appendices of Ben Falk’s The Resilient Farm and Homestead is another great resource. He catalogs what he considers the ten most durable Skills: Making/Keeping Fire, Finding/Securing Water, Germinating Seeds/Raising Vegetables, Building Soil, Storing Food without refrigeration,electricity or fuel, Planting/Raising Trees, Felling/Bucking Tree, Basic Carpentry, Making Stone Walls and Hunting/Fishing/Foraging. He covers other important skills, tools, vulnerabilities. He comes from a survivalist mentality, though I don’t think he looks to be completely independent like a lot of people in this vein, more to temper and pick dependencies.
Another great resource is the video game One Hour One Life by Jason Rohrer. https://onetech.info/ This is a game where you bootstrap a civilization as a group going from rocks and sticks to rocket ships (I know that is not inevitable.) You live for one hour max, so it takes many life times to see your work come to fruition. It does a great job in the website of documenting its crafting system and showing what depends on what and what the requirements are to make it in very simplified terms. For instance to get a sharp stone you need a stone and a big hard rock and with the sharp stone you can turn a tree branch into a shaft and combine with the sharp stone to make a hammer (approximately). There are a lot of dependencies and steps to get to more advanced materials/tools.
To piggyback on Low Tech Magazine, there is a print version as well in three volumes and topic based books as well:
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/offline-reading/
I think he has the most practical outlook I’ve seen in his Human Power Plant studies where he designs a neighborhood plan and a dorm plan for energy use that is largely Human-Powered. In his dorm design two floors are dedicated to exercise machines to power the building. In his calculations for hot water he makes it clear that for every person to take a 7-minute shower everyday requires every person to take a 10 hour shift exercising! His solution is to shower less and take cold showers! Reminds me of the energy slaves metaphor from Buckminister Fuller.
Almost no one in the renewable energy world ever talks about conservation. David Mackay’s Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air (https://www.withouthotair.com/ ) really drives home how easy it is to raise consumption and how difficult (just from a physics perspective, but economically as well) it is a raise production. To double,triple,quadruple your consumption: eat more meat/processed foods, take a couple flights a year instead of one or none, commute further and drive the max speed and come to sudden stops, take long showers, etc… It may not even been obvious you have doubled your consumption. To double production of renewables: cover the whole coast line with windmills, make vast solar farms in the dessert, dedicate significant portions of land to growing ethanol feedstock, etc… in other words move mountains.
I went to a talk with a famous renewable energy inventor and asked him about the rebound effect and he denied it existed. I used the example of how widening a highway reduces traffic only temporarily and how more efficient lighting has led to overall increase in lighting use. He used to give these great talks on conservation and becoming aware of how much energy we used, but it seems like he gave up on that idea after he was unable to convince very many people to change their lifestyle.
He is now advocating mass electrification of everything and people making the correct buying decisions for appliances, electrical cars and heat pumps as the key to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. His technologies are astounding and great, but I don’t see how they achieve the goal of decarbonization without conservation. I remember him saying something to effect that we just need to make the right purchases over the next ten years and thought, that’s not going to happen. How could it? I use very little energy. The rider’s my bill are over 75% of the cost. To finance a heat pump would take over 10 years to breakeven while eating up money I don’t have for little benefit.
Going partially off-grid makes more sense in terms of a shorter ROI, like putting some of lights on a 12V circuit. 12V circuits are not dangerous, don’t require any special permits or design (as far as I know) and don’t have to connect to the rest of my house’s circuitry. I’m not sure my house would be legally habitable if I disconnect from the grid. It would be nice to maybe get rid of my gas rider by switching space and water heating to solar/wood instead of gas.
David Fleming in Lean Logic had a proposal for satisfying Jevon’s Paradox with his TEQ’s idea. https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/teqs/
The basic idea is to create a currency for carbon and give 60% of it by fiat and auction 40% of it to the extraction and carbon-usage industry. Every transaction that requires carbon use requires the exchange of the currency. If you don’t want to use your fiat credits you can sell them to the extraction industry. The amount of credits for carbon is stepped down year-to-year.
I don’t know if it would work, but the most vital part of it to me is that it says what they want to achieve rather than mandating how it will be achieved. It gives plenty of creative freedom to figure out how they want to conserve or transition and to pay more for more decadence or to profit from conserving and finding renewing sources while not assuming that creating better renewable sources or better energy efficiency won’t just lead to the fossil fuel sources finding different applications.
@Slithy Toves,
if you have sculpting skills you can sculpt miniatures, though the quality depends on your ability and there is no way you’re going to want to make a hundred-strong army that way. You can also turn dinosaur or animal toys into miniatures. I’ve done that with great success – I built a triceratops transport that way that actually won it’s category in the local plastic modellers society show. Though admittedly the troops it was carrying in the card fighting platform on its back were heavily kitbashed and altered commercial miniatures.
Small-scale casting is a thing. Casting in white metal. There’s still commercial minis like that being sold – I bought a little baggie of 10mm trolls like that a few weeks back. Metal minis are usually more expensive than non-games workshop plastic (which is insanely overpriced), but they can be cast on a small scale with far less investment than plastics, so they get made in small batches for less popular things (like 10mm trolls), or small businesses. New startups today typically do 3D printing rather than metal, but metal is the old-fashioned independent makers way.
And you can use blue stuff to cast pieces of minis, or even some whole miniatures, and that’s more scaleable to an army than sculpting each and every one.
We’ll have to get used to lower-detailed, minis, though.
I would miss plastic. I really like working with plastic. It is so much easier to kitbash than metal or resin. Resin breaks so easily, and metal is a lot harder to cut or drill than plastic.
@Northwind Grandma (#127):
My wife and I, born in the 1940s, grew up in a world where everyone took a bath (or, rarely, a shower) once a week; and we still keep to that custom. Hardly anybody stunk then, and neither of us stink now. The students I taught at my university generally shower once a day, and tell me, if I ask about their strange customs, that they need to bathe so often to keep from smelling bad.
My theory to account for the difference between people then and people now — it’s just an off-the-cuff theory — is that the human body has evolved to emit mild odors, as an important form of non-verbal communication with near-by bodies about many things; and that if one tries to prevent that from happening (say, by frequent bathing), the body just ramps up its odor-making processes pretty much permanently.
On the Subject of Cars:
There is this great pattern I’ve experience across 3 different cities for bike shops where you pay for a membership and the staff/volunteers teach you how to fix your own car. There are some community college / high school programs that sometimes do this that I have seen where the students bring their own cars / friends and families cars to work on with guidance and most of the parts and tools on hand.
Took my car to shop once in Trenton, NJ and was reading a framed article on the wall and learned that it used to use to the same business model in the 1940’s to 1970’s if I recall correctly. You would bring your car in and they would teach you how to fix it. Has anyone else encountered that service pattern anywhere else?
Hi JMG,
I would be delighted to do those write-ups; it’d be fun, and I’d be happy to help in any way with this book!
One more thing I meant to include in my list is a long piece of fabric to wrap a baby with! No strollers needed…it’s certainly making a comeback, and there are all sorts of psychological and physical benefits for the baby (and the parents, arguably). I can include a write up of this along with the rest in case it’s useful.
Thank you for the cell salt book recommendation! Everything I’ve read by Boericke has been helpful.
Mr. Nobody 46
> Would it be possible to find a “happy medium”
After the October 1973 “oil crisis,” fuel efficiency in car was a thing. It took a couple years for fuel efficiency to take off in the market. The 1973 “oil crisis” was HEE-UGE thing at the time.
Fuel efficient cars were, I think, the earliest 1975, but more likely 1976. The fad petered out after 2-3 years. Not all 1976-1978 cars were fuel efficient though. There was still a market for gas guzzlers. There was a window of time where a lot of people were buying VW Beetles (“bugs”). By the way, VW bugs were one heck of a wonderful car. I think 2018 was their last year😢of production. One can still buy them used. I owned a used 1963 bug, and it got 35 friggin’ miles per gallon (56 kilometers per gallon), and that was city driving in 1976 in Los Angeles County, California.
As is typical, VW bugs was too great a car. VW had to get rid of it so they could sell their much higher priced models.
Now that I think about it: note to VW:
————
Dear Volkswagen,
Please bring back the Beetle. It is the perfect car for the upcoming retrovation era.
————
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@Grimmelshausen (#83):
When I was a boy in the 1940s, in small-town Pleasantville (NY), my father and I would go to the barbershop about three blocks away for our haircuts every second weekend or so. There were always a bunch men there, just hanging out with one another, and some of them also were there to get shaves or haircuts while we were there (there were, I think, at least two working barbers in that shop) The barbers would shave the men using straight razors, which they kept extremely sharp by “stropping” them more than once in the course of a shave. (That was a fine art I never tried to master.) There was also a long row of personal shaving mugs on shelves, which had the names of specific men painted on them, and were only used for shaving that named man; but there were also common mugs which the barber could use to shave any man who didn’t have a personal mug. And I seem to remember that some of the men who came in for a shave must have shaved only once a week at the most, to judge by their quite visible stubble. I don’t think I ever saw a woman or girl so much as cross the threshold of that barber shop: it was a males-only hangout, and the talk there sometimes showed it.
My father shaved at home with an electric razor, and when I grew old enough to need to shave, he gave me one of his old ones to use. But when I got older, I switched to a safety razor and shaving soap; I liked, and still like, the feel and smell of it more than the mild stink of an electric motor. Of course, with a safety razor you never need to strop the blade; you just replace it every week or so, when it starts to get dull.
JADAM is a great recent example of appropriate technology. https://en.jadam.kr/
Its a Korean Farming System to make organic pesticides and fertilizers with limited means. The system is a microorganism fertilizing made from leaf mold, a pesticide made from gingko leaves and a myriad other readily available plants, a fungicide made with sulfur and potassium hydroxide, and a soap made from corn oil and sodium hydroxide. The big innovations in dropping the cost of the fungicide is that it uses chemical heat to get the sulfur in solution, a process that traditionally takes days of running a tending a fire. I’ve made all of them except the fertilizer and they really work and are really easy to make taking the proper precautions.
In terms of Perennial Vegetables:
Eric Toensmeier is the master here. Perrenial Vegetables, Carbon Farming and Edible Forest Gardens are the 3 most relevants titles.
JMG (no. 144) “I haven’t looked into the Cayce remedies but I should probably do so.”
I would be very interested in your take on him. His remedies are all over the place, and don’t fall into any one system. A typical patient might be prescribed prayer, castor oil poutices, electrotherapy, colonic irrigation, osteopathic manipulations, and a new diet.
@Temporary Reality (#112) and JMG (#144):
Before cyclostyles, there was lithographic printing, which used an extremely smooth stone surface. I have seen and read old academic lecture notes published by lithography in the 1800s. I don’t know the technical details of how lithography worked, but there seem to be technical manuals available on the web.
Joan 47
> menstrual cramps
From the day I started menstruating at 16, every second or third month I had debilitating cramps. I mean screaming pain for 5-7 days. I thanked the gods when menopause arrived.
In the latter years, I discovered one thing: I had been dehydrated pretty much all my life. When I started drinking water regularly, my cramps were mild.
This is anecdotal. An old wive’s tale. Or in my case, an old widow’s tale. Same difference.
The pain likely involved only one ovary. When I was dehydrated, blood got stuck, and didn’t slough away. I also have a condition called “thick blood” (hypercoagulability). In my case, blood got good and stuck.
MDs were all male, and really could not have cared less. They accused me of faking pain. No-one would fake such agony. That was one of the reasons why I give a big middle finger to the medical doctor profession this late in my life.
Homeopathy has helped me, in many ways, far more than medical doctors. Women should not have to rely on literal old wives to get them the information they need to lessen regular and excruciating pain. Think labor pains every three months, for five days straight, each time. I thank present day herbalists.
Drinking water would likely have halved my pain, over the long-term, over forty years. Half of the solution was SOOOOO simple: drink water. I wish I had known to drink water. I wish I had known that I was going through life dehydrated. I wish someone had been there to tell me that one, ever so simple thing: water. I felt totally alone.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
John,
Low Tech magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/offline-reading/ is a fabulous library of technologies which will be extremely useful in a low energy future, together with history pieces on many forgotten arts and sciences. I would have thought you know about it, but getting their collected works would be a giant step for anyone looking to downsize on energy and materials consumption.
This post is, to put it mildly, a mixed bag. Decomputerizing cars and tractors is fine. Vinyl, excellent. Slide rules? Yaay!
Let me put in a good word for good ol’ cash. You can’t hack paper. Also I don’t _want_ to make spending money too easy.
Electroculture? I worry that it might hasten soil depletion. Homeopathy? Pu-leeze. Wait’ll the corporations get ahold of medicine-without-medicine.
And then there’s ‘deregulate and we’ll all be rich’. I have heard that before. And it’s still with us, for excellent corporate reasons.
I treated Covid 2x with homeopathic cell salts. They would make my symptoms go away almost immediately. When symptoms came back I realized several hours had passed and I needed another dose.
The TARDIS should be a 1980’s frigo! Maybe in a jewel tone instead of avacado green. I would NEVER buy a stainless steel fridge because it must be able to carry al the family travel souvenir magnets. Hubby is a venerable engineer and he has designed refrigerators with the motors on top because the heat rises, if it’s on top it won’t rise to the fridge area you are trying to cool so it uses less energy.
Lost tech includes: roman concrete (but they figured it our 2 years ago but OSHA won’t allow it to be mixed just so at the job site, muslin from India from an extinct plant, Greek fire (that was on Game of Thrones), Stradivarius violins (cold growing weather at the end of the little ice age), Damascus steel, the moon landing (I think they are hiding aliens up there because the uap.gov website put up a transcript of the missing 2 minutes that was cut on tv, astronauts reporting flying crafts and unusual lights, plus in the post interview those astronauts looked spooked), I’m going to put pyramid precision engineering tech and whatever was lost when Atlantis was sunk around the Azore plateau based on what Plato described about Atlantis.
I wish I had a TARDIS, then we could all pile in and go have a little look-see.
My 84 year old Dad is still using the 1940 Ford 9N tractor he bought in 1977 to maintain his rural property. He mostly uses it for mowing and brush clearance for fire abatement. Since he only runs it about about 100 hours/year, it is still much cheaper to keep fixing than to buy something newer. He just replaced the gas tank after it finally rusted out. But it is getting harder to find parts.
I don’t think these have been mentioned yet…
One, old-school window tech:
– Double-hung windows – that’s the kind that you can open at the bottom and the top – are designed that way for a reason. Pulling the top window down and the bottom window up helps create a draft to keep air moving. Many modern windows lack this functionality.
– Shutters, now almost always just decorative, also used to serve a purpose. Traditional exterior louver shutters can be fully open (folded back) to let in air and light; fully closed (closed with louvers shut) to keep out light or elements, or closed with the louvers open, to provide privacy or rain protection while still allowing air circulation, depending on the need. People used to open and close shutters daily to maximize heating/cooling benefits.
– Heavy insulating interior window curtains used to be opened and closed as needed to keep heat in on cold nights, or to block light when needed.
– Exterior window awnings were also a good tech – they were used to block sun in the summer, and you could leave the window open during summer rains and let the cooler air in but keep the rain out (they were often removed for the winter).
Also, for interiors: Portieres were common in centuries past. They’re the curtains that hung on interior doorways, which could also be opened or closed as needed. By closing the portieres, one could make zone heating more effective. Doors do the same thing, of course, but the nice about the curtains was you could take them down when you wanted more open circulation between rooms for any reason, and portieres also worked better than door when dealing with larger openings. Part of this appropriate tech is also getting rid of the modern open floor plan and putting back separate rooms with doors/curtains, so that rooms can be zone heated based on usage, rather than heating the whole house when you’re only using a few rooms.
Ceiling fans are also underrated tech in my opinion – they use electricity, but only a modest amount., and really do help keep things cooler.
I have often thought – “What is enough” meaning the level and types of of technology that are enough for human well being in terms of food, housing, medical care, education, information, clothing, recreation, arts, music, tools, communication, transport and travel. I imagine different cultures, individuals would have different standards of an adequate or even abundant level of enough. My gut feeling is that a earth lovingly and intelligently known would provide a surprising level of sustainable, regenerating resources for a decent sized population. Of what is technically possible is not easy to bring to pass due to human vagaries and weaknesses. Alas, the ideal and the real
DMSO -several folk have chimed in with links. Discovered it helped with my damaged left hand to the point I could play guitar and even lately violin. Crashed my bicycle and broke my shoulder bone on my recent Derive wander. Started bathing the area with DMSO and survived 12 days in a northern German campsite til I could handle the pain to get my loaded bike back to Zurich and a flight back to bc. Way too late for surgery so last 4 weeks just mended. No painkillers other than the Dmso. Xrays look like i wrapped the broken ends in a ball of duct tape but its solid bone. Currently 90% back to full recovery. Orthopedic surgeon was gobsmacked at how fast i healed. Declined to mention the dmso.
Old sailing skills- O’Neal’s “this old boat”/ anything by Lin and Larry Pardley- sailing a home built 24ft wooden cutter no engine. Multiple circumnavigations/Matt Bracken collection sailing in a Retrotopia level world( no GPS etc).
I wander the gulf islands in a 1979 34ft sailboat I’ve done a lot of renovations on and learned a lot. Seafood harvesting, maintenance of the diesel, sail repair with old sewing machine to name a few…. I’ll pass this bluewater cruiser onto my 4 children for their needs and she’ll be seaworthy for another 30 years if they maintain it. There are thousands of serious fiberglass ships you can turn into a proper liveaboard home for less than a current Ford pickup truck would cost. Fresh water or salt. River, lake or ocean. Just sayin’
There’s another one, which will be dear to the heart of readers, and I think is essential to the long descent and retaining some kind of reasonable standard of living independent on modest and variable quality biomass and the dregs of fossil fuel. The steam engine was never allowed to reach anywhere near its full efficiency, power, and simplicity. I don’t really want to go into the details too much more online because I’m in the final stages of a patent on a new approach to external combustion and steam, but the theoretical work was all done by L.D. Porta from the 1940s to early 2000s, and was just never actioned.
@Joan, @JMG
Re: Menustrual cramps.
I’ve found something similar from an accupressure book: Accupressure Potent Points. The ones that work for my wife are in the buttocks to either side of the anus. Holding them for about 5 minutes or so using the technique from the book gives almost instant relief.
@Tyler, @JMG
Re: Open Source Car.
There was an open source car from 15 years or so ago called Wikispeed that seemed really promising and then evaporated. They made the thing in a couple months and had something like 100 mpg in there tests.
@Free Rain
One of the strangest experiences I had with the Amish was learning they are not organic (maybe some are, as there rules differe Bishop to Bishop). I was asking them what they do about the big those big green caterpillars on their Tomatoes and the man said, “Oh, the spray takes care of those, its the little ones that are the problem.” He saw no problem at all with the petrochemicals. Go figure.
@Shane
Re: Burbank
Its amazing what Luther Burbank did with so little land. As far as I know, he only had about 15 acres. His secret is he didn’t bother with a bunch of exact, scrumpluos records. He just tried things. I use to work with some university partners who were developing Hazelnuts that were blight resistant and marketable. They had been working on them 20+ years and just barely got out a couple varieties. If that was Luther Burbank he would have cranked out dozens of plants on the same land because he cared about the end product, not nazel gazing. I got a copy of his books from the Oakland California library. He had invented a form of color photography for the books and all the pictures were hand-cut and pasted into the book. I couldn’t believe they would let them leave the library, but they did and maybe still do.
@Ambrose
Re: Homeschooling
I think Ivan Illich had a couple very sensible education reforming ideas in deschooling society which had a to do with the homeschooling movements rise in the US. The ones I remember: Don’t let employers ask about education or use education as a prerequisite for hiring and let people teach with no credentials. Another was for a voucher system that let you give the voucher to anyone you wanted to teach your kid anything. So that could go to a piano tutor, to a business to take them as an apprentice or to a school that you formed with other parents.
Florida Farmer 103
Thank you. You wrote a wonderful piece.
From your moniker, I guess you live in the State of Florida? If so, I would like you to know that not all states in the USA are like you describe. When I do hear anything about Florida, it is nearly always to say that zillions of people (strangers) are moving to Florida (as well as to California).
Zillions of newcomers moving to any state (in this case, Florida), is not something to be proud of, much less want more of, much less want to encourage. I consider it as cringe-worthy.
I know I won’t win a popularity contests by saying so. If people can’t figure out that cramming a hundred people into a space meant for ten, then their intelligence-quotient is no more than 80.
I feel sorry that long-timers in Florida. They have to put up with population exploding. It is horrible.
Not all states are like Florida. Not all post offices in other states are as you describe. Man, am I glad for that.
Thank you for sharing your piece. It means a lot. Beautiful writing. Have you ever heard of author Studs Terkel? Your writing reminds me of his writing. Many blessings.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
If information rather than energy travels from immaterial to material, then what about homeopathy? What travels in that case? It’s not energy but is it really information?
As for a definition of technology, “a practical use of information” is one online definition but then you have to define “practical”. Maybe a definition involving systems theory? Something that alters a system?
Also, what about ancient technologies that were used thousands of years ago? That falls under retrovation? What if you invent something thinking it’s innovation but then the same thing is dug up by archaeologists? Whether it counts as innovation or retrovation can vary depending on who knows what (if they’re aware of it or not)?
Are unused patents the second stage of retrovation? Can animals have technology and is learning from their tools also retrovation? What about innovation through biomimicry (learning from nature itself)?
Also, supposing someone proposes the government cooks in bulk and distributes 3 free meals per day via community centres (schools, hospitals, gyms etc.) to all citizens, thereby saving considerable costs for everyone (and time, effort: meal-planning, shopping, prepping, washing dishes etc). I guess such a proposal (or perhaps any policy proposal) would be an example of a technology? This would be an extension of a well-known principle of bulk-cooking but would it be retrovation unless I could find specific examples from history where people tried it?
JMG, you replied: “I’ve seen the occasional article on small hot-air dirigibles; the hot air balloon is a mature technology these days, and so a hot air blimp ought to be possible. Comments?”
Yes, indeedy! The first step in my mind is to compare the lifting power of hydrogen, helium, and hot air. Very approximately those numbers are:
* H2: 114 oz/100 ft.3
* He: 105 oz/100 ft.3
* Hot air (60º F outside air temperature, inside air temperature 210º F): 28 oz/100 ft.3
So for a single-person (pilot 200 lbs.) airship with pretty elegant structure and fairly lightweight bag (say 100 lbs. bag and structure total), your volume would need to be:
* H2: ~4500 ft.3
* He: ~4800 ft.3
* Hot Air: ~20,000 ft.3
To give some reality data points, the small one-person airship I helped build in 1984 was about 6,000 ft.3, and a small single-person hot-air balloon is about 25,000-35,000 ft.3. (and has an expected flight duration of 1 to 1.5 hrs.)
OK. If it’s a blimp, it needs to have propulsion to make it go forward. This adds weight! So perhaps DOUBLE the volumes listed above, unless you’re going to pedal it (which we did with our blimp) and when pedaling your top speed is barely above a fast walk; you’ll want an engine!
The hot-air blimp will need to carry propane, for both the engine and for the burner. Not unreasonable to expect a fuel burn of 30-40 gallons per hour. Yikes! For bonus points: the faster you go the more the airship sheds heat! Moar propane!
Finally, what happens when you get to your destination? With Helium and Hydrogen, you need a crew of two or three people to monitor the blimp 24 x 7, and perhaps a mooring mast. With hot air, it deflates! The following day means firing up the blimp’s burners to inflate the bag all over again. MUCH moar propane!
My friends and I did a lengthy design session to look at building a hot-air blimp with an advanced insulative bag/skin. We concluded we could make a blimp which was FAR better than any previous hot-airship BUT that didn’t solve the “deflate overnight” problem unless you used hundreds of gallons of propane/day to keep it inflated, and it was still quite a big bigger than an H2 or He airship which of course meant it had more in-flight drag and required a bigger engine requiring even more fuel.
Ultralight aircraft (which I also worked on in the 1980s) are SO MUCH simpler than airships, with performance nearly an order of magnitude better (I exaggerate, but still…). So the question would be: what would a retrovial ultralight look like? A fabric-winged paraglider? Fixed wing with wooden structure? No matter what, the powerplant is the crux of the problem.
Retrovial airliners? IMHO they’ll end up looking like DC-3s, which are useful enough as long as you don’t mind being grounded when the weather is a bit iffy and you are OK only going 200 MPH with a max range of, say, 1600 miles. No non-stop flights from the USA to Australia with that solution…
There seems to be growing interest in hand sewing. Two recent books are Make, Sew and Mend by Bernadette Banner, and The Handsewn Wardrobe by Louisa Owen Sonstroem.
Early, all metal sewing machines are in great demand among sewists.
Dont buy the aluminium coffee makers, go for stainless steel.
when my actual 1970s tractor got to the point of my working on it for three hours for every four hours of using it, my wife convinced my to get a new tractor – like your Canadian example, Landini make some stone simple tractors, no computers, no aircon, the only electric bit is the fuel pump. Yay for oldtech tractors.
We also have a city friend who collects stuff off cleanups, with a particuar bent for 30+ year old sewing machines. When we had the big fires a few years ago, we were able to give seven people who’d lost everything a nice new/old reliable sewing machine to get them mending again. Yay for oldtech sewing machines.
I’m still trying to get old stationary engines mated to piston pumps and running off woodgas for water pumping.
Ditto charcoal retorts for making fuel for my half built forge.
Yay for having more stuff to do than I can ever finish in my own lifetime!
Florida and JMG: The abacus, especially its Japanese form, the soroban, has a well-developed technique and literature. Search your favorite bookseller for ‘soroban’ or ‘Japanese Abacus’ and you’re set. I happen to have ”Japanese Abacus Use & Theory’ by Kojima, first published in 1960. I’d wager any title would get you going just fine.
–Lunar Apprentice
If you pick up an original Nintendo Entertainment System from the 80s and plug it into a CRT TV (“boob tube”), you’ll find that pressing the A button causes Mario to jump instantly. Whereas if you play newer games on a standard LCD screen with a Bluetooth-connected controller, there’s a noticeable delay between when you press a button and when you see a response on the screen.
For latency-sensitive genres like fighting games and rhythm-action games, it’s almost impossible to play the old games on newer systems. Old-school gamers know this, which is why there are still diehard fans of decades-old games like Super Smash Bros who still cart around bulky CRT TVs for their tournaments.
The computer programmer Dan Luu actually has a great breakdown of how latency has gotten worse over the years: https://danluu.com/input-lag/
Almost forgot: You can search your favorite merchandizer (perhaps named after a river) for ‘soroban’, and get the item itself cheap.
Ambrose 109
>whether drinking cold water is bad for you
Anecdote
Some years ago, my husband Jeff was getting excruciating, debilitating headaches daily. We tried eliminating a number of things he felt could be causing the headaches.
It was months later, I said, “You know what we haven’t thought to eliminate, is that the water haaving an icy temperate.” He started to drink room temperature water, and presto chango, no more headaches. Zilch. He turned into a convert of room-temperature water.
Tap water from faucets often comes out of the spout colder than tap water. Add some hot water. one way to deal with the situation is to fill a bottle with water; drink it “tomorrow,” after the water has a chance to warm up. What’s strange is that the overnight water didn’t the slight unpleasant after-taste anymore.
So, yeah, Jeff’s experience was the cold temperature of the water was harmful,— it was freezing his brain. He stopped drinking icy water. No more headaches.
√ Ice water damages.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Somebody already mentioned Low-Tech Magazine. You’ll find some well-researched articles about old technologies there.
A few other thoughts:
– Darning/mending is a great way to make things last when money is tight. Promising to become popular again.
– Basket-weaving and a suite of related technologies from twisting fiber into cords to knotting those cords into nets. These are perhaps some of the oldest human technologies, and remain both highly useful and feasible for use with locally-sourced materials almost anywhere on earth.
– Using simple machines to move heavy things. It’s a job that still needs to be done, even when diesel-powered hydraulic equipment is not available.
Embarrassingly I’m 36 years old and have never even heard of flameless cookers.
Really interesting post. Would be delighted to see a book on this from you.
Hey JMG
On the subject of “Electroculture”, I recently found this amazing article this morning.
https://uwm.edu/news/uwm-engineer-discovers-a-way-to-turn-used-ev-batteries-into-fertilizer/
Essentially, an engineer from UWM found that it’s possible to use a chemical process involving ion exchange with potassium to convert old lithium car batteries into chemicals for fertiliser. Apparently it would not only be cheaper to do this than recycle the batteries, it would also reduce the need for importing chemical fertiliser from overseas.
Hey JMG
Related to Slide-rules, the Sector/Proportional Compass is another calculation tool which would be very relevant to your “Technonomicon”. Furthermore, there are already some people who are trying to revive this technology for use in woodwork. Lost Art Press and a few allied authors and craftsman ,such as Jim Tolpin, are one of the major contributors to the revival of this amazing tool.
I’ve used a paper cutout version of a sector before, but I don’t think that is enough to justify me writing anything about it, but it occurred to me that maybe you could contact Lost Art Press about Sectors directly. Their entire business is reviving old woodworking techniques, and they print their books with a mid-sized publisher, so I think they would have much sympathy for your work.
https://blog.lostartpress.com/?s=Sector
Sgage#132
The culprit of our exigence for shaving our face was of Roman general called Mario ,who reformed the army in the perfect killing machine wich conquered the Mediterranean world. And the cause for forbid the bear and long hair was that these supose an inmense vulnerabilty in hand-to-hand combat.
# Note 2026-07-30 09h04s42
I strongly recommend moxibustion (moxa), a healing modality akin to acupuncture, but with a long history of home treatment in China, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia. Traces of this have been found in Finland, Jordan, Africa and North America as well, but is most systematically described in Japan, where until recently, many people would own a manual on how to do it, using it as a folk treatment for themselves and their family.
A good place to start would be Moxafrica’s field manual:
https://www.moxafrica.org/field-medicine
https://www.moxafrica.org/moxa-manual
Books:
Moon at the Window: Reframing Moxa for Today and Tomorrow by Merlin Young ISBN-13: 978-1068630699
The Moon over Matsushima: Insights into Moxa and Mugwort by Merlin Young ISBN: 978-1916327955
Moxibustion: A Modern Clinical Handbook by Lorraine Wilcox ISBN: 978-1891845499
Moxibustion: The Power of Mugwort Fire by Lorraine Wilcox ISBN: 978-1891845468
The Lost Art of Jôsetsu-Hô Moxibustion: Finding Effective Moxa Points with String Measuring Book by Felip Caudet ISBN: 978-1068381416
Moxibustion is a vast field, with many different styles. One interesting modern adaptation is Jôsetsu-Hôm that only uses some string.
Blogpost: https://orankivity.com/abdominal-pain/
The undisputed master of moxibustion in Japan was Isaburo Fukaya, he saved many lives with the contents of a box he had made himself from cardboard. A biography is available in Spanish: Isaburo Fukaya: The Master of Japanese Moxibustion by Felip Caudet ISBN: 978-8409512119
I is also noteworthy that the material used for moxibustion is Artemisia Vulgaris, a plant that is found almost everywhere in the world, and that can easily be cultivated on a larger scale, or gathered in one’s proximity.
JMG,
This post got me excited. I’ve been thinking of doing something like this recently. To suggest retro technologies I have personal experience with I will mention as others have, slide rules and log tables and hand calculation generally. I have a collection of log tables from a book called The Engineer’s Companion I bought in a Tucson used book shop in 2017. It was written by one Mott Souders and was published by Wiley in 1966. It also includes a number of integral solutions and discussions of various engineering equations from mechanical engineering up through radioactivity.
Also, radio, specifically radio using discrete electrical components. The best book about RF and electrical engineering theory I ever read was Elements of Radio by Abraham and William Marcus. I have the Fourth Edition published by Prentice-Hall from 1959. It starts with really simple concepts and builds up to making receivers and transmitters while giving the skills that can be applied to other electrical projects. If you want to get really DIY with components there is The Voice of the Crystal and Instruments of Amplification published in 1999 and 2003 respectfully by H. Peter. Friedrichs. The first book tells you how to make crystal radio receivers from junk lying around, while the second tells you how to make vacuum tubes and transistors, again from junk lying around. Finally I’d add Drake’s Radio Cyclopedia by Federick J. Drake, an encyclopedic compendium of radio circuit design and construction and operation. My edition was published in 1928 and was published by Kingsport Press. Its circuit designs are worth their weight in gold for the communications experimenter.
On another tack, literally, I would recommend Sailing the Farm by Kenneth Neumeyer, published by Ten Speed Press in 1981. The book details how to turn a small sailboat into a more self sufficient cruising vehicle. How to build water distilleries for your boat, how to grow small herbs and crops to help with nutrition on long voyages, how to make solar ovens that work well at sea. Even recipes using sea plants! This book really got me thinking about very different forms of human ecology in the future, as someone who is an amateur sailor.
Best,
JZ
@ Joan #47
I, for one, would be exceedingly interested in whatever further information (links, recipe, etc) to the “make cramps go away forever” herbal protocol.
I will add that herbal remedies for menstrual issues, for contraception, and for other gynecological issues, seem to cycle from being popularly available in general knowledge to being pushed into the territory of “forbidden knowledge”. However all of these are of huge interest to future generations, because there is no doubt that pharmacological products, which are (among other things) dependent upon highly complex supply chains, as well as cheap fossil fuels, and whatever we think about their benefits or harms, will go away when their production can no longer be sustained.
@ Tyler # 70
The beauty of Austrian scythe technology is that you can change out the blades, giving you options ranging from a long, meadow-mowing blade to a short, sturdy, clean up around buildings and fences blade.
I hesitate to link to a commercial site, but although I shop here, I have no connection with the business. With our host’s permission, this page will give you an idea of the broad range of easily changed blades available for your everyway adjustable Austrian scythe. 🙂
https://www.fruithillfarm.com/tools/scythes-sickles-and-accessories.html
Another buyer of your forthcoming book here, and I sure hope its title will be The Technonomicon!
As for accursed and heretical technology, may I interest you in Viktor Schauberger and his revitalizing water technologies (among others). Two websites with basic information about him that I found are https://schauberger.co.uk/ and https://www.svpwiki.com/Schauberger (has links and sources at the bottom). Since a big part of the Long Descent will be to mop up the environmental mess we’ve made, I think his technologies could be quite important.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic of water, I think everyone should figure out if they have a talent for dowsing. And if you have, learn everything you can about it.
Fiber arts: with the long descent, I think a lot of stretchy fabrics that rely on petrochemical fibers like elasthan etc. will go away, but knitting is not the only way you can produce elastic garments. There is an old weaving fabric called Sprang which caught my interest. https://www.sprangart.com/ I’m currently still gathering information, and plan to start spranging (no idea if that’s the verb, but it should be) this coming winter.
JMG, I know that you want to focus on what everyone can do individually, but I feel we should at least touch on two wider aspects of this project. The first is how to create an information network that preserves this knowledge, so these technologies don’t go the way of Roman concrete. I’m not just talking of AI quite literally devouring irreplaceable old books. One of the most shocking experiences I had recently was that there is no interest in some old books I wanted to sell – my late mother had been interested in small farming, and so I had inherited books about raising goats, ducks, gardening, etc. from her. I live in an apartment, and I don’t see myself having the opportunity to put the knowledge in those books to use myself anymore (which greatly depresses me), but I thought at least those books could be of use to someone else out there. Not so. They’re still sitting on my shelves because as a bibliophile, I just can’t bring myself to throw them in the trash. But I’m childless (not “childfree,” because it wasn’t by choice), so I have noone to leave them to, either. I sometimes wonder if we couldn’t open a European chapter of the Green Wizards, and have some sort of library that we could bequeath our books to…
And the other thing is how to, well, not make a living, but at least get some kind of cottage industry going without being taxed into oblivion by the state (or being regulated into oblivion). So, at least educating oneself about alternative economic, err, modalities. Like bartering systems (which ties into information networking that maybe doesn’t solely rely on the internet). Or stuff like The Miracle of Wörgl https://unterguggenberger.org/the-free-economy-experiment-of-woergl-1932-1933/ that used, extremely successfully, the Free Money ideas of Silvio Gesell.
Someone mentioned hypnotism, so I’d like to point out that archive.org still has some fine books about Mesmerism, and what I’ve read so far makes it look very interesting as a healing technique. It seems to work directly with life energy, without any spoken suggestions, like hypnotism. By the way, self-hypnosis (for example, autogenic training) also seems to be something everyone should know how to use.
Lastly, @Ken #82: methinks the problems that we’re creating solutions for are not that far off anymore: https://archive.ph/pXzO4 (Secret Plans – Federal Network Agency Prepares Germany for Prolonged Power Outages) The article is in German, so you need to use a translation program. The interesting thing about this is that they wanted to keep this completely under wraps, so as not to cause a panic in the population. Now, of course, they’re vigorously denying that there is a problem, or that there will be a problem in the near future, or, like, ever!!!11!1!
Forgot to add: your series about Radionics that you posted on Dreamwidth a while ago should definitely be part of the Technonomicon!
Okay, I have more thoughts (I’m on vacation, LOL). Somehow, the first things people think of when it comes to survival technologies for the long descent are gardening and beer brewing, and while those are important, there are a million things that are currently produced in big factories in China that would be sorely missed if said factories stopped producing (or had to focus on their domestic market for some reason). So even if there isn’t a page dedicated to every single item, maybe a list could be shown to get people thinking of what they could learn to make themselves, and then spread that knowledge around. For example, mechanical clocks; brushes, from hairbrushes to toothbrushes, to the sturdy things you use to scrub your floors; ink; shoes; cups and plates and cutlery; mattresses. There are videos and I’m sure there are also books on glass-blowing and metalworking (for example, https://www.farmstandapp.com/638797/8-supplies-for-building-a-diy-outdoor-forge-in-your-backyard/).
And probably look into how to make the things that make the things, i.e. machines. Yes, you can collect old typewriters and treadle sewing machines. But once those become rare, you might be out of luck. Better to know how to make them yourself, no?
I also think that electricity should have its own chapter, because if you start looking into Tesla’s inventions, you’re certainly entering accursed and heretic territory. Disclaimer, I have no idea which of his ideas are simply too fringe to have ever been acceptable, and which ones are just bonkers.
The future of electricity lies in decentralization, I think – each household generating it for their own needs, while ‘the grid’ will increasingly be for only those the government sees as indispensable. I found an interesting title on archive.org, Keeping the lights on : towards sustainable electricity by Walt Patterson, but like so many books, this one has “borrow unavailable” slapped on it, so while the table of contents looks interesting, I don’t know if it’s relevant to this discussion. Just putting it out there in case someone has it.
@ Tyler A (#70)
Here in Japan we would use a handheld sickle-like blade for cutting weeds near buildings or around fenceposts.
Of course, it usually means squatting or kneeling to get them.
There is a picture of one at this link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/163504263974
The one pictured is the most common type these days, with a serrated blade. It can cut anything up to small twigs, provided you grasp the top of the weeds in your left hand while you cut.
For those who do video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JlKaNzl2L_s
(I’ll stop now…)
The “botijo”, clay bowl for to drink cold wáter without electrical devices.
The Botijo – I AM Benalmádena https://share.google/7zb9RqDuo88580YlG
Thanks very much for this discussion and initiative JMG.
There is a lot of interest in low tech in France, with a number of possible useful sources:
– the Low Tech Lab, based I believe out of Concarneau in Brittany, but with many branches in France and a number of other countries: https://lowtechlab.org/en. Their Encyclowpedia [sic] page (https://lowtechlab.org/en/encyclowpedie) allows search of their databases for initiatives, events, resourses and tutorials – mainly in French but with quite a lot of English content.
– the Paleo Energy project produced the book Retrotech & Lowtech: How Forgotten Patents Can Shake the Future, which looks at 60 energy-related historical innovations. I have a physical copy, published by Alelier21, ISBN 978-2-9574451-9-6, but I suspect no longer in print. You can see 25 pages, including contents, here: https://www.calameo.com/books/007236341999b9025a940
– French engineer Phillippe Bihouix, well-known in France, has written and presented on the topic of low tech for a number of years. There is a post about him and a translation of one of his articles here: https://ecosophic-isles.org/2019/07/31/philippe-bihouix-low-tech-and-technoscience-utopias/, and my translation of his ‘The Age of Low tech’ is here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-age-of-low-tech
Mailing with doves.
A Dove if is transported far away of the place in wich It was born will try to return of this place traveling distances of hundred kilometres.
https://www.realfede.com/que-es-la-colombofilia/
I didn’t happen to use a book; enthusiasts published various online guides, and that’s what I used to start off. Archive.org happens to have copies of the two I grabbed back in the day:
https://dn710000.ca.archive.org/0/items/abacus-handbook-2004/Abacus_Handbook_2004.pdf
https://ia800505.us.archive.org/32/items/abacus-soroban/soroban.pdf
Maybe someone else has a good recommendation for a physical book that teaches the techniques?
And @Chronojourner raised an excellent point — merchants / traders would do well to have one on hand.
I’m with Al: I think humanure/nightsoil is an abandoned tech that’ll see a resurgence in the future. It was tried on a large scale by municipal sewer systems, but there is a major problem where… there’s no way to keep people from dumping toxic chemicals down their drains. In order to work at scale, collection can’t happen at the municipal sewer level. You have to have a way to avoid industrial effluent, incompatible cleaning products, and improper disposal of toxic wastes… which probably aren’t avoidable if you’re relying on collecting from any kind of massive, attached plumbing systems.
But, if the feedstock becomes valuable enough (and it certainly will, if we lose cheap chemical fertilizers), then it becomes simply a collection logistics problem… which was previously solved in more than one city around the world by house-to-house collection services. Don’t think that has been done since horse-and-wagon days, and I’d bet we could improve a lot on that now, starting from where we left off. No reason a household cesspit couldn’t be a minor income stream.
@Watchflinger: I bought my 10yo son a Versalog from a thrift shop. I downloaded a manual for it, printed it, gave it to him, and within a week he was using it joyfully (we homeschool, and I don’t allow calculators on math work). You’ve got this!
@ Ambrose #119
“And then there is “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” I knew a guy who studied it in China. He thought that it lost whatever genuine benefits it had, in the process of being codified by government bureaucracies (with an eye to what might be considered “scientific”–or even better, a native Chinese science). Also, he said there was so much cheating–including by the professors, e.g. for writing papers–that the whole system has to be considered corrupted. Outside of China, TCM practitioners have been known to do things like, mix over-the-counter medicines into their brews, so it’s hard for me to see it as anything more than snake oil.”
Actually, you are right, it is 100% snake oil – as is every other style of medical treatment. What actually “works” is a non-replicable (although it often “rhymes”) three way encounter between a patient, a practitioner of any style of medicine (providing they are trained, attentive and experienced), and whatever particular “snake oil” that style of medicine purveys, providing both the practitioner and the patient have personal narrative and symbolic reasons to resonate with it.
You are also quite right to say that what is known in the west as “Traditional Chinese Medicine” (or TCM) was codified more or less recently as a bureaucratic project to take it out of its former lineage and apprentice based transmission and make it teachable in universities offering credentials.
With all that said, there is sufficient “spookiness” in the systems I have been taught, the tools I have learned to use, and my experience in applying and using them in my encounters with patients, to know that when people benefit, and they do, and come back for more, and they do, and tell other people to try it, and they do, I have never once needed to pay for any kind of advertising.
Tolerably often, “snake oil” is an effective resonator of the music that plays between practitioner and patient.
Forgoten tricks for protection against intrusions in a home.
https://youtu.be/K8I1BbARQMc?is=rHmRCk0RGqV09HGI
Casting metal items at home:
There is a Simplicity to casting once you have a setup. Metals melt quickly with the right equipment. Has there been a effort to minimize costs by dialing in natural Gas or propane usage for smelting different metals?
You can get a small smelting furnace for $100 USD. You also need a crucible, $30, though I’m not sure again how much effort has been made to produce cheap crucibles for multiple uses. And the furnaces are just refractory brick and steel containets with a hole for natural gas. Someone in a family or community who has done the preliminary study of melting points of different metals, smelting different Metals together to produce bronze for example, would be in the position to learn to use a furnace effectively.
Scrap copper from renovations, melting down antiques, unneeded implements, into new and useful items like door handles, pruning knives, coat hooks, bottle openers (that last). The caster needs to understand how to make green casting sand ( reusable once the sand and bentonite clay is mixed together) and the flasks that the green sand to go into , which in practice is also not difficult to learn,. The green sand is incredibly expensive if you don’t make it yourself… but making it is just mixing two different types of materials together that are much cheaper if you buy them separately.
Alot of this scrap metal ends up in the landfill or is sent to a scrap yard.
Trying to conceptualize a casting apparatus within a household that functions more like a standard Appliance, in the way that the back yard barbecue is a standard Appliance, instead of a cobbled together Hobbycraft. There is a big safety piece to this practice that could be reduced perhaps with more thought put into household technology.
There’s also rubber casting which I have no exp in, but it’s highlighted as a craft linked to casting small metal items in this book:
How to Cast Small Metal and Rubber Parts
By William A. Cannon
Not sure if these three things count as they’re not really “abandoned”, as I use them, and they’re available now. However they’re low-tech, little-known, and beat the more popular high-tech versions by a mile:
1. Coffee. You don’t need expensive machines, cafetieres or percolators. Just brew coffee in a stainless steel tea infuser – one with small holes, like one of these: https://www.kusmitea.com/en/products/infuser-with-folding-handles?variant=52333260046679&country=GB. Easy, quick, easy to clean, and saves on coffee – 1 scoop coffee, pour on boiling water, wait 2 minutes, and you’re done. I have no idea why anyone would use anything else.
2. Coffee grinder. I inherited something similar to this from my dad – ok takes a bit more elbow-grease to use than the electronic whizzy version, but it does a good job. I use it for grinding spices: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1612701573/vintage-coffee-grinder-wooden-coffee
3. Camping stove. You don’t need Jetboils or compressed butane Camping Gaz cannisters. A pot, a pot shield, and an alcohol burner made out of a tin-can is all you need when you’re out and about, available from this man-in-his-shed: https://speedsterstoves.co.uk/alcohol/meths-burners.html
Just my 2c worth. (I have no affiliation to any of these sites 🙂 )
I’d like to throw dowsing into the ring. A “technology” that belongs in the third stage. I have used it successfully to find a productive water well, only 100′ or so from the drilling companies first, unsuccessful try.
@Charlie Obert #4
I keep one of my dad’s slide rules in the glove compartment of my 15-year-old truck to check the gas mileage every time I fill up.
So I know for a quick check that I still get almost 10.1 L/100km on the highway even with a full load and about 12 L/100Km when I’m just driving around the city. These numbers are comparable to so-called ‘green’ vehicles that cost at least twice as much as mine and win awards for “Best in Class” at auto shows and yet aren’t as good.
It isn’t even that hard to work out the fractional value when it falls between two of the tick marks.
JMG had a lively discussion about this very subject on the ADR a long, long time ago.
Bruce
Watchfinger #133,
Your comment makes me hope there is a section in the book for low/ forgotten entertainment technologies. How many people these days know how to make a musical instrument by hand, for example? Maybe a revival of handmade toys & games?
I had a conversation a number of years ago with a writer who was well known in the peak oil space at the time and she told me she had no concerns about her son staying gainfully employed during descent because he was a musician with the gift of entertaining people.
How about toys that work without batteries?
Plush dolls, building blocks, balls – the simpler, the better. Not only are these the cheapest toys on the market, they’re the ones that get children to use (and thereby strengthen through exercise) their own imaginations and creative skills. The pricey flashy ‘smart’ ones can only do what’s been programmed into them by the designers, with the result that children who play with them exclusively develop the mindset that creativity and imagination are external stimuli rather than crucial life skills. Gee, I wonder how decades of that has influenced our society’s rate of technological development……..
My favorite toy growing up was Meccano. (For the uninitiated, that’s a box of metal and plastic bits in a variety of standardized shapes and sizes with a pile of screws and strings and rubber bands to put them together with.) Want a toy crane? Build one however you want it with the parts you have. Want a toy car? Build one however you want it. Want a toy train? Build it. Want a bus, a house, a kangaroo? Build it. And if you ran out of parts, you could stop at the local hobby shop on your way home from school and buy more – they sold the little wheels and strips and screws and washers in little separate packages in those days. [ Okay, okay, I confess: at the age of 62, I still have the stuff and I still play with it. Try THAT with any ‘more modern’ toy on the store shelves today! ]
JMG,
Low Tech for the wellness crowd, it’s really hard to beat bodyweight training (pushuos, pull-ups, squats, lunges, etc…) combined with a heavy sandbag for strength building vs expenses in iron and machine materials. Irons and machines will always cost more, need replacement, and sometimes repairs.
Maybe a singular kettlebell is all you need for iron weights. (You spend about 3 years minimum mastering all the movements with just one of them.)
Lots of aches and pains go away when just a little muscle gets added to your physique.
“Homeopathy doesn’t usually focus on microbes; it’s a body-centered rather than a pathogen-centered healing method, so the usual approach would be to identify herbs or minerals that cause the symptoms you’re trying to treat, and use those.”
That’s the same kind of problem that liberals have with Trump, the Zionists have with “antisemites”, and the woke right have with “ZOG”. The entire medical profession is too obsessed with defeating pathogens and defeating illness, and not enough time on building up the body’s strength as a positive alternative.
Clay Dennis: I operated an elevator once! It was ~50 years ago at the Bay department store in downtown Calgary, and it was the only time I ever saw an elevator that still had a human operator. She let me sit on her stool and run it for a bit, until I skipped a floor and then I was fired. 😀
—
Something from the actual post that I’d meant to comment on the first time: “Nothing, but nothing, gets the defenders of modern scientific orthodoxy into a towering fury faster than suggesting that something that isn’t material can have material effects.”
That’s a little funny to me because, doesn’t your actual *self* count as something that isn’t material having material effects? Not your body, not even your literal brain, but your awareness. The subjective, conscious thing that is *you* — I don’t really know how it can be thought that this amazing thing is “material”. The brain is material, sure, but how could it’s physical workings result in there being a subjective awareness? Some attribute it to the sheer complexity of the brain, but I don’t see how that follows.
I’m no philosopher and this wasn’t particularly well expressed, but I think we all experience something that isn’t material having material effects every time we commit any action at all.
What an exciting and useful project! Throughout my 13 years of reading your blog, I have learned an incredible amount (including tons about retro technologies). Thanks to you, I write with fountain pens, have a manual typewriter, listen to vinyl records (which my teens LOVE), have a push lawnmower, scythe, a Lehman’s drying rack (massive and built like a tank), use candles for lighting in the winter (and have made clay oil lamps for fun), have a safety razor, make/use rocket stoves, raise/breed meat rabbits, and will hopefully be learning to sew on my great-grandmother’s treadle machine soon. This blog inspired me to take a letterpress class (my 1st one was in college) and look into mimeographs (many thanks to those who are trying to revive this technology). I’m now focusing on woodprints and encouraging my artistic teen to spend more time on zines, pen drawings, and woodcuts rather than drawing through computer programs. Your mention of Hay Box (fireless cooker) inspired me to start using a cooler filled with towels to finish my pot of soup in (especially on hot days). Looking forward to watching this project grow!
Chronojourner # 58:
Very interesting. I’ve seen wind towers in photos and TV documentaries, and they seem very useful to relief hottest days in desert and near desertic zones.
In addition to these old architectural technologies for being colder in dry and hot climates, I tend to think (if I’m right) that brick and stone domes, and tunnel vaults were mainly made up to cover wide spaces between buildings walls; but I also guess they were used to refresh ancient buildings (indeed, ancient churches and another buildings with those roofs are colder in summer than outdoors…I can remember first tunnel vaults were built in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (hot places).
————————————————————————————
Mary B. # 63:
“Diderot’s work is surely public domain by now, unless the French govt. were to object to use of French cultural patrimony.”
It’s possible first world Encyclopedia is nowadays public domain…Thank you for your comment. By the way, I think the old paper encyclopedies obsolescence is another example of fake progress, if you look at today online Wikipedia, with its usual mistakes and biases (cough). And Internet won’t last forever (I don’t know wether to laugh or cry).
————————————————————————
Joseph # 67:
“Before industrial agriculture, farmers routinely maintained evolving seed populations that adapted to place.”
I know since some years ago that near my town there’s a scientific facility where some ancient seeds are saved, but it isn’t opened to a general public. However, there’s also in my town library a small “old school” seeds “bank” for everybody who want to use it, under some legal conditions (it’s public opened).
————————————————————-
Alan # 91:
Hemp was used not much time ago, for example, to make strong strings for ships. Beyond the IMHO artificial controversy about hemp varieties used as a recreational drug, another hemp varieties are good for another uses like I’ve written before, to replace plastic strings in an oil scarcity future.
————————————————————–
JMG # 99:
Thank you for your suggestion, I’ll “survey” my social context to see what “old school” technologies will older people had prefered to be saved…
—————————————–
(To be continued)
I HIGHLY recommend Joseph Lofthouse’s book “Landrace Gardening.” Every community needs people growing regionally adapted seeds and this book explains how to do this. If there are young people in your life who are interested in plants, definitely encourage them to start their own seed businesses.
@Joseph Lofthouse
My sunroots that I bought from you are growing beautifully and I am SO excited about the tomato/radish mix. I live in VA (zone 7) and ended up planting them super late, but they are growing fast. I’ve added dill in the empty spots and am really excited about this polyculture. Thanks for all that you do!
JMG,
The car to bring back from the past if fuel economy, simplicity and practicality are your goal is not the 66 Ford Mustang Fastback. It is actually the car the mustang was based on, the Ford Falcon. The Falcon was the brainchild of Robert McNamara (yes that McNamara) and was designed specifically for good fuel economy , low cost and versatility. In its most economical form it could get 32 miles per gallon and was sold all over the world. Unlike the Mustang it was available with 4 doors, as a station wagon and as a open back ” Ranchero”.
The Mustang was created by Lee Iacocca by changing the sheet metal on the Falcon to look sportier and dropping in a small V8 engine in place of the Falcon’s fuel sipping and famously durable inline 6. This cosmetic trick is what made Iacocca his bones in the car industry and he would do it again later in the 1970’s when he converted the Ford LTD in to the Lincoln Continental Mark IV by extending the sheet metal in front of the radiator by more than a foot, putting on a landau roof and a fake spare tire bulge in the trunk. Car Genius’s like Iacocca is how the US Car industry ran itself in to the ditch with vanity and cosmetics long before over complicated electronics came to haunt them.
The Falcon is probably the last time the US car industry would make a car specifically to suit the needs of an actual American family without any excess, flash, gimmicks or vanity. It was also small and light, by american standards, but specifically designed to hold 6 adults. It is not the most exciting thing to look at , but if it was brought back that could be fixed with no increase in complexity.
Everyone who remembers the 1970’s learned the trick of cutting portion size, in addition to quality, in lieu of raising the U$D cost. The problem is that you can only degrade analog so much before everything starts falling apart.
The “nice” thing about digital is that you can bloat useless, and even detrimental “features” endlessly. And then, if you DO take some of this deliberately imposed waste out, you can call it an “upgrade”. It is also nice to be able to take out some of the good features as well, of course, or spin up a new, generally less-productive, interface. And then you can “rent” back an “update” which will produce profits from something which used to be stable and generally a far better product.
Apple just forced an OS update on me which broke a number of old apps, with valuable data, for which I have no replacement. I am still preferentially running Windows 7 on many computers, if only so I can keep my most important tools running. But it also saves in many other ways to be able to run things without the internet which never needed the internet 25 years ago . . . but now can’t function without it.
Quite a nightmare “future” they piloted us into — by design. But I am almost more resentful of the Consumers — the Eloi to be — who either didn’t read the warning in something like “Brave New World”. Or did . . . and thought that living in chains would look cool . . . or that not living in chains would look old-fashioned.
Ever wonder how the Eloi became the Eloi? Or how all the Matrix-plugged humans got plugged in to The Matrix to begin with? They, mostly, did it to themselves . . . laughing and singing the whole way . . until their mouths were completely stuffed with goodies . . . so nobody could hear them scream.
The Post Office topic:
Well, I can tell you during my youth (near Prehistoric times!) I worked as a temporary postman for a while, but nowadays are bad times for Post Services everywhere, methink. It’s a pity.
—————————————–
Inna # 118:
“I miss seeing wristwatches on people’s wrists. They disappeared in favor of cell phones. Put them back on to mark yourself as an outsider.”
Well, I usually wear a wristwatch in my wrist, and indeed it’s an analog watch…and I’m not very old.
——————————————
I love coffee (which is a contradiction in itself, being myself a former anxious person…), but, unless a weird climatic change allows growing coffee trees in Europe, it seems the end of globalization would end finally with long distance (and cheap) coffee trade. Have you ever heard about “chicory coffee”?
At least in Spain, during last civil war and long postwar times, it was the “poor people coffee”. I’ve tried it sometimes (it’s still sold in some shops here), and it isn’t really a coffee, but IMHO it has a good taste. Maybe it isn’t exactly a technology, but an old school drink.
https://eatbeautiful.net/how-to-make-chicory-coffee-1-ingredient-herbal/
————————————————-
Well, I haven’t found the exact horse-drawn mower I saw in a TV documentary some years ago, but I’ve found in youtube a video about another model used in Spain before modern harvesting machines, in a good condition today…Of course, it can be drawn by a horse or by a mule, like in this video (I’m sorry John, I know you don’t watch videos).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qJPSszMtZ0
Mere mention of an hypotethic horses and mules return to the countryside farms is anathema and blasphemy for all the believers in god Progress, but its a likely option in a future world of oil depletion (animals eat grass and grain, but harvesting machines using biofuels “spend” land for “eating” too, oh, and animals poo is a good fertilizer…).
You occasionally find retro- books in thrift shops, as well as used book stores. Here are a couple that I have found;
L. E. Simpson, M. Weir. The Weaver’s Craft. Dryad Press, Northgates, Leicester, England. 13th Ed 1978
All about looms and handweaving. Dizzying detail.
Thompson JE. A Manual of the Slide Rule. D Van Nostrand, New York. 7th Printing, 1950.
These are likely in public domain. I plan to scan them and upload them to the Internet Archive, if someone else has not yet done it. This can be done without destroying the books! If interested, I can write up steps to do it..
Great project JMG! I’m looking forward to getting this book
I don’t usually post here, but the huglekultur comments brought to mind an article I published in BackHome magazine around the time they decided to fold (2014) You’re welcome to it. They still have some of my pictures up on their archived facebook page https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=601083309981768&set=pb.100046776187095.-2207520000&type=3
We still use the bed to grow various plants and trees.
My husband can share information on blacksmithing. Been doing it for 52 years.
Looking forward to your book.
I guess it’s the full Moon — when I read “Dorthey” the opening scenes appeared in my minds eye, but it could be I was fantasizing about a conversation with people I knew back when, and way back to Indiana, where I grewup, it was pretty flat. Thinking about the big sky over the fields of wheat, the summer humidity like a sauna — unless there were tornadoes — well I never saw one — but if you did, you might take up praying real quick. Kinda like Kansas. I was still in bed semi-dreaming, tearing up at the beauty of it all, back then. I was looking at the fallow field across the road one day thinking, ‘how could anyone pray for another life, one’s miracle enough, just be grateful for this’ The conversation I fantasized had a teaching for me re: my congenital problem with authority, my reactive non-conformity, and my fixed and conflicting natal chart. I was baptized, but never prayed much. I went with T Paine’s ‘providence’ and added some Chuang Tzu’s ‘Inner Chapters’ and some Gregory Bateson and Wendell Berry, William Blake and Norchen Konchog Lhundrob. I’m not trying to confuse the LLM’s, this is all true.
@Carlos #141, I still drive a ’86 Toyota 2 wd pu.
BTW, to be on topic 😀 here’s an article I wrote about sharpening Japanese handsaws with Jay Van ArsDale for “Woodwork” :http://daikudojo.org/ShopTalk/metate_article.htm
I got another one somewhere >?< I wrote, :"Five Practical Handsaw Exercises" about what you can learn from the small Dozuki saws, to the big Oga saw, from Ryoba and from Disston Rip saws. I been meaning to reformat edit redraw illustrations but I mean, who cares really? No one I know anymore. Not worth getting it off the old 486 Platitdidum. Used to have a website: NOKOGIRI on that machine. Used to be able to sit in that position all day.
One thing though, I'm not at the Japanesehandsawsharpener.whatever anymore because I can't remember how to get into it, haha and nobody knows how to edit the page, hoho.
For those of us who do do video, the Popular news/commentary site Breaking Points took notice of AI book shredding this morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c8pmp_OC2s The relevant part begins at 22 min. 56 seconds.
Whatever one might think of Breaking Points, a fairly large portion of the news following public does pay attention to their reports.
JMG, a pocket watch is even more of a statement – just like a baseball hat worn backwards in the communist block in the 80s! They appear to be somewhat trendy. The interested parties seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. There are people looking to make a stylish statement and people who get their hands dirty at work. You, quite appropriately, don’t fit in either of these categories and may just start a retrovation trend. Here is a good review of pocket watches:
https://www.thetrendspotter.net/best-pocket-watches/
On the other hand, $33.86 will get you a Zodiac pocket watch on Etsy:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4397070709/zodiac-pocket-watch-astrology-engraved?ls=s&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=astrological+pocket+watch+for+men&ref=sr_gallery-1-4&sr_prefetch=1&pf_from=search&pro=1&cns=1&content_source=90ab943b-a70b-43dd-9098-2d25460c4451%253ALT2e33a5029ef990e6a394dc0ee81ecd
So… I’ll modify my proposal:
1. People, wear a pocket watch!
2. Let’s adopt a measuring unit to measure the distance from the mainstream to the fringe. Let’s measure this distance in greers, as in “He is about 0.5 greer away from the mainstream”. We can discuss what constitutes this unit.
😉😂😍
What a great topic!
Every year when it’s time to cut the weeds in advance of fire season I haul out my trusty scythe and get to work. It goes through the cursed Himalayan blackberries like butter, while my neighbors wrestle with their deafening, smelly string trimmers, leaving behind them a rain of microplastics. My scythe will last generations; not so the string trimmers. And I always seem to be drinking a beer on my porch while my neighbors still haven’t finished their mowing. They frequently send good-natured mockery my way for being so “old school.”
I spent a goodly part of my career in non-commercial radio, which included a fair amount of live recording work. A lot of the equipment I worked with in my younger years — which was already thirty years old, this being non-commercial radio — is heavily sought after in pro audio circles these days, because it was built to deliver quality sound and last forever. In other words, built with the same philosophy as the autos and washing machines of the same era. A working American-made Ampex 350 tape machine from the early 1960s will fetch a pretty penny these days. I have met many music producers who seek out electronics of the era because they add warmth and an analog feel to the clinical-sounding recordings they make in the digital domain. I’ve read one theory that analog recording (likewise tube-based electronics) adds harmonics to the sound that the human ear finds pleasing, but a scope analysis shows as distortion. Old school!
I never got rid of the large collection of vinyl amassed during my career. One of the most amazing recordings I own is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 with a young Van Cliburn and the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner. This was made in 1963 for RCA, produced by a guy named Richard Mohr with a revered genius recording engineer named Lewis Layton. This is an era of RCA recordings vinyl geeks refer to as “Shaded Dogs,” because the label has shading behind the RCA dog Nipper as he listens to His Master’s Voice. These, too, fetch a hefty price when you can find them. This recording outshines anything I have heard on CD, and it isn’t even stereo.
I have to disagree about cassettes, however. Like MP3s, cassettes were designed for convenience, not quality. The magnetic tape in them is extremely thin and fragile, the mechanism prone to jamming (cue to scene of frustrated stoner pulling miles of tape out of the Craig cassette machine in the dashboard of his AMC Gremlin), the fidelity atrocious. Alas, some retrotech deserves memorial, not revival.
Can’t wait to read the book!
JMG (and anyone interested), the cyclostyle is a form of stencil duplicator developed by David Gestetner. Old ones are far more common in Europe, though you can still find them here. A few years ago, I saw a beautiful one for sale on the German ebay – take a look at this beauty! https://www.mimeographrevival.com/photos/.
Cyclostyles have a double roller-mechanism linked by a silk-screen – they can attain a wonderful resolution and because their registration is really accurate, you can do color-separated print runs to great effect.
If you happen to be in Europe and want to learn how to use one of these (or a related Gestetner), Erwin Blok, in the Netherlands, inherited the Gestetner family’s collection (essentially) because he had such a love for and developed the skill of working with and repairing the machines. He runs workshops and sells machines (and stockpiles supplies): https://www.flickr.com/photos/westparkroad/3162925423/.
Unfortunately, these machines suffer from the same supply bottlenecks as any other stencil duplicator, though right now, the biggest bottleneck (the stencil itself, as I mentioned) has the workaround of using thermal stencils (burned either with a Risograph machine, a label printer, a tattoo-stencil printer, a thermal fax machine, or a small portable thermal printer like a Brother PocketJet). You can get really high quality images on a thermal stencil (https://forum.mimeographrevival.com/viewtopic.php?t=40). You just can’t make the stencils themselves at home or in a home workshop.
I guess I’m well on the road to Retrovation! I shave with a straight razor bought about 50 years ago, use “cordless” drills inherited from my father, and grind my coffee by hand.
A very useful book to have is Tools and Their Uses, published by the US Navy. If you wonder what that odd tool in the toolbox is used for, this is the book for you. If you wonder about the best way to use a hacksaw, this is the book for you.
My high school age son just purchased an “ancient” xbox360 gaming console from the early 2000’s off of facebook marketplace for $40 (I was as shocked as you to discover that 2006 was twenty years ago!). He took it home, opened it up, and with guidance from some youtube videos, he was able to get the dust cleaned out and the console working like new.
When I asked him about his purchase, he told me;
1) Buying it used was much cheaper (obviously). New consoles can run into the $400s
2) He’s suspicious of the subscription model that xbox moved to. Xbox moved away from selling physical discs, to the extent that current consoles don’t even have a disc drive. Gamers must now “buy” their games from an online store. He pointed out that if the company goes under, no one will be there to keep the site working and he will have lost all his games. He wants to possess the physical disc! He also said he appreciates the aesthetic of the iconic lime green xbox disc boxes.
3) The games can be bought for $5-$10 dollars at thrift stores, ebay, or second-hand gaming shops. Games for the current console, with comparable graphics and gameplay, can cost $60-$80 new!
@JMG,
I knew a fellow whose GM-built truck died the electrical death. His theory was that he accidentally made the truck think it was being hotwired and it locked out the ignition– permanently. Not sure if that was the root cause or not, but the thing sure didn’t run in spite of no mechanical issues. The really, really frustrating part is that he wouldn’t dare put a Microsquirt or Speeduino open-source EMS on it as insurance here in Ontario apparently won’t cover any vehicle with such ‘radical’ modifications. Of course one could do it anyway and hope the suits never found out, but he didn’t have that level of risk tolerance. Fair enough.
@Jessica,
What you call a “reverse hybrid” is known in industry as a “series hybrid” — Edison Motors is working on conversion kits for old trucks along those lines, along with new-build semi-trucks that match our host’s philosophy. In fact youc can call it retrovation, as there were series hybrid trucks back in the first age of electric cars at the turn of the last century. Some of them were even made by Edison! As you might probably expect, the hardest part for Edison Motors isn’t the engineering but jumping the regulatory hurdles.
Also, re: cassettes– the only part an amateur would have trouble with is the read/write head. Everything else was DIY-able in the 80s, and tolerably often was. Homemade Hi-Fi was a big thing once upon a time. The tape heads are doable, too, but you have to make them with 10-micron precision and that’s not easy. I’ve only heard of a couple people ever trying.
@Peter: Thanks for the recommendation on Tools and Their Uses, I just ordered a used copy for my kids!
Hi @Annette2,
Indeed, the person I mentioned is Dolly Freed and her book Possum Living. Besides, I have just read that rabbit meat being lean is excellent for making jerky. For information regarding starting rearing rabbits, I have found The Integral Urban House very useful.
Ottergirl at #131
I enjoy your comments (regular readers, rare commenter here). I did have a bit of a chortle at your comment about your grandparents 1960s house with the small closet and the one car garage. We live in a house like that and it has been a huge obstacle to being a DIYer attempting homesteading skills for the decline. My conclusion is that those houses were built for 1 income families where the wife could go to the A&P grocery store frequently and heat up TV dinners. Some of our challenges with the post-war suburban house:
-No closets or cabinets big enough to hold a canner or place to put canning jars. My canning tools are in the garage, basement, and under a counter where I had to cut out the faux wood paneling to reach the usable space. Needless to say, I don’t can much because it’s hard to get everything together for small batches.
-We retrofitted in a woodstove which now takes up 20% of our living room. Hard to build community when you can only invite over 2 people at a time because there isn’t room for them to sit.
-We use the one car garage to hold the woodpile and as an garden storage shed. We have no breezeway, porch or other covered areas.
-My husband has no where to put his tools or set up a construction bench to do house fix-it projects so we time them for summer when a folding table can go up in the driveway. The delay can be a problem depending on what needs fixed or built.
Because of our challenges I have a big interest in how houses are set up for decline and would rate the post-war Cottage/Ranch as the least ‘retrofittable’. I almost wonder if it would be easier to retrofit a McMansion for off the grid homesteading life if you could get a woodstove in there. I know they built them ‘tight’ with the insulation so you’d have to sort that out but I’d rather have that trouble and more square footage for all the tools and work needed to garden/do construction/have multigen households etc. Somewhat tongue in cheek I nominate all the PBS This Old House canon to the retrovation discussion.
Clay Dennis 128
> Another one is grocery boys ( or girls) who push the cart of groceries out to your car for you, unload it, and return the cart to the store.
And teenagers (11 to 18), usually boys, creating their own micro-business mowing lawns and removing snow. (such a person could use their client’s snowblower and, for a fee, keep the machine maintained and fueled. In the old days, it was snow SHOVELING.) Clientele would be elderly people. This would help elderly folks live in their homes as long as possible. Payment would be, well, that goes unsaid. Clients would not only be elderly people who are still in their homes; but elders would be a good age-group from which to start. Most of all, prices would be AFFORDABLE, according to dickering beforehand.
Dickering/haggling was an art-form I remember from as late as the 1960s, although I can‘t recall where. Maybe a place like the Fulton Fish market in Manhattan. Dickering/haggling was common in New York City from at least the 1860s to 1950s, likely earlier. It was in markets all over, but NYC I am familiar with firsthand.
Dickering/haggling is something that was lost, and will come back as a retrovation.
Flyers/handbills* left at people’s homes (like taped to a front door, or left under a stone on a porch), which was the old-fashioned way of getting word out to the teens’ neighbors, after that, word-of-mouth.
* Flyers/handbills are usually one sheet of 8.5in x 11in paper. Writing is only on one side. It is a simple advertisement telling the person’s name who wants to earn a bit of cash, what skills the teenager has that they are willing to offer a neighbor, and contact information. No company names because the person’s name and his/her growing reputation is foremost. One doesn’t wallpaper over one‘s “good name” or “good reputation” for nothing, assuming they deserve a good name and good reputation.
Dover Publications had affordable picture books of such handbills used in
American cities which were used from 1870 to 1920. Some of the black-and-white graphics were a hoot. I believe the original owners, Hayward and Blanche Cinker were either Hungarian or Austrian, and their homebase in the 1940s was Queens, New York, USA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Publications
Payment is agreed upon ahead of time, and the client has payment ready immediately after the task is finished. The teens knocks at the door when finished, and client hands him you-know-what.
For that matter, a retrovation would be to get rid of lawns. Replace grass native plants of the region, and have a food garden. Lawns are horribly destructive,— it would be appropriate that lawns be outlawed.
If I remember my history, lawns came about in the 1800s as a hoity-toity symbol announcing how rich one was. The bigger and greener the lawn, (the bigger and greener the gardens; the grander the house) the higher male head-of-household’s status. Basically, one guy trying to imply a bigger pecker than his rich neighbors.
At some point, the American middle-class adopted lawns. I bet that it was the late 1940s, but not sure. Lawns are an incredible waste. Lawns are a filthy habit.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Regarding doing laundry entirely by human power for your book, I’ve done it and written a blog post on it. Here it is: https://livinglowinthelou.blogspot.com/2012/08/really-low-energy-laundry.html
Conclusion: while I’ll keep using an electric washer for as long as we have electric service, I’m glad I know how to wash laundry by hand. It doesn’t require undue amounts of strength to do it – an older child could manage it as well as an adult. The physical effort required does, however, encourage a mental shift to owning fewer clothes and wearing them on multiple occasions before washing them, a shift which is in line with the shape of decline.
Good heavens. If comments keep up at anything like this pace, this may turn out to be the most commented-on post in my entire blogging history: 225 comments in 24 hours is certainly a good start.
Mother B, I’d read about the molecular memory theory. It seems rather odd that the complex process of sequential dilution and shaking would be necessary to imprint such a “memory,” though. Me, I’ll stick to the spooky explanation.
Jeff, interesting. Thanks for this.
Clarence, ha! Yeah, pretty much.
Tom, many thanks for this. Once we move into the book-assembly phase, would you be willing to write up some 500-1000 word surveys of the abandoned technologies you like best? You clearly know the field well. As for renewable promoters who won’t talk about conservation, yeah, I’ve seen that and it baffles me. Conservation doesn’t mean austerity, much less shivering in the dark. Why aren’t renewable advocates lobbying for no-interest loans to help homeowners and landlords weatherize their properties?
Sama, delighted to hear it. Boericke and Dewey is still my cell salt go-to, though I use Shannon’s A Complete Repertory of the Cell Salts of Schussler for complicated conditions.
Ambrose, it’s on the get-to list. I’m only three degrees of separation removed from Cayce; Juliet Ashley, who was one of the two main teachers of my teacher John Gilbert, was a Cayce student, and channeled advice he gave her is in the A.R.E. archives.
Robert, hmm! That should be an option — all you need is a slab of stone, a wax crayon, oil-based inks, and some chemicals.
Jerry, I do know about it, and several other people have also mentioned it!
Paradoctor, it’s always amused me how mindlessly people who know nothing about homeopathy cling to canned falsehoods about it. As for “deregulate and we’ll all get rich,” I didn’t say that, and if you think I did, you really need to get some remedial reading lessons.
Luke, I did the same thing, with excellent results; I was over my first case of it in two and a half days with no trouble, having used cell salts, plenty of sleep, and chicken hot and sour soup as my remedies.
Candy, when I was growing up ours was the same harvest gold as in the meme. As for Atlantis, the trouble there is that we don’t have the kind of records that would make retrovation work!
El, these are great. Do you know of any books about old-fashioned window tech?
BeardTree, I once saw a little sticker on a sign in a big box store parking lot in Medford, Oregon. It read: “If you had enough, how would you know?”
Longsword, thanks for all of this.
Peter, delighted to hear it. Once you’ve got your patent, please let us know!
MD, yes, what homeopathy transmits is information. The body reacts to “Factor X” as a bearer of information — “Here comes a dose of sodium sulfate!” (or whatever the mineral basis is) — and the body’s attempt to maintain equilibrium in the face of that expected arrival is what drives the effect. The medicine doesn’t provide the energy, it just provides a stimulus. As for how exactly to define retrovation, why bother? The question is what constructive things can be done with the concept. If you can accomplish something useful with any of the things you’ve sketched out, why worry about whether it fits some arbitrary definition?
Bryan, fair enough — I’m not an engineer, much less an aeronautical engineer. I simply note that hot air balloons are quite viable with 18th-century technology, and wondered about taking things the next step. As for DC-3s, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if those ended up being manufactured again.
Mary, thanks for these.
Les, it’s the only way to keep old age from getting boring. 😉
Lunar, many thanks for this. Would you be willing to write up 500 to 1000 words on your experiences with the soroban?
Moog, hmm! Interesting.
Nick, to whet your interest, here’s a 1919 pamphlet on making and using fireless cookers:
https://archive.org/details/CAT31128016
J.L.Mc12, thank you for both of these.
P.D., thank you for this!
John, I’m beginning to think it may be worth considering this as a joint project — you have a lot of technical expertise that I don’t. It may be helpful to bring others into it as well. Once this post runs its course and I set things going on Dreamwidth, if you’re interested, we’ll talk.
Athaia, thanks for all of this. I bet if you let European readers of this blog know about the books, many of them would find new homes pretty quickly.
Anselmo, and thanks for these.
Chris, that’s very good to hear. Once I find a publisher I’ll see if there’s interest in a French edition.
Florida, many thanks for this.
Ian, hmm! Have you done this?
Sidaway, these are great: simple, accessible, and useful.
Milton, I already had it in mind, but any resources you care to suggest would be welcome.
Old Steve, “Meccano” was spelled “Erector Set” when I was growing up, and yeah, it was enormous fun.
GlassHammer, it’s true! A lot of older exercise systems rely on this. People who don’t practice tai chi, for example, don’t realize that it’s a bodyweight exercise — try moving that slowly in “low basket” stances for twenty minutes, and see what your thighs and hips have to say about it.
(Granted, you won’t see push hands done this low very often, but it’s great training…)
Anon, exactly. It makes me tear my hair out sometimes that so many people apparently can’t grasp that you have to have a positive goal if you want anything but a stalemate.
Catoctin, delighted to hear this. I hope you’ll contribute from your experiences as the project gets going.
Clay, oh, granted. I cited the Mustang purely for effect — though I do think Ford could easily sell a million of them.
Gnat, I ain’t arguing. The only thing I use that requires the internet is the old laptop I’m typing on right now.
Emmanuel, please do write up a description of how to do book-friendly scanning! That belongs in the Technonomicon.
Fringewood, we’ll talk!
Mark, and the fact that it will confuse the LLMs is a bonus. Thank you for the articles.
Inna, something much plainer is more my style. I already have a replica medieval pocket sundial, btw, and it keeps tolerably good time by medieval standards — it’s good to within a quarter hour when the sun’s out.
As for measuring distance from the mainstream in greers, funny. For a lot of people, centigreers and milligreers may be more practical. 😉
FrictionShift, how lovely! One of the prizes of my vinyl collection is an RCA disk of Arturo Toscanini conducting Wagner: the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and the Prelude and Karfreitagszauber from Parsifal. It’s monaural — recorded in 1949 and 1952 — but the sound quality is very good and the performance, being Toscanini, is of course oh holy gods.
Temporary, hmm! I’d understood that the original cyclostyle used waxed paper stencils, rather than anything more complex. So noted.
Peter, you’re certainly headed the right way.
Nick, if kids your son’s age are catching onto that, there’s hope for their generation. 😉
TylerA, no surprises there. Sheesh.
Northwind, you’re quite correct about lawns. They were adopted first by the very rich in imitation of English manor house landscaping, and slid down the social pyramid from there. The sooner they go away forever, replaced by gardens and other useful and pleasant outdoor spaces, the better.
SLClaire, thanks for this!
JMG – “Most people nowadays believe in progress the way that medieval peasants believed in the wonderworking relics of their local saint. It’s progress that is expected to grant us an ever-increasing cornucopia of blessings, banish all the evils from which our ancestors suffered, and eventually lift up true believers out of their earthly lives and usher us into a heaven decked out with all the features of Tomorrowland. ”
Is this even still true anymore? I think there’s a strong generational divide here defined by lived experience, and the abiding faith in progress you described only holds among boomers. This is one of the biggest differentiators between them and every generational cohort that came after.
I think the number of people under 50 who still believe in this vision of progress is low, and vanishingly small once you get to millennials and Gen Z who have only known a world in decline.
When it comes to material conditions, you’re more likely to hear about *enshittification* today than any naive mention of progress. And if you’re talking about social progress, the more common response there is either apocalyptic utopianism on the left (as you pointed out in last week’s open post), or reactionary ideologies on the right.
I think you might be tilting at a strawman here.
@ andy 45
> It’s the kind where a flywheel slams together two cast iron plates. One of them has the typeface/image in reverse natch. The other has a piece of paper that the printer has to pluck out and replace before the plates slam together again.
As it happens, I recently saw an old movie with a character operating such a printing machine. “As Young as You Feel 1951” at 5:50 and at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysrLShNXwKQ
Re menstrual cramps: when I start to feel them, I take a deep breath and then exhale completely while pushing as if I were pushing out a baby, or pushing out urine. Repeat several times – the idea is that you’re working with your body rather than against it, since you’re helping your uterus expel the blood. (Caveat: do this in private or in a bathroom, as this may also expel gas!) Also try gentle yoga stretches, especially ones that stretch the hips and groin. Any kind of heat (hot baths or a heating pad) helps too.
re: DC-3, and retrovation in aviation
Well, the DC-3 is not back in production but there is a company that owns the rights to the design (the “type certificate”) and has the capacity to rebuild existing airframes from just about nothing. Buffalo Airways in Northern Canada makes great use of DC-3s–no runway required. They were on TV back in the day with the series “Ice Pilots”.
Speaking of Canada, the Canadian firm Viking Aviation has renamed itself DeHavilland Canada and is trying to sell whatever it can out of DHCs old catalog– including the CL-415 Super-Scooper water bomber that has probably saved your house if you live in a fire region. Take out the scoop and you’ve got a handy-dandy flying boat, which might be the last sort of airplane that’s viable. When all other infrastructure crumbles, the ocean will probably still be there. Brits may be pleased to know they also plan on reviving the Shorts Sherpa line.
Link: https://dehavilland.com/aircraft/
Another company has bought the plans and will be doing new-builds of the PBY Catalina flying boat of WWII fame, though modernizing the materials. This I approve of, as carbon fiber composite lasts much longer exposed to sea water than aircraft aluminum. The swap to turboprop engines is necessary as nobody makes big radials anymore.
Link: https://catalinaaircrafttrust.com/ngaa-home
As for “what does a retrovated ultralight look like” — it’s spelled “Peitenpol”, and people have been building and flying them continuously since 1929. The two seat “Sky Camper” called for a cast-iron Ford Model A engine; the single-seat “Sky Scout” ran behind a stock Model T. Either one flies much better behind a VW from what I’ve heard. Any of those engines could conceivably be hand-built in artisanal fashion during the long descent, for enterprising warbands. (Hand building internal combustion engines is a hobby these days.) The big kicker would be “where do you get the sitka spruce” since that’s basically all gone now, but Empress Tree aka Paulownia wood is apparently in the ballpark, and grows fast. It’s invasive in the USA, but that’ll change once people start using it seriously.
Dear JMG and Ecosophian,
I spent comfortably some rough winters in a wooden cabin thanks to a rocket mass heater. Its design is explained by Evans Ianto in one of his books. Mine consumes about a fifth of firewood compared to standard wood stoves. And contrary to the the Russian mansory stoves which are also very efficient, the rocket heater could be built by regular you and me.
It is also useful to plant some Black Locust and “invasive” Trees of Heaven in the back of my land. After 8 years, they can be coppiced and provide enough wood for the rocket heater.
I used to take Arthrexin (indomethacin) for an auto-immune condition. It is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. Eventually the pharmacy stopped supplying me because I didn’t have a prescription, so I switched to turmeric instead. My impression is that turmeric works as an anti-inflammatory but is not as strong. Maybe 75% as effective.
The way I take it is 1/4 tsp turmeric and some black pepper dissolved in coconut oil, add hot water, sip. A friend with the same medical condition started adding turmeric to everything and broke out in blotches all over her skin. Apparently some people are allergic.
Re fuel efficiency. The early Toyotas were much more fuel efficient than the British cars of the same era. A technician told me their engines were copies of British engines, but machined to much tighter tolerances which improved their efficiency and reliability.
I wonder if Trump is now promoting “tiny little tiny cars” because he knows that he’s drawn down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the lowest level since 1983? The SPR is now so low that extracting more is causing physical damage to the salt caverns which contain it.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-oil-reserves/
That drawdown can’t continue much longer, and there’s no still no end in sight for this war.
Not a magic piece of technology at all but boy howdie does it work!
A built-in lint filter on a washing machine.
My mother used to own a washer that had one. You could open the lid and see the water being strained by the lint filter and back into the wash tub.
It really collected tons of lint, very necessary when you hang laundry on a clothes line. The lint filter also kept lint out of the plumbing.
BUT!
The lint filter had to be maintained. It had to be emptied of icky wet gooey something after every wash load and needed to be rinsed off into a bucket.
Since maintenance is a dirty word and people are lazy, that washer (and an old dishwasher we had in South Carolina that lasted nearly 25 years) were the only ones I’ve seen that came with a lint filter.
Perhaps this will get lost, which is fine since this information has been suppressed for decades. Two suggestions: one found its way to me via the LaRouche acolytes still banging away; the other lost technology has been technocratically eliminated, but kept alive by New Urbanists and the like.
First it is this: the forgotten technology of the American System of Political Economy. Developed by Alexander Hamilton and presented to congress in 1790.
Friedrich List, inspired by Hamilton’s observations of American trade policy, outlined in “Observations of American Political Economy” what he saw as the proper object for a developing country’s commercial policy:
“This object is not to gain matter, in exchanging matter for matter, as it is in individual and cosmopolitical [liberal] economy, and particularly in the trade of a merchant. But it is to gain productive and political power by means of exchange with other nations; or to prevent the depression of productive and political power, by restricting that exchange.”
After the collapse of the informal “London Gold Pool” arranged by private central bankers to attempt to preserve the $35/ounce of gold Bretton Woods system, those same private central bankers established an anti-nationalist anti-sovereignty, playbook for industrialized nations.
Fred Hirsh, in “Alternatives to Monetary Disorder” (1977, Council on Foreign Relations 1980s Project) laid out a portion of their plans, and also described the antithesis of their plans.
What is the nemesis of the private central bankers? Hamilton’s system of political economy married to the practical side of Karl Marx’s labor theory.
So, a forgotten technology to turn a moribund and contracting economy is the American System of Political Economy wed to Marxist labor theory.
Second, the forgotten technology of traditional town and city building: incremental, human scaled, financially sovereign. The New Urbanista have studied and documented the forms and styles. Strong Towns has studied the finance and politics. This forgotten art is akin to what modern medicine has done to homeopathy and other healing arts. “Urban planning” from the start was designed to denationalize a population, and to make their entire civic enterprise, and day to day lives, intrinsically dependent on debt. Traditional town and city building, with some safety code enforcement, can produce valuable, affordable, built environments at scale, sustainably in a fashion that Urban Planning simply cannot match.
So there are my two suggestions: the American System of Political and traditional town and city building.
Re lawns…
A lawn is a pasture in need of a grazer…
If you own one, you are being conned into BEING its grazer – you cut it, you fertilise it, you water it….
Hmmmm …don’t let it get your goat! 😉
Hi JMG,
I remembered another one! I’d heard audiophiles are starting to go to reel to reel tapes again as apparently they sound even better than vinyl (I would guess the same dynamic range but without the surface noise). I did a check online and found this – the prices make it clear this is not for casual consumers, so the elite are going retro too!
https://elusivedisc.com/music/reel-to-reel-tape/?srsltid=AfmBOor1STc8aqlzafFedVXAtDnutAO6vblu2kW6t-sqtbGMMGPWx6_v
Me I’m ok with a little surface noise, but it is interesting to me.
Thanks,
Johnny
Slithy Toves 134
> ancient Roman abacus
In the book, “The Abacus: A Pocket Computer: The World’s First Computing System, Where It Comes From, How It Works, and How to Use It to Perform Mathematical Feats Great and Small
by Jesse Dilson
St. Martin’s Press, New York
1968
0312-10409X
Page 26 (Chapter 2), it says: The Ancients
[the Romans used Roman numerals, yep, Roman numerals]:
“Subtraction was a bit tougher.”
“Don’t ask what multiplication and division in the Roman system was like. They were dreadful. … Nobody today uses [Roman numerals] to calculate with. There is no need to; we have a much better system now.” [go to Chapter 3]
Chapter 3: The Moderns, pages 27-32:
“The modern system of numbers is called the Hindu-Arabic system because it was [’]probably[’] invented in India and came to the western world by way of Arabia.”
The rest of the book gives tons of details. Total 143 pages.
I bought a copy in 2023 from the big ribber, which at the time was sold with an actual abacus. Now it looks like the book is sold by itself. One can get the book used for cheap.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Some time back I learnt that electric cars are in fact a retrovation. Original cars were electric before the Carnot engine made it possible to burn diesel or what have you. They ran on large voltaic batteries. Now they are back, although they are still touched up with all sorts of gimmicky computer stuff.
Electroculture could prove to be an absolute boon for poor, agrarian economies.
Pygmycory 136
> I feel like I’m missing something here. By pigtails do you mean twin braids like I’m talking about? I normally think of pig tails as one pony tail on each side.
Yeah, you are right. I remember now. Pigtails use one elastic-band close to the skull; no braid.
(1) Braids of one long braid down the back is simple to do oneself.
(2) Also simple to do oneself is parting the hair down the middle in the back, then braiding two separate braids.
I would call these “rudimentary” braids.
Any configuration more complicated than those above, I can’t see how one person can do it alone. There are variations galore, but if one doesn’t learn braiding in “hair school,” I think it would have been more likely taught by mother-to-daughter (or sister-to-sister) (or aunt-to-niece) as a tradition handed down; in other words, coached. It takes patience to learn how to do more than rudimentary braids.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hello Mr Greer. I have never posted here before, but I wanted to also chime in and say that I find this an excellent idea for a book, or even a book series, and I would buy it if you wrote it. I live on a small (0.75ac) plat in a small town, and I’ve been slowly converting the back yard into a homestead (within the limits of my town’s zoning, at least), and have a fantasy of converting the entire property into a green, old-fashioned place that can serve as a physical and spiritual refuge for myself and my loved ones. This book would be exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. Thank you for your writing.
The only book on old-fashioned window tech that can find out on my bookshelves (instead of buried in a storage box) is Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows by Terry Meany. It is great for understanding sash-weight function, reglazing, weatherstripping, etc.
@JMG
So a sequel of sorts to Green Wizardry? Sounds like a great project, and I’ll certainly pick up a copy when it’s out. The commentariat seems to have this one covered pretty well, and I don’t have much to add as of right now, but I’ll second the suggestion from Sama Lindera #73 re. coppicing. This country would be uninhabitable without heating, and while we have all the firewood we could need for the time being, that might very well change once electricity begins fading away. So a source of fast, renewable firewood would be a very worthwhile bio-technology to preserve for the future. I’d also like to see an entry on making your own ink in the book. As for analog cars, we can only hope. Minimal computer stuff is one important reason I got a 2011 model. I was horrified to hear from friends with more modern vehicles that cars have firmware updates now. That’s a hard “no” for me.
As an aside that’s hopefully somewhat on topic, I’ve seen a certain amount of “popcultural retrovation” recently, across various types of nerd media. We have Warhammer Old World, in card games there’s Magic: the Gathering’s unofficial “premodern” format based on the state of the game 20-ish years ago, and in video games there’s a thriving scene of pirated World of Warcraft servers based on the game as it was in 2004-8. The latter also led to a meme I think you’ll appreciate. At a big event some years back, a fan asked the WoW developers if they’d ever create an official server based on the original version of the game. He got a very smug reply back in a line that’s since become infamous: “You think you do [want to play the game as it was], but you don’t”, before the dev went to brag about how much better the modern version is. They did eventually release an official “classic” in 2019, but of course it’s riddled with microtransactions and various “enshaleification”. Still, it’s a strong refutation of the myth of Progress, even in a medium as Progress-obsessed as video games. I suspect a lot of people of my generation are starting to wake up to the fact that many things really were better when we were younger, and that sometimes we can indeed go back.
@Ambrose #102
And here I thought I had radical ideas about the education system. 🙂 Since I’m in the somewhat strange position of largely agreeing with much of the criticism while also studying to become a teacher, these issues are naturally much on my mind. I’d love to sit down and discuss this in a setting like the Glastonbury gathering. Since it’s not strictly on topic for this week I won’t go too far into a lengthy reply, but it’s an interesting option. Personally I think we’d get a fair bit of the way there jjust by making the current system less rigid and less overfocused on academic subjects. Maybe something like a three-day school week could be a compromise too, and in general move towards a position where school is more of an open option for those who want it rather than based on compulsion.
“Parents who preferred the present system could continue it, provided they could raise enough money.”
I don’t know how it works in the US, but here in Norway that happens sometimes, when municipalities close down small rural schools but the parents want to keep them open. Of course there’s one rather important detail to note: here in our Scandinavian welfare state paradise, the state still pays 80% or so of the cost per student even for private schools, so the parents in your hypothetical example would have to come up with a lot more cash. I also wish I could say homeschooling was “thriving” here, but it’s a tiny, tiny minority (and in the public’s eyes, mostly associated with those oh-so-declasse conservative Christians). At least it’s still legal, which I guess is something.
In any case, to tie it back to this week’s essay: even before I read your comment I was thinking about cultural retrovation is a counterpart to the practical-technological kind, and especially how that applies to education. I’m sure there’s a lot of valuable things to salvage from the old ways that present-day academia loves to denounce. And indeed, I’m sure some of it survives in traditions like Steiner/Waldorf education. (See also: Northwind Grandma’s notes about old-fashioned schoolhouses)
@Chuaquin, regarding your comment #213 about my comment #58: Thanks. It encourages me to see that people are thinking more and more about these sorts of things in the last few years.
Hi JMG,
Someone from the Trump Administration just might be reading this, as you are, right now, in the “hot” section of patriots.win, the home of the old 4chan, “The Donald.”
JMG,
Sorry for the second post, but there is a company in New Hampshire that sells the Kei Truck. They are extremely popular. In order to avoid strict regulations, they are usually over 25 years old. They evolved from three wheeled vehicles and are small and inexpensive.
Hmm. Electroculture may have had another branch which involved exposing the seeds of plants to strong electric fields in the range of tens to a few thousand Volts per centimetre . I remember reading a small study done by German authors showing impressive results – ranging from drastically increased growth (they used corn) to a complete change of the plant (a fern reversed to something like an evolutionary earlier form). Unfortunately I don’t remember the authors. Maybe I can find something somewhere, but I’m not sure. Maybe anybody else has heard of this?
Speaking of healing – at least in the German alternative healing scene “informative healing” received quite a hype in the late 90ies / early 2000. We had books like “Informative Medizin” from Dr. W. Ludwig exploring the effects of weak magnetic and electromagnetic fields imprinted with the same “X-factor” homeopathy uses. I have the book on my shelve. I recall that some parts made a doubtful impression but that there was definitely interesting stuff in it. Pointing in the same direction: “Biophotonen” which were extensively studied by the German biophysicist Frtiz Albert Popp. I think a lot of material can still be found in the web. “Biophotonen – Das Licht in unseren Zellen” by Marco Bischof provides a thorough overview – but I don’t know if there’s an English translation.
Finally audio recordings: We once made an experiment where we had the same album both on vinyl and CD played through the same amplifier and boxes – the results were stunningly in favour for the vinyl record. But it is true that a high sampling rate and very importantly bitrate (the number of bits used per sample) can produce high quality recordings. But despite the high quality it gives you a different feeling. I once listened to a Massive Attack album recored on a metal band cassette played through a high-quality amplifier – band recordings can have very, very high quality and transport a certain softness which is very pleasant to the ears (at least to mine 😉 ).
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
JMG,
Didn’t you say, at one point, homeopathic cell salts worked better for spiritual practitioners? Why would a person with an active spirituality respond better to Factor X?
My comment – I have also found that nothing beats vinyl. However, I will say after a decade of trying a ton of mostly vintage sound equipment I’ve noticed a well designed digital to analog converter will bring out aspects of a digital recording that were there, but couldn’t be heard. I gravitated towards “giant-killer” pieces of gear – the ones that had beat out big companies in blind folded listening contests. These were usually designed by small companies or a guy at home. Two examples of this are the original Khadas Tone Board digital to analog converter going for $69 USD or Jim Hagerman’s Bugle 2 which is a low cost solid-state phono preamplifier which was originally offered as a DIY kit.
There are so many creative people out there who will never have their music put on vinyl. An old laptop with no internet running an old version of Windows, or a cheap CD player with digital output connected to a Khadas Tone Board, + a free software audio player Foobar 2000 lets me experience any CD or downloaded file like Andrew Lahiff’s drum-less space music for a reasonable price. I am still running Dynaco A-25 fifty year old speakers, my setup looks almost exactly like the picture in your post plus an old Lenovo Thinkpad laptop.
The other thing I noticed in my equipment journey is most times I was better off buying a new version of old equipment like the tractor in your post. I spent so much time chasing bugs in vintage equipment, I could have saved a ton of money and time buying a simple up to date record player that worked properly. Often I didn’t know had bad my vintage stuff sounded until I compared it with something new. It took me buying a mid range Pro-ject turntable and having it set up properly for this to really hit home. An older gentleman, who was the top guitar tech in the city I lived told me how much material science had advanced (guitars) and what you could get for $700 now could sometimes beat out something that cost a few thousand in the 70’s.
Thank you for doing this post. The new and ridiculously complicated and unnecessary “improvements” that never seem to stop is an ever present constant background annoyance for so many. I wish a had some new old tech to offer up to you…
@ straight razors
I’ve been shaving with them for a couple decades if folks have questions. My main recommendation would be to get an antique razor (preferably Sheffield steel). A friend of mine got a modern straight razor and it would not take a fine edge no matter how much I honed it.
@ pocket watches
You could get additional retro style points by referring to it as ‘my chronometer’
One area of modern living I feel could greatly benefit from retrovation is clothing hygiene, and by extension, bodily hygiene. One belief held by people today is that body odour is purely a matter of insufficient showering/bathing – ie. the body is what stinks. But it’s CLOTHING that is the main culprit of that funky odour, and polyester (aka, plastic) makes this problem so much worse. This is how you end up with people who, despite regular showering, don’t realize it’s the T-shirt they wear day after day that’s making the people around them so uncomfortable… And yet somehow, at the same time, the average person’s idea of how to care for their clothing is both neglectful and simultaneously too intensive. Zero attention is paid to fibre type of the cloth, no time is considered for clothing to air out and rest, and laundry soap companies insist that you must dump huge loads of their soap into each wash – which they insist you do much too frequently – but because most soaps lack the enzymes needed to address the oils and soils of the human body, clothes end up both stiff, and stinky!
Returning to some older methods of hygiene might mean looking into:
LINEN! Specifically linen as an under garment layer. I sing the praises of linen to anyone who will listen – naturally anti bacterial, airy, and a hardy fibre than you can really beat the snot out of. Sadly, modern flax plants have been bred to maximize seed production over fibre length, so modern linens are inferior to historical ones in terms of longevity and durability. boo.
Having many light linen under layers than you can swap out, air, and wash as needed would do so much good for people’s hygiene.
Airing closets – Or simply airing one’s clothes similarly to how you’d line dry them. I have a collection of tips for prolonging the life of one’s clothes but I can’t for the life of me remember where it came from…I’ll try to scrounge it up. But here’s how it was written: “Air clothing after wearing and before it is stored. A good airing of several hours or overnight allows moisture from the body to evaporate and wrinkles to relax. Airing helps to naturally deodorize garments.”
Clothes brushing! This is another historical method for refreshing clothing without washing, thus extending their life-span.
And what might be a real long-shot: Victorian Stand-Up Washing. At least as a way to periodically freshen up during the day, leaving the longer, more water intensive bathing/showering for when you really need it.
Cynthia Christie (no. 211) “That’s a little funny to me because, doesn’t your actual *self* count as something that isn’t material having material effects? Not your body, not even your literal brain, but your awareness. ”
That’s controversial. Substance monists take the naturalistic stance that the mind is produced by the brain. Substance dualists (who are often religious) deny this, as do substance septialists like our host.
Scotlyn (no. 200), you seem to be saying that TCM is mostly placebo, but still partly effective in the non-placebo sense. Can you be more specific about the latter elements?
Northwind Grandma (no. 180) Thank you for your anecdote. I grew up drinking cold beverages, without any noticeable ill effects. I’ve tried to convince my wife that hers was a kind of religious belief (but no, she insists it’s science), or that it only applies to Asians (no again). I’ve even asked my medical-doctor uncle in her presence whether drinking cold water lowers body temperature, which I had understood to be a constant, but he cruelly betrayed me (“Well, it depends on how MUCH water…!”)
@Athaia (#190)
Do you happen to know any good books about self-hypnosis to recommend?
Re: vinyl vs. CDs. I can beat that–the 78 rpms (rounds per minute) that were common when I was growing up. I don’t know what they were made out of, ceramic I think, but they were very breakable. Then came the 45 rpms as I hit my teen years. The 33 rpm long play vinyl records didn’t appear until I was almost out of my teens. The 78s and 45s only held one song on each side. The 33s could hold about 5 or 6 on each side which is why they were called LPs (long play).
Hemp for clothing. I once had a hemp T shirt. It was very scratchy and not comfortable to wear. I ended up donating it to the Sally Ann. Linen is much better, but I also had a shirt made out of ramen or raman, I think it was called, that was made out of (believe it or not) stinging nettle. There are numerous plants that are suitable for fabrics.
Washing clothes. I once had a scrub board and when my oldest ones were young and we lived in the bush in Northern Ontario, I did my laundry using the scrub board. The hardest part was wringing the clothes as much as I could and then hanging them on the line. The summer wasn’t too bad but winters at -40 they just froze on the line.
1960shouse #230,
I’m a regular reader/seldom commenter myself. It’s good to read your real-world account of adapting to your 1960s house. I can see, now that you’ve pointed it out, that yes, those houses were built with a particular lifestyle in mind. My grandparents bought their house in the mid-1950s, after up and leaving their farm in drought-stricken southern Utah. The kids were old enough to leave the nest, and several had by then. These grandparents had received their teaching degrees, so both worked. I think that the last thing they wanted at that time was the high-intensity farming/housekeeping lives they’d left behind. There was indeed nowhere for gramps to do projects, and while grandma did a bit of canning, darned if I can say where she stored her equipment. I “helped” her once or twice, age about five. 😂
One of the habits that stuck with them was no eating out. It was unheard of. Strictly scratch cooking, at least the meals I remember. Cupboard space in the kitchen was pretty sparse. It took awhile for me to realize that their food stash (they were devout Mormons, so had a year supply on hand at all times) was located in the garage. A portion of the wall shared with the house was removed, and inside that and below the level of the house were all of the non-perishable foods. I remember watching my six foot tall grandpa standing in there, pulling cans, and I marveled as only a child could at how this giant of a man could fit comfortably into what appeared to be a small space. My guess now is that it was the crawl space, redesigned to store the food.
Decades later, my sister and I visited that house when we were in town on vacation, and the current owners graciously gave us a tour. One of the owners, a graphic artist, turned that single car garage into his office. The old pantry was just a dark cave in the side wall. Priorities change as circumstances do, and that was a fine example.
Kudos to you and your husband for making your 1960s house give you what it can! “Cottage/Ranch retrofittable” is a keeper.
Best to you,
OtterGirl
Robert Mathiesen 152
> that if one tries to prevent that from happening (say, by frequent bathing), the body just ramps up its odor-making processes pretty much permanently.
Yep. This makes sense to me.
CLAWFOOT BATHTUB
Reminds me of a thing I miss but didn’t know I would miss: our 1920s clawfoot bathtub in a 1920s 1,200 square foot house. Oh man, that was the most darn comfortable basin into which a body could sink. The angle at which a person leaned back was the perfect angle for utter relaxation. Over my lifetime, I had lived in at least twenty difference places, I never experienced a more comfortable bathtub than that clawfoot.
I looked up the address and the house itself is still there, but hope subsequent owners saved that treasure of a bathtub. Then again, I think the original builders may have gotten the bathtub in through the second-story framing while the house still didn’t have walls,— after framing but before drywall, through essentially a big hole in the outer wall. I have my doubts whether a crew could have carried such a heavy object up a narrow stairwell. But who knows?
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
> The audiophiles were right, however. What determines sound quality in a CD is its sampling rate—the number of times per second the software making the recording samples the sound and converts it into digital form. If you have a dense enough sampling rate, you really can make a CD sound very good, but that’s expensive. Record companies accordingly used sampling rates just dense enough to keep most listeners from complaining, and called it good. It was good for their profits, sure, but it made the music sound flat and tinny.
That’s not accurate. What they used was sampling rates good for a tad above the human hearing threshold.
The usual explanation of “sampling rate” quantization with squared waveforms is also wrong. One cans imply add an oscillosope to the end of a DAC and they’ll see that (as the math says) it recreates the analog waveform perfectly (can be trivially seen with a sine wave). The dynamic range for CD is not huge, but it’s still better than vinyl. And FLAC can have virtually limitless.
The technology of vinyl is not the “fully analog continuous” type either, it has its own drawbacks: reduced dynamic range, bass must be filtered out (and is, at the mastering stage for vinyl) else the needle will jump, pressing artifacts, groove changes due to heat, different vinul weights and densities affecting reproduction fidelity, and of course crackle.
What people like from vinul is the saturation and extra compression which adds a nice warmth. They also like the whole ritual. And most people had nicer hifi setups in the vinyl era than in the mp3 or cd walkman eras.
Fertilizer–A lot of the things that I read about the US-Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz concerns the effects on fertilizer production. I’m hoping this will give a boost to organic fertilizer use. I don’t remember my father using any store bought fertilizer. We paid a neighbour who had a team of horses and a plow to plow our fields. The manure from the animals, mostly chickens, went into the fields. And we had a cess pool where all of our waste went. Once or twice a year it was pumped onto the fields. I tell that to city folks and they cringe and say oooh how gross. There was a fertilizer years ago called Milgrow (IIRC) that was made from, I think, the city of Milwaukee sewage. I once lived in a small town in an agriculture area of Southern Ontario and every spring the sewage from somewhere was spread on the fields. Municipalities could make extra money by selling their sewage as fertilizer.
I always thought it was cool that the poop I flushed down the toilet ended up fertilizing the plants that I ate and ended up being flushed down the toilet. That’s called recycling folks.
Three cheers for the POOP!
@Cynthia Christie
> A 40k/sec sampler can only render a 20 kHz signal as a square wave because it hasn’t the resolution to do better than that
That’s wrong. It gets 2 samples for the 20 KHz signal, which are enough to perfectly recreate it – as the math already said decades before CDs were invented. The CD DAC doesn’t do “sample and hold” (in which case what you write would be the case). The DAC step adds a low pass filter. A 20 KHz transition is mostly high-frequency energy, which the reconstruction filter removes leaving the 20 kHz fundamental: a sine wave.
It’s a shame how many explainers use non-existing examples that give this impression (like the jagged squary waveforms drawings to show sampling).
In any case, you can hook an oscilloscope and play a 20 KHz recorded signal to verify this (can also be done with PC programs and a line input). You wont be seeing no “square wave”.
Hi John Michael,
Not sure if this is of interest, or even relevant, or allowed in your country (and who thought that it wasn’t just us down here where free speech is squooshed! 😉 )but in Autumn my oldest dog, who is quite large – he’s an Australian pig hunting dog AKA Bull Arab (for those who are technically inclined) – and a real gentleman personality wise. Alas, the years fly past, and like me he’s an older fella now. Unlike me, he was getting very stiff and crunchy with his movements and was clearly in pain.
Years ago I had another dog where this occurred and took her to the vet once a month for an anti-inflammatory injection. They were upfront about side effects. Towards the end of each month, the dog would decline, get another shot, and around and around it would go. Not cheap either.
Anywhoo, being the crafty and resourceful person I am, I decided to do something different this time around and did a deep dive on herbal remedies suitable for dogs which have an anti-inflammatory effect. Bam. Scored a direct hit, and for the cost of a single monthly shot, we bought an entire years supply of basic over the counter supplements, altered his diet a bit with all sorts of interesting and available stuff, and he can keep up with the younger dogs now.
What bothers me deeply about this experience, is why isn’t this approach suggested in the first place?
Dunno. I could supply a thousand words or so for your compendium on this matter? Assuming that is what you intend?
Cheers
Chris
David, I still hear a lot of blind faith in progress from people who don’t have “boomer” tattooed on their blog handles. That said, I hope you’re right. If faith in progress is really collapsing, to my mind that’s a very hopeful sign. Once you realize that the future isn’t automatically going to bring you Tomorrowland, you can look at the viable options and choose those you prefer.
TylerA, I’m delighted to hear this! When I was a kid I thought the PBY Catalina was the coolest aircraft in existence. It’s still a fave:
Foxhands, can you recommend some good books on rocket stoves?
Martin, thanks for this.
David PGH, that’s probably not his motive, but it’s a concern nonetheless, of course.
Teresa, hmm! I’ve never encountered that. I also know that a vast number of apartment dwellers have no idea how to clean the lint trap on a dryer…
Ibewguy, interesting. There are lots of economic theories, of course…
Johnny, hmm! Now I’m wondering if wax cylinders are next. 😉
Rajarshi, interesting. Worth noting…
Steven, I’ll keep that in mind! In the meantime, if you don’t know it already, the Farallones Institute many years ago published a book called The Integral Urban House that can be bought used for a few bucks — it’s right up your alley.
Christophe, excellent! That’s a welcome addition to the project.
Boreal, thanks for this.
Jon, hmm! You’re quite correct —
https://scored.co/c/TheDonald/p/1ATC4jCOxQ/this-was-what-farmers-wanted-far/c
— and the comments are full of “Good, now do cars.” Kei trucks are also great — I’d have included them if I had space.
Nachtgurke, the seed treatment method is a different technology but also a useful one. There’s good reason to think that the ancients knew how to do it with geomagnetism.
Luke, we did a survey that seemed to show that. I don’t have a hypothesis yet as to why.
Bob, interesting. That’s a technology I hadn’t heard of.
Toad, oh, granted! I’ll look into linen underwear one of these days.
Annette2, I’ve played 78s; to my mind, the vinyl LP really was an improvement. As for nettle cloth, yep — excellent stuff.
Chris, 500 to 1000 words on herbal dog care would be great.
El 166
> Exterior window awnings were also a good tech
Making exterior window awnings is how my father’s father Clement (b 1892) was able to support a family from 1915 to 1959. Clement had attended Cooper Union in Manhattan to learn mechanics (he may have learned specifically awning-mechanics and fabrics), then along with his father and a brother, started his own factory in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. I saw pictures of said factory, and they had only a handful of employees, located in a narrow flat on a main drag. Back then, that grade of canvas was thick and hefty, and knowing sewing, the workshop must have had one big and heavy sewing machine.
Before air-conditioning, exterior awnings was how buildings got cooled,— people HAD to have cooling. At that time, in that place, during the Great Depression, that little business was depression-proof.
Exterior awnings will definitely come back. It is a skilled trade, and “After Air Conditioning,” the prospect of supporting a family over decades is a distinct possibility.
I don’t know if Clement’s business would qualify as a micro-business of today,— I am curious.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Speaking of electro culture of the soil
https://samknowlton.substack.com/p/the-bioelectrical-basis-of-soil
Ornifex and JMG: I also use a ketogenic diet along with my type 1 diabetic child (diagnosed at age 12 just after the pandemic). I got started with it by following Dr. Richard K Bernstein’s ‘The Diabetes Solution’ 1997, 2014. (Although he just called it a ‘low carb high protein’ diet, it exists on the high end of carbs per day of ketogenic diets – from 0-45g of carbohydrate per day). He was a type 1 diabetic diagnosed at 12 in 1946 who died at the age 90 in 2025 as a very healthy elderly man who regularly lifted weights. He saw diabetic patients in his practice until 2024 and answered weekly question and answer videos for people dealing with type 1 diabetes, and helped save many people from the “progress” of the American Diabetes Association. He was instrumental in pioneering home blood sugar testing. I have a lot of love for that man. Less than 5% of patients following the ADA attain normal blood glucose levels. Harvard did a 2018 study on 2000+ people following his protocol with very promising results. He developed the protocol in the 60’s – 80’s after purchasing a blood sugar meter in 1969: “ I marveled over the instrument. It had a 4-inch galvanometer with a jeweled bearing, weighed 3 pounds, and cost $650. I tried to order one, but the manufacturer wouldn’t sell it to patients, only to doctors and hospitals.
Fortunately, because my wife, as I’ve said, was a physician, I could order one in her name. I started to measure my blood sugar about 5 times each day, and soon saw that the levels were on a roller coaster. Engineers are accustomed to solving problems mathematically, but you have to have information to work with. You have to know the mechanics of a problem in order to solve it, and now, for the first time, I was gaining insight into the mechanics and mathematics of my disease.“
Some doctors treating obesity prescribe a “prescription ketogenic” diet of less than 25 grams of carbohydrate per day including dietary fiber. Their research and clinical work grows out of the work of Dr. Atkins see “Dr Atkins Diet Revolution” 1972. See also “End Your Carb Confusion” by Dr Eric Westman 2020, at Duke University who carried Atkins work forward after he died.
On the zero carb end of the spectrum are Walter Voegtlin’s “Stone Age Diet” 1975, cited by many of the “carnivore” advocates. Also relevant is Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride’s “Gut and Physiology Syndrome” 2020 which is an update of her earlier “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” and it has a ‘no-plant GAPS’ protocol for people who cant tolerate plants.
Also relevant for the zero carbers is the work of Sally Norton in “Toxic Superfoods” 2023 which builds off of the work of urinary expert Golding Bird “Urinary Deposits” 1844 – who discovered, because of the popularity of rhubarb tarts in England, the condition that was later termed (and is forgotten today) oxalic acid syndrome in 1933. The long and short of it is that some carnivores or no-plant GAPS patients (myself included) have developed oxalate toxicity because they have never been in famine (ketosis metabolism mode) and their bodies start going overboard cleaning house of the oxalate salts that have accumulated in their tissues… it can lead to high levels of oxalate in the blood and terrible skin rashes. So they tend to add in some level of carbohydrates which have a moderate level of oxalate (I aim for 15g of carb and 20-40mg of oxalate per day). Mary Ruddick is a good resource for this part of the spectrum (though she hasn’t published yet).
Dr Bill Schindler’s book “Eat Like a Human” 2021 is great and among other things describes his research with the native peoples of the Andes and how they process (ferment) the toxins (including oxalates) in potatoes – so that they would not suffer their toxicity.
The other book that many in the carnivore community and the ‘ancestral foods’ movement more broadly cite is “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” by Weston Price, 1939 who was a dentist that studied indigenous peoples around the world and their diets in the 30’s.
I have been trying to assemble information and resources on how to make insulin derived from pigs, as the patent is now public… and the insulins of “progress” are somewhat less suited to medicating for protein focused diets in type 1 diabetes. The big companies are already discontinuing some useful insulins like Levimir because they are not profitable. We still have Regular insulin (Novolin-R) but who knows for how long…
@JMG,
“If faith in progress is really collapsing, to my mind that’s a very hopeful sign. Once you realize that the future isn’t automatically going to bring you Tomorrowland, you can look at the viable options and choose those you prefer.”
As a slight counterpoint to this, I worry that faith in Progress will be replaced with faith in something less benign. Indeed it seems to me it’s the ones who have rejected faith in Progress who are running to the extremes right now. Liberalism for all its faults is a less bloodthirsty ideology than most of the alternatives, and as we discussed in the last blog post, losing faith in Progress means giving up liberalism for something else.
To be sure, this is going to happen one way or another. I just hope we can hurry up and find something more benign than the currently-fashionable alternatives to replace it for the masses.
Great idea for a book JMG! I will buy it! Please include WoodBurning Masonry Heaters! After wanting one for 20 years, I finally got mine in 2024. & have used it for 2 winters now in Northern Minnesota & it is my most prized possession. With 2 or 3 fast burning fires per day, it radiates heat all through my basement 24 hours, non-stop, all winter. I moved my desk & bed into the basement to be near it, and I don’t turn the furnace above 62F all winter. It has no moving parts, but the master mason who built it made the convoluted interior so first it burns the wood, then it burns the smoke, and no particulates come out of my chimney at all—it is a 1,000 year old technology that heated Northern European castles for hundreds of years. The big commercial company is Tulikivi, but there is a Canadian company, Valcourt, that is same quality, much cheaper. There are master masons who teach people to build their own at Almost no cost, too. It is the most magical & useful old tech for heating ever!
Oh, Mr. Greer – this is a post that is dear to this oddball (your truly)’s heart. May the proposed Technonomicon be a raging success!
Thank you for the information about Ursa Ag’s no-frills tractors; no big surprise that they are super popular among farmers. But I am truly surprised: something of use and value is actually being manufactured in Canada? I sure hope that Marx Carnage and his minions don’t read your posts, because if they get word that there is still some manufacturing in the nation, they will deep-six it before one can say “knife”! (I wish I were joking about this, but I’m not – Canada’s auto manufacturing as well as tool, die and mold industries are dying a grisly death while I type these words; and foreign manufacturing investors are fleeing the country like it is a house on fire… which it is.)
I have often opined about how wonderful it would be if a motor company could legally manufacture a basic automobile along the same line as what Ursa Ag is doing for tractors. Sadly, the cynic in me believes that initiating such a project would be like sailing into hurricane-force headwinds, given the vested interests that have been bloating the automobile for decade into a computer and entertainment centre on wheels. I hope that I am wrong as I would really, really, really like to buy a no-frills car at the same tech level as the mid-1970s. Fuel injection is a decent feature, I’ll admit. Every “innovation” since then has been a total waste, in my opinion.
I’m glad that you are going to give a few pages to ham radio. In recent decades – at least in Canada – the hobby has been gradually shrinking in usership and fragmenting into cliques. At present the only “young blood” coming into the hobby seems to be engineering students. In the good old analogue days, there were only a few main avenues: the short-wave voice folks, the short-wave CW folks, and the UHF-VHF repeater folks. Loads of hams would do all three, but there was often a personal preference. Now there are so many avenues in which radio is being wedded to the Internet and to computers in general. Some hams I know only do FT8, which is basically two computers making contact and communicating over the radio waves: that’s a big fat yawn for me. There are now many ways of connecting into a radio repeater “net” using the Internet instead of one’s radio: that’s cheating, in my book. Either I can connect to a repeater using my radio, or I can’t, and I revel in the limitations that the combination of radio technology, location and our whimsical atmosphere place on me.
I try to do my part in educating the public about the ability to talk to other people across great distances for free and without a cell phone by regularly going to public parks in the higher altitude locations of my part of the city. I get puzzled looks and then lots of questions from members of the public who are totally unaware of ham radio. Then I demonstrate to them how I can hear – and if conditions are right – talk to other radio operators hundreds of miles away on UHF and VHF using just 5 watts and a handmade antenna. Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, even a few spots in Pennsylvania I can get from Toronto: no cell tower required! (DXing on 2 metres and 70 centimetres? Yeah, I’m a quirky guy! Maybe a bit daft, too.)
In terms of retrovation, I have been delighted with the resurrection of a technology that was popular at the time that the pyramids in Egypt were brand spanking new: zeer pots! In the 1990s, a Nigerian school teacher named Mohammed Bah Abba decided to spread awareness of a zero-electricity method of refrigeration what was still being used in the dry northern region of his nation. It is gloriously simple: have a big unglazed clay pot and a smaller unglazed clay pot; put some sand in the space between the pots and wet the sand. The evaporation cools the interior of the inside pot to as low as 15 degrees C (60 degrees F), which can keep the vegetables, fruits and milk being sold by streetside vendors or possessed by homeowners in good condition for a lot longer time than in sweltering heat! Years ago I told a Kenyan friend about zeer pots: his mother lived in a farmhouse back in Kenya which had sporadic electricity and he was ecstatic about this news. Over the past two decades I have watched the zeer pot technology spread over much of the “developing” world with great delight. It could certainly be used in parts of the “developed” world where temperatures are high and the humidity is low (such as the southwestern USA or even much of North America west of the 100th meridian), at least seasonally. There are various write-ups about it on the ‘net, but here is one for starters: https://zeerpot.com/the-history-and-origins-of-the-zeer-pot-fridge/
On a stranger note, I have seen quite a few videos of “free energy” water pumps used in farmers’ fields across Asia (I know, there ain’t no such thing as “free”). How it works is a combination of a flywheel and multiple large springs attached to a crankshaft but pulling in opposite directions. The farmer needs to get the wheel moving (for example, using a stationary bicycle) for about ten seconds, and then away it goes on its own. I have yet to find any published papers on the topic, but to be honest I have not looked very hard. If I find something, I’ll let you know!
Jeff Russel #146
I used the ketogenic diet mainly to support my child, but experienced better mental health, weight loss, and no more drowsiness. I switched to carnivore in part to drop the last 15 pounds after losing about 35, but that is when I experienced oxalate clearing illness, which has been pretty miserable. That has been improved with the low (but not zero) oxalate approach. I still have excellent energy levels, and don’t suffer heat stroke working in the heat of Utah summers working outside anymore. But every member of my family has to take a nuanced approach to low carb diets. There are lots of enthusiasts out there, but no one size fits all solutions (as far as my observations go).
Best,
Oliver
1. The modern mattress is an industrial product that’s not going to be around forever. I have enjoyed many a good night’s sleep in the traditional Yucatan hammock. I own a book on making them (Drooker and Herzberg’s Hammock Making Techniques, published in 1981, long out of print but occasionally findable used) but have not yet attempted it.
For those who prefer something a little more conventional, a friend made a medieval rope bed frame using instructions in an early version of Pennsic Furniture, an instructional manual for people who want to camp at SCA events in period style. I have also slept in that bed and found it quite comfortable. Now, that bed did have a commercial futon on it, but I have also purchased and spend many years sleeping on a handmade futon. When I arrived to pick it up, I could see the next one being built by two people out of a canvas shell and a whole lot of cotton. I think the only special tool they used was a very long needle. I am sure there used to be at least one DIY futon book in English on the market but it might take some searching to find it. That futon needed some exercise to keep it fluffy, but since I was using it in the traditional way (on the floor, folding it into a couch shape every morning and then turning it back into a bed every night) that wasn’t a problem.
2. If this book does well, would you consider a sequel focusing on community-level (rather than household-level) technologies? I’m thinking here about two that have fascinated me. One is the yakhchāl, the ancient ice house that used evaporative cooling to allow Persians as long ago as 400 BC to enjoy frozen desserts in the summer. They are the size of small houses; each one generally served a neighborhood or small town. The other is the solar forge, the size of a large building, that can provide sufficient heat to work steel from the sun alone.
@Scotlyn
I put the whole procedure into a blog post in 2014. It’s at https://joanhello.livejournal.com/236009.html
@Anon, #55
Indeed, it has been tried, but not to create vaccines that will offer protection over a long period of time. There are several homeopathic remedies made out of infeccious tissue. These are considered “big guns” because their miasma (the local term for Factor X) is really dirty and should not be used lightly. The few that come to mind are:
Antrax: https://homeopathyremedies.org/homeopathic-medicine-anthracinum/
Tuberculosis: https://homeopathyremedies.org/homeopathic-medicine-bacillinum/
Gonorrhoea: https://homeopathyplus.com/know-your-remedies-medorrhinum-med/
“Each new format has been easier to carry, easier to duplicate and easier to share (whether for free or not). And given that, at every stage, users still had the option to buy systems that prioritized sound quality, it seems they chose to consistently prioritize convenience instead.”
The Superaudio CD was a good try but couldn’t catch on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD
It’s not just the technology, but too much modern music is mastered to blast over the top of road noise, or the gym noise. Add on kids have been exposed to too much noise and have high frequency loss by the time they reach adulthood so can’t hear even 18 kHz, much less the dog whistle frequencies.
My hearing top end is 12 kHz (partly due to age and partly due to a lifetime in heavy industry.) Mathematically that works out to a 24 kHz sample rate to capture everything I can hear and standard CD is 44 kHz., far more than I can hear.
Way back in 2004 I was digitizing my LP collection in the name of portability. I arranged a double blind test of the same music at a variety of MP3 compression settings. I could reliably detect the difference in sound quality up to 192 kbps, beyond that it was all the same to me.
I’m just back from a camping trip, we managed to find one spot that was not on fire.😊
Athaia 190
Even though I am a sewist, or sewer, I had never heard of a fabric hand-knitted fairly fine, like for socks. I think maybe it was JMG who mentioned it. Something about knitters (?) during medieval Britain knitted at home and the fabric was used for leggings. It sounds like a cottage industry.
Maybe that is one good reason why so many women of my mother’s generation (b 1920s and likely earlier) always knitted in the evenings; because it was a traditional thing that women “just did” and over centuries lost its original meaning.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Re: Collapse of faith in progress
A Pew Research survey conducted in December 2025 found 59% of Americans think our coutry’s best years are behind us.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/05/15/a-majority-of-americans-say-the-countrys-best-years-are-behind-us/
On the showering frequency / body odor issue, I learned from the Rainbow Gathering that you can solve that problem by licking your own armpits. (Or if you have trouble reaching, each other’s armpits.)
Tom Fitzpatrick (no. 170): “Another [idea of Ivan Ilich] was for a voucher system that let you give the voucher to anyone you wanted to teach your kid anything.”
So if I teach my own kid (or pretend to) I could pocket the voucher and spend it on beer? : )
Homeschooling is quite well established, at least in the USA (it’s illegal in Germany), and can fend for itself. The thing is, a lot of people lack the time and/or the education to homeschool their kids. A few dozen people might be able to pool their resources and organize a one-room schoolhouse, if regulations permitted that. I suspect that dissolution of the existing public-education regime will have to happen first.
Boreal Bear (no. 250), people have been brainwashed to believe in the concept of school grades (with certain things studied in each grade), the idea that there ought to be 12 grades (“high school” was once very different”), and other such assumptions. The most basic question is, what should kids be required to learn, or offered to study? Everybody seems to agree on math, but how important is algebra? Should *everybody* be required to take it? Should it come before geometry, or after? What about foreign languages–which languages, and at what ages? (Enter Latin enthusiasts.) What holidays should there be? Is it important to give kids the summer off? (They’d probably do a lot better without such a big break.) Rich people have historically hired tutors for their children, but if a bunch of parents are organizing a school together, it’s hard without some common culture (perhaps a religious culture) to guide them.
Waldorf education (Steiner schools) are a good example. They believe that kids shouldn’t be taught reading until the second grade. On average, Waldorf kids end up a couple of grades behind their muggle peers. That’s a deal-breaker for a lot of parents, even without all the gnome-worship and whatnot.
If I may backtrack a few steps, let me just clarify that using my original criteria to ask the question, “how can we duplicate text (et al.) without using industrial processes?”, the answer was essentially, “we kind of can’t beyond use of a scribe.”
If we ask the question from an intermediary point, “how can we duplicate text (et al.) on a homescale level, using products still available to us?” the answer is completely different, and suggests that we can’t write these off quite yet.
Old mimeographs work with thermal stencil paper using the stencil-making methods named above. And too, there are old, and reformulated, recipes for making the old-style waxed stencils. Spirit duplicators (and hectographs) work with masters made via still-available spirit-master “carbon” papers and vintage copy-pencils. The Japanese Gariban works with a type of waxed paper (may differ from what you get in the grocery store in the US) that might not be too difficult to make or obtain.
The “new-old-stock” supplies still available in varying quality are simply what’s available to us from the end-of-the-research-pipeline survivors, made with the chemical and physical manufacturing capabilities of the 1940s through early 1980s – but there are answers from further back in time, from James Watt’s and Thomas Edison’s eras, and from the years leading up to say, the 1920s. I’ve been posting patents from the early days, and have collected digital copies of formularies and manuals on ink manufacture and other useful processes, because I know that this information will be critical for the tinkerers whose experiments we need.
I’ve written (on my blog) before that some of the “failed” duplicating methods might not actually be failures, they might be tributaries not taken, when the flood of “Progress” went pell-mell in only-one-certain-direction, leaving other good options high and dry for a time.
Does this mean mimeos (et al.) aren’t quite fit for your Technonomicon? I don’t know. Perhaps not, because they’re not an “out of the box” solution. But then again, some of the duplicating technologies about which we can still find information might be relevant and useful and pick-up-able with some basic supplies.
So, my point is, stay tuned.
I can’t even express how excited I am for this book. I’ll preorder it, I’ll send you money to start writing it now if you start a gofundme. I personally intend to start experimenting with electroculture shortly – I’ve heard of it and wondered how one sends current through the ground when one disperses current through grounding out. Then as I learned more about electical currents, I came to understand that current doesn’t disperse instantly and can affevt the ground. Is this dc or ac curremt they run in the ground?
As for alternate healing technologies – I would like to introduce everyone to something a close friemd of mine practices. It’s closer to the scientific consensus than homeopathy – close enough that one can and must get a medical license to practice it – but it undermines the pharmeceutical profit system enough most insurances won’t cover it. And yet, its so successful she has enough customers to make a nice living.
It’s called neruo-optometry, and it essentially uses the eyes to heal the brain, as the two are intimately connected. Using vision tests, it allows a doctor to diagnose various brain conditions. Often conditions such as anxiety, adhd, or frequent migranes have an underlying cause sich as a traumatic brain injiry that can be identified. Amd the treatment? No expensive lifelong medicones with awful side effects. She prescribes eye and brain exercises, some remarkably close to meditation, or staring at certain pigment lights. Things that can be done at home by the patient, that often cure the problem, instead of managing it. Things that often get people off medications they’ve had to rely on their whole lives.
Here’s some mebsites for more info. Might become more popular as pharmeceuticals become too expensive.
Neuro optometry websites:
Noravisionrehab.org
Covd.org
Re: masonry stoves
See https://archive.org/details/masonrystove for free designs from Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Energy
JMG,
There was no definition of technology in your essay. I’m wondering… Is doing without technology? (or a technique?)
People often associate doing without with suffering. It is not, in my ample experience. I grew up in the USSR, consequently:
1. I was 8 when my parents got a TV (never developed a habit).
2. I was 10 when my parents got a washing machine ( a dryer and a dishwasher were unknown).
3. I was 15 when my parents’ turn for a landline came up (there were shortages and people waited for decades to get them installed). A phone booth before that, a short distance from my house, was just fine.
4. My parents never owned a car.
5. As a child, I never took a shower – bath only, once a week.
6. An abacus was a standard feature in all grocery stores in my neighbourhood. Women manning those abaci were not brainy math types, but they managed just fine.
There was no suffering in it.
Hey JMG and commentariat
I’ve just published my latest instalment in the “Language Learning through time” series on my Substack, after a long hiatus in writing it. I’ve made a bit of a change by including new but open access books alongside the usual 19th and 20th century fare.
Btw, would forgotten or “forbidden” methods of language learning be included in your new book project, JMG?
Sorry, forgot to include the link.
https://jlmc12.substack.com/p/language-learning-through-time-part-9d6
Foxhands # 238
Four years ago, I bought 200 Black Locust saplings from the Virginia State nursery for less than $2 a sapling. I have a few that are now 25 feet tall! The blossoms are delicious and make the most amazing syrup. What amazing trees! I’m getting ready to coppice many of them this Fall and will be using the wood for the rocket stoves my nature students make and cook over. One day, I will eventually build a rocket mass heater on my property and will definitely be burning some Black Locust wood. Black Locust leaves are super nutritious, and my meat rabbits gobble them up. The only issue is the thorns, so I carefully pluck the leaves from each branch. When I first started feeling the leaves to my rabbits, I just cut off the branches and one of my bucks ended up scratching his eye. So now I spend the extra time and just collect the leaves. I saw a video once of someone who bought old metal tools (like an ax) with missing/broken handles and he left the tools on growing Black Locust branches. In a few years he would saw off the tool and have a perfectly fitted handle. So cool!
“The Rocket Mass Heater Builder’s Guide” by Erica and Ernie Wisner is a wonderful resource. One of these days I will make the time and gather some friends to build one of these beasts. Some neighbors just built one in their greenhouse, but I haven’t checked it out yet. Rocket Mass Heaters need a strong foundation since they are so heavy, so it will probably have to be built in the basement or in the cob/strawbale tiny house I have planned. Such an exciting technology!
@ Northwind
I switched to cast iron for frying pans myself about a decade ago. I’ve never regretted it; still using the original Lodge set I picked up then. It seemed expensive at the time but since the non stick ones we had been using up to that point had to be swapped out every 18 months it has worked out considerably cheaper in even quite a short span. Come to think of it, cast iron cookware should probably also go on the list.
The letterpress printer is jet black with a deep patina and only a very small amount of surface rust. The specialist who transported it told me that an annual coating of baby oil – a mineral oil used here in the UK on babies, was the standard approach to avoid “bloom” on cold days. It’s just struck me that I have no idea why baby oil is a thing. Do we want to make babies even more slippery? Most of the rotating joints have a lubrication hole bored in. Three in one oil there. I’ve been warned not to get any oil on the surface of the flywheel, grabbing the wheel to slow it down is the brake.
@ Martin Beck
What an interesting film. Yes, that’s the kind of thing although the one in the film looks a great deal larger than the Diamant. The character operating it looks like a comfortably off factory worker. I was told by the previous owner that printing 10,000 pages over the course of a working day was standard. That seems a lot to me and setting up and breaking down pages takes time. You have to clean up the printer religiously at the end of the day too; dried ink is tough to remove.
One more book on the ketogenic diet I forgot to add is this: The Relation of Alimentation and Disease: Historical Study of Nutrition, Diet, Digestion & Disease Prevention by James Henry Salisbury 1888. He did a 30 year research study on elimination diets and the Salisbury steak is named after him.
@ Joseph Lofthouse #67. I ordered a copy of your book, tonight. I see there was a less expensive “student” version, but I sprung for the high priced spread. 🙂 I live in a senior apartment complex. We can have small plots, for gardening. Between my assigned plot, and a little guerrilla gardening, here and there, I have about 100 square feet. I grow mostly food. This is in western Washington state.
Up until about 5 years ago, I had really not done much gardening. But, between the Master Gardeners (a university / county extension outfit) showing up every Monday, the internet, a collection of books that is entirely out of hand, and a contributor here, Chris from Fernglade Farm, I don’t do too badly. It’s mostly elderly ladies who also garden. They think I have a green thumb and know what I’m doing. I tell them I throw s__t in the ground, and see what happens. 🙂 Lew
Absolutely non-sense! Now excuse me, I am going to go listen to my streamed album that sounds like it is being played through a tin can and string, at least when it isn’t buffering or being removed by the music label. I need to wait for my car to do a software update because the steering wheel doesn’t work due to new untested AI code being deployed. But I can be distracted for a while using the brain rot from Tik-tok doomscrolling. BTW, I am on the way to the pharmacy to collect my soup of 13 drugs that make my heart race at 300bpm… but it is all good for me… 😉
European Reader: “That’s wrong” – Ok, that’s bold. Let’s see then.
This stuff about digital to analog converters may have some merit. I don’t actually care. I’m concerned about audio signals when I hear them and when I see them digitally represented in my wave editor, or in the data for the app I’m working on. I don’t have a reason to rent an oscilloscope or do anything else to see what shape of wave the actual speaker or preamp or whatever sees.
As to that thing about being able to recreate the 20 kHz signal with any fidelity having only two samples available — I do not think that is true. I think the slice of time during which only two amplitude states can be represented may well have more detail than that. I don’t know how it could be thought that this might not be true or how any math could obviate that. I think a contrary view can only come from an incomplete understanding of the concepts involved.
Anyway the larger point of what I was saying with that is that’s it’s apparent that a 44.1k/sec sample rate isn’t good enough to capture accurately all that a healthy human ear can hear, regardless of whether one individual person (in the example, me) can subjectively detect that shortcoming or not. I’m not sure whether your intent is to dispute that, or merely the details, but I remain unconvinced either way.
Ambrose: I do not know what a septialist is and Google was not helpful. I think I got the rest though. Yes, I understand about dualism vs monism. As with flying cars and interplanetary travel I am personally of the opinion that if a monist explanation for how consciousness proceeds from the physicality of the brain is in the offing, it is well past time for it to appear. I think it doesn’t because either it isn’t true or because it isn’t discoverable.
What if there’s something in that second category, though? What if the following proposition is true: “There exists a property of the universe that makes consciousness possible, similiar to how the electromagnetic spectrum makes radio possible. We haven’t discovered it, but natural selection has, and creatures work better with awareness than without, so natural selection used that property to bring about consciousness.”
Anyway the actual question wasn’t whether monism is true, it was whether something that’s not material can have material effects. So if the case from the previoes paragraph is true, is the “site of awareness” material? The part of the brain that works as the “antenna” is, sure, but the awareness itself?
Maybe that’s not monism anymore but another version of dualism. I think the question if “material/not material” is the same either way. Anyway all I really wanted to do was laugh along about the “defenders of modern scientific orthodoxy” and their amusing sputtering at certain topics. 😉
@Ornifex/JMG/Jeff Russell RE : Ketogenic diets
It is always fascinating to see how different diets impact different people.
I am completely plant based diet and that works great for me, but that is me. Some people do it and last about 3 days before they are racing to KFC at 2am to get ANYTHING meat based. I don’t blame them, many folks make the mistake of assuming everyone is the same.
Find what works for you, offer it as an option to others but don’t push it.
Re: Wristwatches
I have worn wrist watches all my life. My current watch is a Seiko mechanical automatic (self-winding) watch I bought in 2010.
My father used self-winding watches all his life, and I have followed his example. I like the fact that I don’t have to worry about batteries and I don’t have to manually wind it up, either. The downside is that it is not always to-the-minute accurate (I have to adjust it every other day or so) but that is a trade off I am happy with.
Hi JMG,
Below are two book titles I used to build my rocket stove
1) Rocket Mass Heaters by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson
2) The Rocket Mass Heater Builder’s Guide by Ernie & Erica Wisner
“Mister Nobody says:
July 29, 2026 at 2:28 pm
One reservation I would have about reviving cars such as the 1966 Mustang is that automobiles of the sixties were rather less fuel efficient than their successor-models of the later twentieth century. Would it be possible to find a “happy medium” of the increased fuel-efficiencies of later decades without the unnecessary electronic geegaws that make modern cars a pain in the posterior?”
The early Citroen 2CVs, in the late 1940s, achieved about 100 miles per (UK) gallon or 3 litres per 100 km. They were fine for French country roads, i.e. the top speed was about 40 mph or 60 km per hour. They weighed roughly 500 kg, half a ton, and were able to drive across fields, given the generous ground clearance.
50 years after that, the Audi A2 TDI (with a 1.2 litre engine) achieved the same fuel economy on diesel but it is much more high-tech and its top speed was a ridiculous 190 km per hour, 110 mph. The speed limit on nearly all European motorways is about 70 mph so who needs 110? If you re did the Audi A2 for a top speed of ‘only’ 70-80, you’d probably be able to achieve 120-150 mpg. The A2 still only weighed 800 kg, given its pioneering aluminium bodywork. (Most cars I see on UK roads in 2026 weigh from 1.2 to 3.0 tonnes, i.e. 1200-3000 kg.)
I suppose if you hybridised the two cars you might get a decent result . . .
One issue, diesel is becoming relatively scarcer as oil supply moves from conventional wells to shale. Also we desperately need diesel for essential transport like ships, lorries, tractors …
All this talk about different systems for playing music goes right over my head, chiefly because I basically stopped listening to recorded music when I went to college in 1960; and I found that I never missed it very much. Lots of my fellow undergraduates didn’t listen to recorded music very much, either. We have been called the “Silent Generation” for many reasons, but one of them was simply that music rarely figured very much in our young lives. That seems to have developed in American culture sometime after our college years (1960-1964 in my case).
What recorded music there was available, back then in the 1950s, was mostly very melodic: peaceful, soothing, and unexciting. Take a listen to Patti Page’s “Mockingbird Hill” for a typical example. (You can find it online in several places; it’s little more than 2 minutes long.) And it was chiefly available in the form of 78 rpm records, or on the radio.
What I did like in the way of music was songs that told a story, and that I could sing myself. I had The Golden Boo of Favorite Songs, and a few other booklets of that sort, with such songs as “Reuben and Rachel, ” “The Old Oaken Bucket,” “Little Brown Jug,” “We’re Tenting Tonight,” and “Will You Come with me?” And about that time along came the folk ballad revival, which I also liked very much. But none of this was music that anyone ever played as background, while doing something else.
Anyway, what I expect, or hope, to see return is not recorded music at all, but home and small-group singing of old ballads and other songs, with little or no instrumental accompaniment.
In addition to The Golden Book of Favorite Songs, there was also The Grey Book of Favorite Songs, and combining the two in one volume, The Blue Book of Favorite Songs,, all of which can be downloaded from archive.org
The book Craeft by Alexander Langlands might be worth a look for this project. He explores old ways of doing things. “The goal, in being craefty, is not to use as much as possible of the technology and resources you have at your disposal but to use as little as possible in relation to the job that needs undertaking.”
@ Ambrose #259
“Scotlyn (no. 200), you seem to be saying that TCM is mostly placebo, but still partly effective in the non-placebo sense. Can you be more specific about the latter elements?”
Ambrose, you need to ask yourself what “placebo” means.
Because all healing takes place in the patient, using the patient’s physiological processes and materials, which will always be active, always ready to re-model themselves in accordance with current stresses and strains, until our final day, when all of that stops.
There is nothing that anyone can offer any patient (from any system, from any set of maps and models, from any collection of “snake oil”, using any set of tools, with NO exception) that “works” (ie pleases the patient) if it cannot “work WITH” the patient’s own body’s capacities, processes and materials to regulate itself, balance itself, and heal itself.
OTOH, any of the above that succeeds in “working WITH” the patient, can, in principle, “please the patient” sufficiently to align with their healing.
You may differentiate between “real” medicine and “placebo”. I do not.
You cannot (and here I mean, it is not possible to) force healing on anyone against their consent. To heal, a person must themselves be successfully, and wholly, recruited into joining the enterprise. There are millions of ways to do this. In principle, all of them CAN “work” if they “placebo” – ie please the patient.
What are the kinds of medicine that are capable of pleasing you personally? (I suspect that a good, scientific explanation, and the ministrations of people with certain credentials, will be the most resonant and pleasing to you personally, am I wrong?)
———
PS – I have spoken so far about a three-way encounter between practitioner, patient, and substance (“snake oil” if you will) – all of the arms of which make a contribution (and, by the way, any one of which can contribute a veto). At the same time 90-95% of the time our injuries and illness clear up when we ourselves are playing both the role of the practitioner and the role of the patient – in other words, with our own self-care. The need for a separate person to play practitioner is not nearly as frequent as any practitioner would like us to think. 😉
@ Joan #276
Thank you!
@ Ambrose #259
the tl;dr version of my last comment?
I hold that there is nothing that is “effective” in a “non-placebo sense”.
🙂
A few more replies, some of which I didn’t get around to last time since I was interrupted by a power outage (funnily enough considering the subject of this post…):
@Commentariat re. cassettes and VHS
Personally I remember them from the 90s and don’t really miss them, other than as nostalgia pieces. They were both fairly cumbersome to use and had low video/audio quality, on top of not being very robust as physical media. Reviving vinyl records makes more sense IMO.
@Andy #45
Congrats on the press, and in general I’d like to wish you all the best with your business. Over the last few years I’ve dabbled a little in learning bookbinding myself, but only for personal use. Glad to hear you’re keeping that noble craft alive and doing it on a commercial level!
@Chuaquin #87
“Wow! When you’ve written about mimeographers, I’ve remembered when I was a student during ’90s, and a teacher told us there were machines used for copies before the photocopier arrived, very desired during last times of Franco dictatorship here to copy and spread forbidden ideas…”
They played a similar role here in Norway during WW2, when people made so-called “illegal newspapers” during the German occupation. Of course this made them just as desired and sought after here during the War.
@Athaia #192
“Yes, you can collect old typewriters and treadle sewing machines. But once those become rare, you might be out of luck. Better to know how to make them yourself, no?”
As a casual typewriter enthusiast, it’s been my impression that they’re fairly complex industrial products that wouldn’t be feasible to make on a small scale. I’d be glad if that’s a misunderstanding. Making replacement parts like individual letter arms might be a different matter, of course. And either way, I hope someone starts producing them again during the scarcity industrialism era while the capacity is still around. AFAIK only the Chinese are currently making typewriters, and they’re held to be pretty shoddy. It’s also sobering to look up prices for typewriters from the early to mid 20th century and realize they were much more expensive in their day than they are as collector pieces today, almost like high-end computers today.
@Foxhands #238
Glad to hear about the efficiency of rocket stoves from an actual user. I’ve seen the “five times more efficient” number a few times, but there’s also quite a few skeptics who claim rocket stoves seem too good to be true. When you say “a standard wood stove”, do you mean a modern and relatively efficient one, or an older pre-1990 type?
@Cesar (#260): the only method of self-hypnosis I’ve practiced is Autogenic Training, which was developed in the 1930s by the German psychiatrist J.H. Schultz. It never became popular in the Anglosphere because that spot got taken by progressive relaxation, but it is pretty popular in Japan and in Spain, for some reason.
This means there aren’t many books in English available. The most in-depth is Wolfgang Luthe’s Autogenic Therapy, but it’s a) out of print and b) maybe a bit too in-depth for beginners. Still, if autogenic training suits you, I can’t recommend it enough if you want to learn what’s possible with this practice.
To start learning, there’s Autogenic Training by Dr. Kai Kermani, and Autogenic Therapy by Jane Bird and Christine Pinch. The latter belong to the British Autogenic Society, and while their books is very good, they insist on only learning it from certified teachers, because apparently, you will spontaneously self-combust if you dare to learn it by yourself. Well, I learned it from books, and I’m still here, but I’m a contrarian and an autodidact by choice, so ymmv.
Two other books could become interesting for advanced practice, Autogenics 3.0 by Luis de Rivera, a Spanish psychiatrist who is (or was, when the book was published ) the president of the International Society of Autogenic Training, and Advanced Autogenic Training and Primal Awareness by James Endredy, which is a bit idiosyncratic in its approach and the methods he combines with it.
There is one other book, Autogenic Training: A Mind-Body Approach to the Treatment of Chronic Pain Syndrome and Stress-Related Disorders which already tells you about its main focus – it’s the only one of the ones I listed that I don’t own, but from the excerpts I’ve seen, it has very good instructions for autodidactic learners.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions.
Oh, about cooling buildings without electricity: in addition to the cooling towers mentioned by others, there is also the brick screen that shades the outer walls of a house, either called Jali or Musharrabiya. Which I find pretty neat, especially if you combine a clay screen with some moistening system, the only downside I see is that at our latitude, it would swallow what little light we have during the winter months.
And one other technology that came to mind is biogas. Here: https://greengasinc.com/energy/biogas-electricity-generator/ they tell you exactly how many cows you need for it, and they also sell the necessary equipment 😉.
Obtaining and processing wood for cooking in a wood stove can be a a big barrier to using wood stoves. I have a small portable wood stove called Ecozoom acquired by a company now called BioLite. Designed to make cooking more fuel efficient and less smoky for women in third world countries, it can be fired with small branches gathered and broken by hand.
Once, with a 4x4x8 block of dried black locust and a little newspaper, I cooked a meal in under 45 minutes for four adults and two children consisting of two salmon steaks, a couple potatoes boiled in water and then fried, sauteed peppers and onions, and a couple cups of coffee. I even had a little wood left over.
This is a great project! I can’t be of much help with it, but might I suggest Amateur Press Associations? Long before the Internet, APAs were a major way for far-flung fans and aficionados to contact each other; the only drawback is dependency on a semi-functional postal system. They were already dying when I entered science fiction fandom in the 1990s, though I heard lots about them from my boomer friends; by the time the boomers are gone the memory of APAs seems likely to be gone as well and be in need of reviving. After all, they were good enough for Lovecraft!
Little Toad mentioned linen; I went to a talk about linen and was suitably intimidated by the amount of work that went into it. No wonder women spun all the time in the olden days! Perhaps the process of making linen would be a good addition to the Tome? As petroleum stocks decline, linen may well make a big comeback over water- and pesticide/herbicide-intensive cotton.
Annette is referring to ramie, I do believe.
Yesteday night (local time), during a talk with my parents, I remembered one of my grandpas (deceased in last ’90s), had worked during his younger times for a while as a shepherd (he was also a horse and mule seller for a while). A time later, thanks to my association of ideas, I thought that nowadays, sheep are sheared here mainly by some hired Latin American men, with electric shears. Near any Spaniards want to do this hard and nomad-like job today, not even Romani men; though in old times, for example, two centuries ago, it was one of the Romani men favorite job (because it was suitable for wanderers).
I think current widespread electrification won’t last forever, in the long term; so I’ve remembered electric scissors replaced old school sheep scissors…Well, this statement isn’t really true, because hand scissrors for shearing sheep are being made even nowadays, though they’re used only for a few animals each time. Of course, shearers use today electric scissors to work with big herds.
An example of scissors for sheep can be found even in Amazon (no advertising purpose here!):
https://www.amazon.es/Tijeras-esquilar-tijeras-resistentes-pulgadas/dp/B08PFF9Z1Z?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=AENZG9AV536ZT
I think good steel scissors, if they’re cared well, can last even a century, depending on their maker quality. And they’re are a low tech tool.
Here, old school sheep scissors:
https://www.cositasantiguas.es/products/tijera-de-esquilar-antigua-herramienta-de-campo-autentica?srsltid=AfmBOop3g97T3aOzcoZteEhXK35nDmCIvRw8TGe76UCLIvoyPEz2yl0G
Another thing I remembered about my grandpa old times as a shepherd, isn’t a technology, but a lost knowledge, methink. When there wasn’t any grass available for the cattle, for example in a dry summer, some shepherds cut back some ash tree green branches (from local Mediterranean species “Fraxinus Angustifolia”). Then, they saved leaves during one or two days away from their cattle (because ash tree mild toxines within leaves disappear after starting to dry), and finally cattle was feed with those leaves as a “consolation prize”. An interesting trick for hard times, methink. In some places, ash tree leaves were cut back during Fall to be dried (like hay) and eaten by cows and sheep during Winters, for example in mountain areas.
This custom seems near forgotten in rural areas here nowadays.
————————————————-
(Slightly off topic) Have you ever read about James Herriot books saga? (He was a British veterinarian).
Robert M. # 152:
“The students I taught at my university generally shower once a day, and tell me, if I ask about their strange customs, that they need to bathe so often to keep from smelling bad.”
I’ve been told by a near friend that too many showers (daily shower) can harm more than be good for “very clean people”. According some people, too many water and soap in your skin can degrade your skin, because you can lose your skin natural oil and suffer irritations.
I’ve read online some reasonings supporting this idea, and some against it. Who knows?
—————————–
Anselmo # 195:
The Spanish “botijo” is a cool low tech technology! (Well, I’ve tried to do a bad joke with this humble but useful clay thing for drinking fresh water: it really cools liquids thanks to their slow evaporation through its clay surface).
———————————-
Homeopathy:
I guess there could be some link to explain in a scientific way how homeopathy can work, maybe linked with the called “water memory”, a theory supported by the Japanese Masaru Emoto. I point it as a mere dilettante in these topics. I mean, if water has any memory, why not another stuffs too?
https://bornastheearth.com/dr-masaru-emoto/
While living in Brazil, we – like many other people – used a contraption that pulls the clothes rack up to near the ceiling. In small apartments, it allows you to work at ground level while the clothes are drying over your head. I also think there is more draft near the ceiling. I won’t link to any commercial site here, you can search for images with “ceiling-mounted drying rack” or “varal de teto”. Shouldn’t be too hard for somebody without two left hands (as is my case, unfortunately…) to build by themselves, but for now, at least, they are readily available.
We grind coffee by hand and prepare it in an espresso-type machine, and we soak dry beans at least 24h, but I didn’t think those were extraordinary things to do.
JMG,
Another retro communication technology I would bring back from the treasure trove of the 1970’s is the CB (citizens band) radio. This of course, becomes much more valuable when the cell phone network collapses and we find the old land line system dismantled and unusable.
Shortwave radios are fine for the enthusiast and the only radio method of going long distance but the lowly CB radio can be a lifeline for a neighborhood, or perhaps a small town. They are great for rural dwellers near the edge of town to contact service in the nearby town ( ambulance etc.) Plus they are low tech, and easy to operate.
And if one hurries you can still find them for sale in thrift shops, pawn shops, and other 2nd hand venues. ten-four good buddy,
“As a casual typewriter enthusiast, it’s been my impression that they’re fairly complex industrial products that wouldn’t be feasible to make on a small scale”
The same thing applies to sewing machines. The issue is the tooling needed to build one. Once you have all the specialized tools, castings, fittings and experience to make one you may as well keep building more.
At what point does the proprietor of a typewriter (or sewing machine) shop become a capitalist?
JMG and commentariat, go take a course in old-timely skills like bowl spinning, leather craft, basketry or blacksmithing at the John C. Campbell Folk School, in greater metropolitan Brassrown, NC. I’ve spent a week there learning to silversmith, and another week learning to make my own soaps and lotions. Great food, wonderful people, every dime well spent learning a skill I still use regularly. Gonna go back one day and learn to make my own brooms and brushes. Cheers.
https://www.folkschool.org/
Hi JMG,
Wax cylinders would be wild! Maybe people can get down with wax tablets again too!
Somewhat related, I have noticed that some of these newer turntables support 78s. I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s pretty cool. I’ve never had a 78 player but do find the collectors pretty interesting. Their whole deal (I think I’m right in saying) is a love affair with whatever it is that was lost with vocal music in the early part of the 20th century. I don’t think anybody is quite sure, but whether it’s just the sound of people not used to hearing recorded singing, or it’s something about the tenchology available back then, or it has to do with the lives people were living, or something else in their souls that just changed that just made their voices sound completely different in a way that is very moving.
I feel something of that when I watch silent films (apologies for bringing up movies again, but at least these ones are by dead people!). Something in the atmosphere that isn’t easy to convey. Even when the plots are contrived and even silly, there is a haunting and beatiful quality to them that seems to have been achieved effortlessly and seemingly without it being even noticed at the time. Something that was in abundance but is incredibly rare now.
Thanks,
Johnny.
Hello Mr Greer
Though unrelated to you great post, I just had a thought. As the eroei of fossil fuels goes down, requiring more and more capital and energy to be reinvested to maintain production, the profitability of fossil fuels extraction is going to decline steeply. Add in economic contraction post peak oil, fewer people will be able to afford high energy goods or services, consequently pulling fossil fuels prices down. That profitability gap is going to get very narrow. The part of the political class feeding off oil money at present may find in the near future that they have bought a nothing burger as campaign finance vanishes with oil company profits.
PS the BP oil corporation announced this morning that they are pulling completely out of the North Sea. There was some waffle about international restructuring but the real reason is that profit margins are very thin, there is serious risk of making big losses as they are down to tertiary recovery methods and using very old infrastructure; most over 40 years old, some over 60 years old. The North sea is now a high risk oil play now due to very old infrastructure.
PPS in the UK the right wing media are telling a fairy tale that resumed drilling will bring a gush of new wealth to the UK as in the eighties. They never mention that the oil industry in the North Sea is already receiving twice the subsidies and tax breaks as the wind turbine and solar PV sectors combined. Expanding drilling will only increase the losses to the UK treasury. The profits, if any, will be in somebody else’s pocket, but that is the point.
PPPS The lie that there is no drilling being allowed in the UK waters. Announced in the last few days, drilling at the Rosebank oil field will be delayed by several months due to an oil rig dropping crucial equipment in the North Sea. Rosebank and it’s near neighbour Jackdaw are the last undeveloped oil fields in UK waters. They had drilling licences issued many years ago. However they do not have a happy history. The drilling licences have sold on at least four times. Why? The Jackdaw and Rosebank (nice country cottage names) are relatively small oil fields that are not in the North sea. They are in the North Atlantic, two hundred miles north of the Shetland islands. This has important consequences. The weather is a lot worse in the north Atlantic than the North sea pushing up drilling costs, and there is no direct access to the North sea oil pipeline infrastructure. The main oil terminal is at Aberdeen four hundred miles away. So interesting times. I’m waiting for the wailing and nashing of teeth when the political shills of the oil industry are left with empty bowls, well in the UK at least.
I’ve got some stuff on shave horses that I will hopefully get to you soon for this week’s post.
Pat @ 273: Re the masonry stove you described. With convoluted stoves, rocket stoves, etc., how do you clean out the soot and other stuff that can create a chimney fire? How do home insurers regard them?
JMG regarding the PBY Catalina: You have plenty of fellow admirers of the PBY; Consolidated Aircraft seems to have had the best airplane “styling.” Another favorite of airplane enthusiasts is the Lockheed Constellation. Maybe the Curtis Commando C-46, too. What do these all have in common? A shapely, non-cylindrical fuselage; more expensive to build. I don’t know how the old radial engines compare with the modern turbines when it comes to fuel economy. That must be an issue. The turbines are probably more reliable.
Ambrose @ 281, “The most basic question is, what should kids be required to learn, or offered to study?” I think most Americans could likely agree on the following:
English and Spanish. Spanish for real, not pretend like it is now in some schools, because Spanish is the other major New World language.
Mathematics up to basic algebra and geometry.
Civics, geography and history, world and national, taught as separate subjects.
Natural science, which would include basic ecology, astronomy, geology.
Maybe others can opine on what level of computer mastery should be taught.
Also, basic life skills. Cooking and sewing/knitting/crochet, etc. required for girls, optional for boys. Not out of misogyny, but because most girls at some time in their lives will have responsibility for maintaining households and caring for children. Gardening, to include care of hand tools, for everyone. Basic electronics and carpentry required for boys, optional for girls.
PE replaced with some form of intramural sports, I almost want to say required for all able bodied, so kids can learn physical skills and how to function as part of a team.
CatoctinMountainMama/Caroline About locust trees:
How do you deal with the syrup dripping aphids?
I suppose you do know that locust burns very, very hot. Some folks won’t burn locust wood indoors for that reason.
Viduraawakened #19 The link that you gave for phytoremediation is practically vibrating with malware. Whenever I try to load it, it almost immediately starts throwing fake MacAfee virus warnings, or turns into porn.
On a side note, back when I was a student at Berea College, in Berea, KY, the forestry department was researching using Ailanthus trees for phytoremediation. I think they were looking into practical applications in removing heavy metals from coal mine tailings.
Chauquin, American seed companies are now beginning to offer seeds for forage roots, the large beets, carrots and other roots which once were fed to livestock during winters.
Regarding electrical currents….
…I seem to vaguely recall, in the dim recesses of my memory from many moons ago, that the construction of ancient temples, particularly to agrarian Gods, created microcurrents in soil and improved fertility.
Also, having sacred forests located where rivers and streams were most likely to flood kept the land fertile.
Someone pointed out that the best way to get humans to pay attention to something is to make it part of religion, hence the temples &c.
I am definitely going to look into electric currents in gardens. Our backyard is lush with unusable weeds, but only certain fruits and potatoes grow there, even if we buy soil from the garden supply store. We are just beginning to explore the exquisite frustration of growing edible things.
Bruce
JMB,
Yes and to force adaptation in the muscle you need to go to the point of failure, the point where you simply can’t do another rep …. another movement. And … it’s pretty safe to go to failure with bodyweight, some risk of injury is there but nothing is going to crash onto you.
It may or may not be appropriate to include the technology of repairing all these other technologies. This is something that can be learned and put to use today, because (even today) not all devices are computerized, and not all breakdowns in computerized devices are caused by problems with the computers. Example: I have a small electric kettle about seven years old, which is now on its fourth life. That reflects how many times I’d have had to replace it, so far, if I weren’t willing to disassemble the thing and fix it (clean tiny debris out of the fussy internal switch contacts, two out of the three times) instead, every time it suddenly stopped working. I’ve repaired washing machines and dryers, despite (the first time) having no prior experience with washers or dryers (and that time also being before today’s miraculous abundance of DIY repair videos online).
“Ooh, but those things are all electric! Danger! House burny down!” Good thing it’s a book of forbidden technologies, right?
“How to be a duck plucker? No way to duck it. Get yourself a duck, and shoo, boy, pluck it!” That is to say, you can start with taking things apart with the intention of putting them back together again at least as good as they already were. And if the thing is already broken, you’ve got nothing to lose.
@Viduraawakened
Re: Airships
This is a really cool technology that almost works. The infamous Hindenburg disaster is seared into everyone’s mind, but there were plenty of other failures that didn’t become bywords in popular culture, which killed serious development of Airship technology. Hydrogen was not the cause of disastrous crashes, weather was. Airships cannot handle bad weather, which makes them very vulnerable to sudden squalls and such.
Nevertheless, there are enthusiasts who have been trying to work out the bugs all century long. They would be very graceful floating along in the sky, and I dearly wish I could see them gliding overhead instead of jet airliners, but, alas, they are, as JMG has repeated over and over, not economically viable, and thus are relegated to publicity stunts, like advertising blimps that circle sports arenas.
Retrovated tech…
Yesterday we sprayed our sheep, giving them their annual, post-shearing saltwater and garlic shower. For us, this procedure has been successfully replacing the organophosphate “sheep dip” (still in regular use on neighbouring farms) for the past 25 years or so. Other farmers around here still cannot believe we don’t “dip”. 😉
The technology we used might just qualify as “steampunk”. The nozzle, in particular, looks to be a fiddly gadget to make, but the whole set up works extremely well at creating a fine, but powerful mist, and is entirely powered by a human.
I give you – the knapsack sprayer. https://knowledge.desikheti.com/knapsack-sprayer-types-uses-parts-maintenance-complete-guide-for-indian-farmers/
🙂
Hey John,
yes, we have been going backwards in many ways with the cars, Of course my first used car in high school although easy to work on had abysmal gas mileage. But, the next set of cars might have been peak internal combustion engine car, first imported from Japan during the 1970’s oil crises. Those cars were easy to work on and got gas mileage we have never topped, especially the diesel ones, but even the gas ones.
Then we legislated fuel efficiency, people already wanted and were buying fuel efficiency so they could get to work, but we wrote laws, but at the same time, we wrote more laws on exhaust pollution. While admirable in intent, or at least in stated intent, the wrong metric was and is used. We have stated that the vehicles must not pollute more than x grams per gallon of fuel used. What we should care about is how many grams of pollution per mile driven. This means that many simple, fuel efficient designs cannot be sold here, and there are many that pollute less per mile driven due to the great fuel efficiency. SO, we have more complicated solutions to the pollution issue and use more fuel and less ability to be worked on at home while polluting more than we need to for the miles driven. To this day this limits imports of such simple smaller cars whether that was the main or just a secondary intent of how the law is worded, as well as getting more complexity.
And, the state of music in cars ! My previous passenger car ( wrecked by being ran into by another driver a couple years ago) that car had a car stereo that had radio/cassette/CD player. I just replaced the car with a used car, I thought I could add at least a CD player. Well, it turns out, you can, kind of, but it is not realy, what it is is a box that you insert your CD in, then it converts the CD to an MP3 file on the fly and sends it to the car stereo via cable to the USB plug. One of my kids says I can download my records and CDs onto a thumb drive, or a series of thumb drives might be simpler. At least it has a radio, with a button to push to turn on and rotate to adjust volume ! The car literature makes a fuss over the big name brand speakers it has….but no choices on quality music sources to feed them !
Ah, what do I miss from simpler technology times earlier in my life ? Ok
– Ability to repair and maintain car in the driveway by average people
– Ability to easily add on music options to cars ( my first used car came with a removeable underdash 8trac tape player, later changed to cassette)
– No expectation of being constantly reachable. A home answering machine was better than only being able to use one hand and a portion of attention as people are tethered and a slave to pinging notifications.
– Video and Music over the airwaves, ie., free to the consumer via included advertising. No non-stop subscription fees. And, adds can inform on what business exist, I have done business with a few that advertise on the local radio station I hear int he car. ( Car repair, termite inspection…)
– The telephone book. A free to the householder print listing of businesses, and people. The internet is broken, you cannot find out what local businesses exist, which may be a large problem why we cant “find anyone” to fix our houses ! And small businesses want to be found ! A one line int he yellow pages was cheap, didnt need to be a half page if you were small and just starting, so this put small business people out there next to ones with more money.
– USA made clothing. Yes, it was much, much more expensive per piece of clothing. However, we then saved money and sanity by owning less clothing. We didnt need room sized closets. We had less time consumed by clothes, not just washing, but deciding what to wear, also less time spent shopping for clothes ( as it wasnt affordable). More expensive in country clothing meant more good union jobs, less expensive housing, and more time to do other things. ( Teen girls loaned clothing alot in my area between friends, so a treasured top might be worn 4 times in one week to the high school, each day by a different girl. This type of sharing is a healthier virtue than mindless consuming of cheap throw away product)
– More books on the shelves at libraries. You cannot know what you want to check out if you cant browse it. The online catalog of what to order from associated branches, while nice for a librarian to have access to or consumers for some research, is worse for day to day wanting to find a book. Which novel ? Which repair or DIY book ? You have to see them to know.
– Timers for ovens. Yes, I come from working class family with working women. The ovens could be set when to turn on and when to turn off. Food could be set in the morning, or start before running errands. Yes, people would have an electric oven on when out, and it would turn off at a set time, in case you were delayed it wouldnt burn.
– Built in drainboards next to sinks
– Home telephones. They did not break, they were not mobile so were not lost. People spent overall less, although they also could not talk long distance as much back in the day due to costs, the phones were a buy once item, and bills could be kept reasonable by usage and because there was ONE phone bill per family ! Not 4 or 5 phones to be constantly replaced and to pay monthly service.
– Appliances lasted much, much longer. Now, they sometimes were much more expensive vs salaries ( although in my area there is a trend to expensive appliances even more expensive to median salary that are gimmicky and won’t last)
– live entertainment of some sort was more accessible, and even movies. This was not done at home in ones or twos.
-Time. there was alot more unstructured time.
A trend I see is that more time is wasted now due to our great technology ! We already had plenty of labor saving devices in the 1960s, 70s . What has been added has not made lives better. People have less time and are more stressed money wise in some ways due to higher expectations and a larger amount of “needed” constant bills ( subscriptions, expectations of more clothing, more devices, etc…) We had less stuff and more time hanging out. Even in lines, people might meet each others eyes and smile, not just looking at devices. Durable goods are no longer durable. Agency taken away from people. mut be done by experts.
–
re: Ketogenic diet,
If I may chime in– it’s also the only effective epilepsy treatment that will remain available in the low-tech future. IIRC its efficacy against epilepsy was found when it was first used for diabetics, in an unfortunate soul who had both diabetes and epilepsy– and whose seizures were stopped cold by going into ketosis. It is a more reliable option than any known epilepsy medication, and is still the the last fallback before brain surgery for seizures that don’t respond to medication. It is not a frontline treatment for two reasons– one official, and one obvious. The obvious reason is that there’s no pharma money behind it. The official reason, if you talk to any neurologist, is that they do not trust their patients to follow it.
There is a certain logic behind that one. It’s hard staying in ketosis. Most people who “do keto” for weightloss are on high-fat/low-carb diets but aren’t actually in metabolic ketosis. You really need to watch every bite like a hawk, and have immense willpower, considering how addictive sugar and carbs are. I found the strips you pee on to check your levels invaluable. In the old days, lacking that, the patient was put on a ZERO carb diet for a period of weeks (I was told ‘unsweetened eggnog and nothing else’ by an elderly nurse) in hospital while being monitored– remember when we monitored people in hospital?– until they showed improvement and understood the “feeling” of being in ketosis. After that they could be sent home with a diet plan.
I was on keto for a couple years after I was wrongfully diagnosed with intractable epilepsy. It helped immensely with my seizures, even though they later were revealed to not be “true” epileptic seizures at all, but “Psychogenic Psudoseizures”– a symptom of “Functional Neurological Disorder” which seems to just be a rebranding of Freud’s conversion disorder. My depression and anxiety improved a lot, too– improvements that lasted years. I encourage anyone whose brain isn’t behaving properly to try ketosis.
I was actually put onto it not by my doctor, but by a coworker who had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Her apparently-unorthodox doctor put her on keto immediately following the injury, which allowed the brain to heal with no lasting damage from the TBI. The healing persisted after the patient left metabolic ketosis– indeed, when I met her she was a bubbly sugar addict, and blissfully symptom free. I noticed the same thing, though I’m doing worse than I was after my long run of keto again. It might be situational, or I might need a second round.
Either way, once antiepileptic drugs and insulin get hard to come by, the ketogenic diet will be a literal lifesaver. It very much is worthy of inclusion in the Technonomicon.
@ Ambrose says:
July 30, 2026 at 10:15 pm
Waldorf education (Steiner schools) are a good example. They believe that kids shouldn’t be taught reading until the second grade. On average, Waldorf kids end up a couple of grades behind their muggle peers. That’s a deal-breaker for a lot of parents, even without all the gnome-worship and whatnot.
I teach English at a public high school. I’ve had several students who attended Waldorf school grades 1-8. All of them have read, written, and thought much better than most of their high school peers who didn’t attend the local Waldorf elementary school.
Pierre
In the spirit of an offering to old hoary Saturn, here are my recommendations for things to include in the Technonomicon:
1. An outline of how tube amplifiers work, including applications for radio, musical instrument amplifiers and stereos. Including a description of electromagnetic pickups for electric guitar or electric piano!
2. The advice for brewing coffee has all been excellent, but I have a few more recommendations as someone whose professional life is being taken over with the love of coffee:First you could include an overview of Jabez Burn’s patents/technology for indirectly heated coffee roasters from the 1880’s. They can also apply to roasting cacao, chicory, or peanuts – so the technology is not restricted to coffee. You can roast in a cast iron pan, but you won’t get the even development drum roasters provide and you get much more scorching.
Secondly, I love pour over coffee, Turkish coffee, French press coffee, moka-pot coffee, but traditional Italian espresso, whether as luxuriously thick concentrate or mixed with steamed milk or cream, is a lovely world unto itself. I have been repairing commercial espresso machines for cafes for the last few years and a long descent compatible version of the espresso machine was perfected by the Italians between 1947 and 1961, and they can be found throughout Africa and other less developed parts of the world running on methane or propane. The coffee community is busy progressing away from these older machines, but there is a dedicated community that recognizes their perfection, and you can still order them today. You can set them up so they only require municipal water (but even that can be replaced with a gravity tank), and the electric pumps common today can be replaced with the human lever generated pressure it all started with in 1947. Some electronics are helpful but not essential for keeping the boiler filled at the correct level, but they are simple and robust. The steam wands also have culinary applications other than steaming milk for coffee drinks: they are great for making hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, egg nog, bechamel or hollandaise sauce, or evenly heating milk to precise temperatures for making cheese. Here is a beautiful example:
3. While some have understandably praised traditionally fermented ginger ale over modern soda drinks, as the parent of a diabetic child who has to take medication for traditional ginger ale just the same as for fizzy brown sugar water, I see the significant advantages of the druggist’s soda formulary toolkit. It is easy to make affordable medicinal and non-medicinal flavored beverages, sparkling or otherwise, that do not impact blood sugar. But making your own flavor extracts, syrups or calorie free sweeteners (stevia extracts), electrolytes, mineral and soda waters can be cheap, rewarding, healthy, and fun! Technologies to cover would be how to use a pharmacist’s percolator for making flavor extracts, an essential oil still, and an overview of setting up a seltzer water tank. A good intro to this is Darcy O’Neil’s “The Art of Drink” which has a good overview of the history. Also see “A Compendium of Modern Pharmacy and Druggists’ Formulary”, 1895 for lots of recipes for different flavor extracts.
4. Lastly, on the topic of permaculture: In the 70’s and 80’s the permaculture designer Mike Corbett in Davis, CA adopted the swale technology from the Civilian Conservation Core, and it has since become one of the bedrocks of that movement. There are great examples of miles and miles of swales that the CCC built close by here in the mountains in Utah in the 30’s that foster forests today (as well as in Arizona and New Mexico). It would be interesting to find their manuals for surveying, laying them out and digging them with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. An introduction to the transit compass, a surveyor’s transit level, and clear long plastic hose water filled levels are warranted.
This one might not count, since its actually something being worked on right now, but how about a solar-pumped laser?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96239-5
The big thing in the laser world these days is solid-state diode lasers, but the old-style pumped crystal lasers still have some tricks up their sleeve! In this case it’s an Nd:Ce:YAG (Neodynium:Cerium:Yittrium-Aluminum Garnet) laser running of pure sunlight instead of the flashbulbs normally used. The cerium doping is a new thing– Nd:YAG lasers are decades-old technology–and key to the whole process: it absorbs blue and UV light which otherwise degrade the Nd:YAG crystal and re-emits it at wavelengths the Nd:YAG can use. Which is amazing: this additive boosts resiliency while increasing efficiency!
I’m imagining a few mysterious crystals lasting through the dark age in some forgotten workshop, leading to a flourishing of sun-pumped laser inventions come the ecotechnic renaissance. YAG lasers are good for laser surgery, which our descendants might want to try, but are also used in industrial cutters and the like.
Ian Duncombe 202
> Casting metal items at home
In South Africa there are back yard foundries casting three legged cooking pots from aluminium. They sell well because they heat up faster and are cheaper than commercial cast iron pots.
The problem is the aluminium is sourced from scrap and can contain toxic levels of lead, cadmium etc which can leach into the food. That can lead to illness and damage brain development in children. It’s a problem for the authorities.
Hi JMG,
I’m pretty sure this does not qualify as an “abandoned technology”, as a number of people still use it, but it’s definitely niche, and that is the fountain pen. It’s use is concentrated these days mostly among “retrovationists” and collectors. My argument for its inclusion is that renewed widespread use would significantly reduce disposal of plastics in the form of discarded pens. No more throwing away a whole pen ever couple of months. All you need is a good fountain pen and whatever inks you want to put in it and you’re good to go. A good quality fountain pen can last a lifetime, or at least for many years. I have several and keep different inks in them. I will note here that @CatoctinMountainMama/Caroline in comment #212 mentions using them herself and I’ll bet a lot of people in your community here do the same.
As we start the “Long Descent” I think they will become an important writing device to help writing and learning get through the dark age to come and I would like to see more people adopt them.
Still, I very much understand if you don’t want to include them as they are not in any real sense of the word “abandoned technology”, just much less used than in days past.
Cheers!
— C
Someone mentioned math tables upthread,
I still have my hardcover math tables book, CRC standard mathematical tables, I believe mine is the 25th edition and can be bought used at the Slimy River for a low price and so is much less expensive and time consuming than making your own on a spread sheet and printing it out ! You can have all your trig, log, exponent, etc…. functions in tables, no need for a calculator, and tons of calculus equations, and to jog your memory the various trig equations you might have forgotten the quadratic equation….
I am looking forward to sharing this post with my 9 year old son, who seems to have immediately concluded, upon entry into this life, that old things from way before his time are generally better. He has an absolute fit over any “upgrades” that his parents deem necessary and would like to save every old refrigerator, oven, computer, book, you name it. The idea of “progress” means nothing to him; it’s all about saving the old things and the old ways. He is a born retrovator–it sounds like it will be quite a useful trait during his lifetime –I’ll definitely be buying this book for him when it comes out!
Cynthia Christie (#295) et al –
I think the discussion about digital-to-analog conversion is less relevant than the analog-to-digital conversion that must happen first (unless your music is numerically synthesized). A somewhat subtle aspect of A/D conversion is that the sample rate (Fs) must be at least twice the frequency of any “significant” component of the input signal, because any frequency component above Fs/2 gets aliased an equal distance below Fs/2. So, if you’re sampling at 40 kHz, a 35 kHz signal (20 kHz + 15 kHz) becomes a 5 kHz signal (20 kHz – 15 kHz). Of course, nobody can hear a 35 kHz signal, but most people can hear a 5 kHz signal. Analog anti-aliasing filters are needed to suppress “everything above 20 kHz” from getting into the A/D, but there are design tradeoffs between how much suppression you get, at which frequencies, for what cost.
So, my assumption is that bad digital sound can be attributed to the aliasing of inaudible signals into the audible range. Once the A/D converter has created alias tones, they are impossible to remove. If the original, inaudible signal was a high harmonic of a musical instrument, the alias will in general NOT be harmonically related.
An oscilloscope display has nowhere near the precision needed to detect barely-audible signal components in the presence of normal-level audio. For that, you need a good spectrum analyzer (or good spectrum-analyzer software).
anonymous #32
One hands on book that I’ve seen on the topic is Brown’s Alcohol Motor Fuel Cookbook. Originally printed in 1979 the book has a step-by-step guide to converting a (then modern) engine to run on alcohol, as well as methods of ethanol still construction. There was an updated version published in 2002, which might cover fuel injected cars. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t tell you if it definitely does. The author, Michael H. Brown, also wrote ‘How to build a junkyard still’.
Have you read any work by A Midwestern Doctor on the Substack in The Forgotten Side of Medicine? The work reveals discarded (a.k.a. healing) therapies from the past. It dovetails well with your book idea.
I think this is on topic enough…I read in Jung’s Aion today that integrating the contents of the collective unconscious is an important part of individuation. Well, it seems that the myth of progress is one part of those contents. Much of society seems possessed by this myth and those on this blog are integrating it. In fact, much of your cultural commentary is helping integrate the contents of the collective unconscious. Any thoughts on that, JMG (or anyone else)?
Hi JMG
I thought of slinging as a very simple but rather effective projectile weapon. Iirc it was permitted as a hunting weapon for civilians in ancient Rome while the bow was banned.
Are you planning to include forgotten skills as well as technologies? I was thinking of yodeling or whistle languages for long distance communication.
Thanks
I’ve only read about half the comments, but since no one seems to have chimed in on this topic, I will essay a bit about simple home cooling from my own experience. In the American South, until the ’40s or ’50s, homes were built with high ceilings (where the heat in the room could pool harmlessly) and attics, which were well ventilated, usually having a hefty 3 to 4 foot diameter fan to bring the hot air up from the rest of the house and vent it out.
If I recall correctly, the idea was that the house would be wide open at night, with the fan doing its best to bring a breeze in through open (screened) windows, and sometime shortly after sunrise the whole house would be shut up tight, the attic fan turned off, and from then until sunset the house retained the coolness of the evening quite nicely. Some houses were built in such a way that the fan wasn’t necessary. Screened-in ground level porches surrounding the house (usually with a non-screened in area facing the street, suitable for socializing with neighbors) were another feature that kept the hot sun from heating up the house. There were more features that I can’t remember. Most houses, as I recall, were wood frame construction, although I remember a few all brick houses that were incredibly comfortable. Perhaps someone else has some information on these points to clarify my narrative here…
I think my second comment got lost in the outpour of comments. And I would love it if you were to somehow highlight the ketogenic diet and its variants. Shamefully, I currently am not up for the task of writing an essay about it, but I trust the rest of the commentariat with this task.
I’ve been thinking and before this oil age ends we can make a four page list with the most common food and the amount of net carbs they have per one hundred grams so that people can keep track of macronutrients in the future too. The keto diet allows for the daily carb intake to be between twenty and fifty grams of carbs per day depending on personal factors, but the daily limit is something that you personally have to test with a glucometer which won’t be available two hundred years from now, so it’s safer to have a blanket limit of twenty grams per day.
Lint filters save a lot of trouble but alas, they require maintenance.
If you know your fables, you know that the lazy grasshopper can be found around the world.
I’d also like to see more technology using bicycles. A great book I’ve got is The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles Over Motors by Tamara Dean and published by New Society Publishers in 2008. It’s loaded with alternatives to electricity BUT someone’s got to put in the muscle.
On a much larger scale are treadwheels and treadmills. They work. Cathedrals were built with them.
In addition to my last comment:
-Ash tree leaves use for feeding ruminant cattle depends evidently of finding enough trees to cut back their branches without killing them. At least here, ash trees usually grow near rivers and canals. Unfortunately, a fungal illness named “ash tree declining” is affecting some ash trees in Spain since 2021. It seems this “epidemic” is a motive for mild concern for botanists here. In some places, ash trees are a big part of “galery forests” near rivers. It would be interesting in a medium/long term more ash trees were planted along water courses.
-For animalists dismay, in a long term future when it will happen a likely oil-derived plastics decline, wool is going to be more valuable, with vegetal textile, for clothes and another uses.
————————————————————–
Old Steve # 208:
“How about toys that work without batteries?”
I agree. Non electric toys will be in the long term the “winners” for children…after screens die.
—————————————————————–
Inna # 222:
Oh, pocket watches! First one of them I was my grandpa pocket watch (my dad’s dad). He used it during the ’20s, but he began to use a modern (to some extent) wristwatch during the ’30s. It doesn’t work anymore, but my family inherited it after his death. By the way, it’s said first wristwatches started to be used by heroical first airmen during their flights (since 1914?)…Please, notice when my grandparent gave up his old pocket watch…
———————————————————————–
JMG # 233:
No argument here…I’m still reading last comments today, there are a lot of them.
———————————————————————–
David # 240:
I’m afraid EU strategic oil reserves would be even in a worse situation today than American ones…
—————————————————————————
Chronojourner # 251:
You’re welcome…I can tell you I’m a dilettante in a lot of topics, but I know some basic things about a myriad within the human knowledge spectre. I’m not boasting: on the other hand, I’m not an expert in near anything (ahem). Nobody’s perfect.
—————————————————————————-
(To be continued)
Another classic article from Kris De Decker at Low<–Tech that bears mention here is about Schottky junction solar cells: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-solar-panel
The chief advantage over conventional solar cells is that they could be made with little more than a charcoal forge, instead of in a high-purity/high-temp semiconductor fab. The one nagging disadvantage is that they are only about half as efficient in converting sunlight to electrical energy. Still, when a charcoal forge is all you've got, that's pretty good.
Finally, two closing thoughts: (1) sign me up for a copy of the forbidden tech book if and whenever it's out; and (2) *sigh* here I am typing on Friday afternoon, late for the party as usual.
@JMG,
It has been fascinating reading all the comments in this thread. A lot of it feels like a recapitulation of the last 20 years of your blog!
I worry, however, that this can not be a single book. There is so much going on here that I think we are looking at a several-volume project. ‘Health and Healing’, ‘Engines: Transportation and Work’, ‘Cooking and Heating (and cooling)’, and on and on. An encyclopedia, almost.
Or maybe you can pull it off as basically a compendium of references. In fact, you yourself mentioned making a kind of ‘Whole Earth Catalog’. Or maybe a periodical – does anyone remember ‘CoEvolution Quarterly’? Any which way it goes, it seems a very ambitious project, and I wish you luck!
“In the American South, until the ’40s or ’50s, homes were built with high ceilings (where the heat in the room could pool harmlessly) and attics, which were well ventilated, usually having a hefty 3 to 4 foot diameter fan to bring the hot air up from the rest of the house and vent it out.”
Going to be really important for the American Northeast and the American Midwest in the near future as global warming means that those regions will soon get the climate of the historic American South.
Oh, I have so many comments.
I think I will start with schools without computers (Etienne, Northwind Grandma, Mary Bennett and others).
I went to school in the USA in the late ’60’s through the ’70’s, and university in the early ’80’s. The techniques in all of these was the same:
– Large chalkboards in the front of the classroom, hung on the wall, wood frame with a narrow wood tray along the bottom edge to hold the chalk and erasers. Erasers were a rectangular block about 20cm x 40 cm by 120 cm or so, made of sewn-together strips of thick felt. The teacher, while lecturing, would write their lecture notes on the chalkboard, and the students followed along taking notes in their:
– Spiral-bound, ruled notebooks. You could get these as “single subject” (front and back cover with the papers in between), or multiple subject (“three subject” or “four subject” were common types) which had two or three cardboard dividers within them. The dividers often had pockets in the bottom. You could then take notes for several classes in a single notebook, one class in each divided section. The pockets served to hold homework papers temporarily.
– #2 lead pencils to take the notes with. Boy I burned through a lot of these as a student. Every classroom had a hand-cranked, mechanical pencil sharpener bolted to the wall in one corner (usually near the door) for students to sharpen their pencils. I had a mechanical pencil sharpener of my own at home, too (still have it).
– The aforementioned mimeographed sheets (“dittoes”, we called them) were used in my younger years for fast-and-dirty classroom handouts, or bulletins from the school office, or whatever. Purple ink on paper. The teacher or school secretary typed the text on a “ditto sheet” which was the master used to print. One of these masters lasted for several hundred copies. The ditto machine was a hand-cranked affair.
– Later on, in the ’70’s, the Xerox photocopiers came out. This was a godsend to teachers, because now they could copy out their class handouts in black-and-white.
– There were many class handouts (math homework worksheets and the like) which were professionally printed. These probably came from the same or similar companies that produced the school textbooks.
– School textbooks. As I recall, we stuck closer to these in my younger grades, doing homework assignments using the pages in the back of each lesson in the book which provided ‘drills’. Often, especially in the later grades, I recall teachers making up custom homework sheets. Probably because kids could make “cheat sheets” from the pages in the textbooks and pass them around, so they could pass their homework assignments without actually doing the work.
– Reading instruction started in earnest in the first grade. We may have been exposed to the alphabet in kindergarten. There was a well-designed series of lessons on how the letters were used to spell sounds, going through the various combinations of letters, etc. I still remember being taught “i before e except after c” and the trick of putting an ‘e’ on the end of a word to make the vowel inside the word ‘long’. In recent years I’ve heard that this method was condemned as “phonics”, but in my youth we just called it “learning to read”. By third grade we were doing spelling bees, and not small and simple words either.
– Math– We were taught multiplication tables by third grade, up to 12 x 12, and we had to memorize each one. Then in fourth grade we were taught how to do long division, on paper, which directly leveraged the multiplication tables. Electric calculators were unheard of. In fifth and sixth grade we studied fractions and how to do math thereon.
Mary Bennett, I massively disagree with you about making “cooking sewing and knitting required for girls, optional for boys” and “basic electronics and carpentry required for boys, optional for girls” — NO, I think all of these should be mandatory for both boys and girls. Many will be the time when a person (a) isn’t married yet or (b) the spouse is out of the house and the person will need to do one of the above. Also, when I was a kid, cooking, sewing and knitting was ‘typecast’ as “women’s work”, pronounced with a sneer. I had a 7th-grade introductory home economics class which was required of both girls and boys, and that was fine. The teacher taught us some really useful cooking info which I use to this day. On the other hand, I was forced to take home ec in the 8th grade, simply because I was a girl (boys were not), and I bitterly resented being ‘tracked to be a housewife’. So I balked and skipped a lot of class sessions, and as a result never really learned to sew. Now, when I look back at sewing on its own merits, it actually is a useful skill and I wish I had learned it. I have to point out that I have seen many young men in the fabric store; they learned sewing to support their cosplay hobby. On the flip side, I have read that many of the students at Home Depot ‘how to do it’ classes are women, so there’s definitely a benefit for women knowing at least basic ‘honey-do’ skills (hang a door, clean out a sink trap, etc).
BeardTree, hmm! Thanks for this.
Harvester, many thanks for this. Pig insulin is going to be a lifesaver going forward — I hope you or someone can figure out how to do it on a small batch basis.
Slithy, I’m sorry to say that’s tolerably likely during the transitional period. Eventually the upper classes will settle down into a relatively tolerant Christianity focused on social stability, the poor will find the new religious movements that meet their needs, and then the upper class churches will gradually fade out and go under as their economic basis dissolves. Before we get to that stage, though, some very toxic ideologies could seize the public imagination. I’m trying to get alternatives into circulation as fast as I can, but it’s an uphill struggle.
Pat, thanks for this! Do you happen to know of books that are good introductions to the technology — and would you be willing to write 500-1000 words on the subject once we get to that stage?
Ron, I know — it’s a delight to learn that not all Canadian firms have been sucked into the downward spiral. I suspect, for what it’s worth, that what will restore ham radio to its former glory will be soaring prices for computer chips, making lower-tech methods the only affordable option. As for zeer pots, delighted to hear of this — those will be very useful in the deserts of Alberta and Saskatchewan a few centuries from now…
Joan, fascinating. I slept on a futon for many years, and may do it again if it ever makes sense for me to move into a studio apartment. As for community technologies, we’ll see — it’ll depend partly on how well this project does.
Patrick, excellent. That’s a stage most people go through as they age — and it’s essential if you’re going to reorient to the realities of age and have the best possible life thereafter.
Ambrose, you know, I could have gone through the rest of my life happily without having that image in my mind. In my experience, btw, you’re quite wrong about Waldorf schools — every child I’ve known who went through such a school ended up reading ahead of grade level. Starting earlier and browbeating children who are not yet ready to read into doing it anyway isn’t necessarily a good idea!
Temporary, that’s the question that matters; if somebody can make old-fashioned wax stencils, say, on a small scale home business basis, that’s enough.
Paedrig, every application of electroculture I know of uses direct current. Here are a couple of old books to get you started:
https://archive.org/details/Electroculture_127/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/growing-crops-plants-by-elect-dudgeon-e.-c
Neuro-optometry sounds interesting — thank you for the links.
KAN, thanks for this.
Inna, I’m definitely going to ask you to write up at least 1000 words on your experiences with doing without, because it may not be a technology but it’s certainly a technique, and a very useful way to relate to technologies.
J.L.Mc12, you bet they will. Jacotot’s method is the one I know I’ll be including.
Catoctin, thank you for this.
Michael, I laughed, but it was wry laughter, as I know people whose genuine reaction isn’t too far from this! As for tin cans and strings, I wonder if kids even know how to do that any more. Hmm — might be worth including. Thank you for being a sane vegan, btw — I heartily agree that there doesn’t seem to be any diet that’s right for everyone, and that everyone needs to find the diet that’s right for them. (I suspect, for what it’s worth, that one of the reasons that many people of northwestern European ancestry can’t tolerate a plant-based diet is Neanderthal genetics — Neanderthals got something like 96% of their calories from large animals, and it would make sense if some of us from the region where the Neanderthals held out longest, inheriting those genes via human-Neanderthal interbreeding, don’t have the right digestive enzymes to process vegetable protein.)
Michael, so noted!
Foxhands, many thanks for this.
Robert, printed sheet music and books thereof are also a music recording technology — it’s just that the equipment you need to play it back is a human being, with or without an instrument! Thanks for the reminder — that certainly belongs in the Technonomicon.
Pedestrian, thanks for this. Yes, that sounds like a book to include.
Jfisher, efficient stoves certainly belong in the book, so thank you.
Sister Crow, two worthwhile ideas — thank you.
Chuaquin, yes, I heard of Herriot’s books, though I never read them. I mostly recall them via the Monty Python parody of the song that gave Herriot his titles.
Aldarion, hmm! I don’t think that contraption has made it to the US, which is a pity — it would be very useful.
Clay, another good one. I remember the CB craze of the 1970s well enough to sing “Convoy”…
DD, thanks for this, and that’s an excellent point — educational opportunities for learning old skills deserve a section of their own.
Johnny, so noted!
Philip, that was the kind of thinking that landed me in trouble twenty years ago. You’re right that if prices were allowed to reflect reality, that would happen, but what we’ve seen is that prices are not allowed to reflect reality. The profitability of fossil fuel extraction is irrelevant if the survival of industrial society depends on it — and it does; therefore the economy will be gimmicked six ways from Sunday and thirteen to a dozen to see to it that fossil fuels get extracted no matter what. So far, the usual gimmick has been to pass on the costs by various roundabout means to the rest of society and the environment; that’s why we still have ample gasoline, but everything else is undergoing explosive crapification…
Phutatorius, oh, the turboprop’s much more efficient and reliable. The question is how long it can be built under conditions of declining energy availability; as I recall, it requires some fairly exotic alloys and so on.
Renaissance, well, that’s my theory, at least!
GlassHammer, I’ve been pretty close to the point of failure doing low stance tai chi and zhan zhuang (standing meditation), that being the point that your legs give way and you land on your rump! Yeah, it’s solid stuff.
Walt, that’s certainly something that belongs in the book. Can I count on you to write 1000 words or so on the subject, drawing on your own experiences?
Scotlyn, good heavens. Thanks for this.
Atmospheric, I’m quite sure the choice of metric was deliberate, one part of the vast system of barriers that keeps Americans held hostage to the big-auto industry. Your list is great, btw.
Harvester, I see coffee’s going to have its own section. Can I count on you to write 500-1000 words on that?
TylerA, since it’s being worked on right now and it’s not something most people will be able to buy, much less make in their basement workshops, probably not. It’s still cool, granted.
Chronojourner, fountain pens make a great gateway drug to old tech, so definitely yes.
Atmospheric, that’s definitely something to put in.
Erica, have you introduced him to board games and card games yet? He might enjoy those.
Jay, yes, I have. An entire book could be written on forbidden health care, for that matter.
Luke, good. Yes, a lot of what I do is facilitate the integration of unconscious contents into collective consciousness. The Shadow of our society, the pervasive reality most of us are still struggling to admit into consciousness, is our ongoing decline and eventual fall — and the integration of the Shadow is always the first great task on the road to wisdom.
Sea Spray, both of these are good.
Clarke, excellent. Can I count on you to write up 1000 words or so on the subject?
Ornifex, well, we’ll see if anyone else rises to the challenge.
Teresa, it’s true!
Dr. C, the party only got started on Wednesday, so at most you’re fashionably late. Have a homebrewed beer and join the fun. 😉 Schottky junction cells — hmm! Interesting.
Sgage, the Whole Earth Catalog started out with a single cheaply printed volume, and took off from there. What I have in mind is a proof of concept — a volume that contains a good selection of things and will show whether there’s a market for such a book. Once it comes out, if it does well, there can be more — potentially many more.
Cicada, thanks for all of this.
Diets topic:
I’ve read some comments about this or that best diet for people (well, more often a kind of diet), and I can tell you I don’t follow any special diet since my younger age, and I’m quite healthy for my age. I won’t suggest anybody my “lack of diet”- diet, nor another “silver bullet” fit for every human being on Earth today. I think some people can live well with a vegetarian diet (in a reasonable and balanced way), and some others can be healthy with a Paleo diet or a similar food regime (equally in a reasonable way). Different diets, like tha many ideologies and religions, are suited for some people, not one only for everybody, methink. Arguments about which one is the best diet reminds me in a dangerous way old fashioned arguments about which one is the “true” religion… By the way, are diets a technology?
—————————————————————————-
Boreal Bear # 305:
Thanks you for your information about WW2 mimeographers use in your country. Borrowed (or stolen) machines during last times of Spain last dictatorship sometimes had a little engine (not always). I bet ’40s mimeographers were more basical…
————————————————————
Mary B. # 322:
I didn’t know that information, thank you.
—————————————————————-
Airships topic:
I think it’s an interesting “retro” technology, but it isn’t perfect. I’m thinking now in how defenseless were old school airships against strong winds against them. Indeed, I remember a story from WW1 when a German airship went to England to bomb London, and it was caught by a hard North wind over the North Sea. Oops! Airship ended some hours after this small problem arriving Algeria. In those times, it was a French colony, so German aircrew was arrested by their French enemies…Unfortunately, I haven’t found online confirmation for this bizarre travel, but I read somewhere.
I wouldn’t discard this weak side of airships (maybe some countermeasures could be made up in a near future), but I think it’s a real problem for that big “guys”.
Here, a balanced opinion about weather and airships, IMHO:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1924/october/rigid-airship-and-weather
———————————————————————
(In my next comment, maybe I’m going to write about Mr. Herriot books about old school Veterinary Medicine).
JMG, you have opened Pandora’s box, but one that’s full of good things…There have been a number of shows on Gaia dealing with things like homeopathy…Apparently, the Rockefeller’s , not content with their oil monopoly, saw that it was too successful, but unprofitable, so they formed the AMA to exclude everyone except those practicing allopathic medicine, which at the time killed far more people than it saved…They also promoted vaccines, where they had a financial stake, although vaccines have never been a net benefit to anyone…
Note, physicist and general savant Greg Cochran has pointed out that wounded soldiers who avoided surgery during the Civil War, had a higher survival rate….We also know that in 19th century Vienna, babies born at home with a midwife had a 99& survival rate, while those born in a hospital had less than 70%….
Hi BorealBear,
Below is a standard wood stove which could be purchased in one of those big stores where I live
https://www.obi.hu/kandallok/arrezzo-kandallokalyha-7-kw/p/3887098
The construction is simply a fire box, most often made of steel and with fire brick inlay.
On the other hand, the rocket mass heater with its “insulated inner chimney” make the burn much more efficient.
With a well-built thermal battery, I believe the performance can even be improved further.
The pioneer of rocket heaters is Ianto Evans with credible legacy in appropriate technologies. Another of his books, The Hand-sculpted House is an exceptional source for me to master house repair with cobs.
Tocsin of a church bell, was a traditional way for alert the people of a town of a danger.
https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/telenoticias-fin-de-semana/Becerril-Sierra-recupera-vecinos-incendio-2-2253394650–20200726030947.html
Is not necesary to mention the Freedom Bell.
Hello JMG (and all!)
Wow! I feel I must contribute to this amazing thread, so may I suggest The Vermont Country Store, though not cheap, filled with old time lifetime-lasting, plain products such as clocks that tick, sturdy home appliances with no LED lights, and so many more products from the 1960s and 70s that have stood the test of time but are very hard to find.
https://www.vermontcountrystore.com/
Yogaandthetarot
JMG, how many thousand words do you want from me about armpit-licking? I can include illustrations.
I am surprised by the positive reports of Waldorf, and wonder how representative they are (or mine are).
Cynthia Christie (no. 295) ” I do not know what a septialist is and Google was not helpful.”
Oh, that just means a seven-fold system, like the one in Theosophy. If you can solve for dualism, then expanding to seven shouldn’t introduce very many additional complications! (Neo-Platonists rejoice.)
“Anyway the actual question wasn’t whether monism is true, it was whether something that’s not material can have material effects. So if the case from the previoes paragraph is true, is the “site of awareness” material? The part of the brain that works as the “antenna” is, sure, but the awareness itself?”
This gets into the issue of what counts as “material.” What about electrical impulses?
Very long time follower but not active till this point. The theme of your latest post is certainly my favorite subject. I’m a Diesel fitter and motor mechanic of 45 years experience living in remote North Wester Australia and my daily driver is a 30 year old Daihatsu Delta truck I converted to 4wd. Why drive something like this when I have the skills and expertise to maintain a modern and far less “agricultural” vehicle. It’s simply an undeniable fact that in remote areas reliability trumps all and modern vehicles are nowhere near as reliable as selected older ones. For a number of years I ran appropriate technology workshop’s and internships in Australia, New Zealand and in the USA so have mucked around with rocket stoves and water heaters, natural building, TEGs, solar ovens and dryers , composting toilets etc. Picking just one technology as a starter how about ram pumps. In NZ I built a ram pump that could pump 4 liters a minute to over 20 meters height and 400 meters horizontally with a 1 meter fall but at 5 meters was pumping over 40 litres a minute. By doing this you can greatly amplify the energy and appropriate areas for a small hydro electric setup. Typical throughput is 7:1 so seven liters pass through the ram pump to one liter pumped. If we drop it 5 meters and then through a Pelton wheel we have much greater energy density and a smaller setup than if we were using the original 1 meter fall. Now as a thought experiment image the entire stream is flowing through a ram pump ( of course for a lot of very good reasons this is not a good idea) 1/8th flows through your hydro setup and 7/8 ths continue downstream but if we drop the 1/8th back into the stream at just upstream of the pump inlet we have increased the entire stream flow (8/8ths)at that point a further 1/8th. Taken to a ridiculous extreme you could have the 7/8ths from the original ram flow into an identically sized ram and have the 1/8 from the hydro join it at that stage making your water flow back to the 8/8ths all you would need is an additional 1 meter drop each time and each time you would be able to harvest the exact same amount of energy. Conversely image that the flow from the hydro setups were added to a parallel channel and that each step down through the series of rams meant there was less flow available so a smaller ram was needed. Image now at the final ram 8 liters flow in 1 liter is pumped up and 7 liters joins the very end of the parallel channel which at this stage is flowing at full flow minus the 7 liters just joining it. Of course I’m not suggesting anything close to this but it does illustrate that significant energy can be harvested from modest sources say a couple of ram pumps running in parallel and not affecting stream flow. And of course it’s not just about generating electricity. Many devices can be made to function on water pressure I’ve even made sausages using an old commercially available water powered machine to press the sausage meat into the casings and I have a design for a ram pump that makes compressed air and lots of things can be powered by compressed air.
Cheers Tim
@JMG, re: solar laser,
Well, yes but also no? It’s an open paper if I copied the right link, so you can see the setup of the solar pumped laser is pretty jury rigged. Even the specially-doped YAG rod is available commercially and people do build lasers with them in basement workshops. Growing such a doped garnet is theoretically doable, too– crystal growth enthusiasts have made YAG before so it should just be a matter of tweaking the input. OTH, I know of no one who has grown their own crystal to make their own laser with it. I do not know if that is due to a technical issue or a lack of overlap between laser nerds and crystal nerds; I am only very tangentially one of each. Enough to appreciate, but not participate.
That said, it’s fair to define this idea as outside the scope of what you seek– and I think it’s good to have such and example to help define said scope.
Another one for the list of what I miss from earlier in my life:
– Laundry equipment that works, even for washing diapers, and works fast. And, this had an already working 1970’s solution. The new required washing machines must be so low water that you cant have fabric submerged and soaking in water. Not even with a new top loader. One of my offspring is so happy that the house they bought came with a cheap, old enough, top load washing machine. The clothes come out clean, rinsed of all residue, and in a half hour or less. A front load washer can be going for 2 hours with a tough load of clothes, like diapers. The fabric is soaked by tumbling the drum because only parts of the load are submerged at once. This makes soaking and extra rinses for tough loads take FOREVER. And, things like diapers may not be as clean or rinsed as they should. New top loaders now work the same way, but worse, as they go out of balance much much more often. Except speed queen USA made top load washers, those still have a button that can bypass water saving and give a full tub of water when needed.
The new dryers are also substandard. To meet energy saving requirements, the drying cycle is not hot nor long enough to fully dry all items, again, diapers have the worst luck in these machines, although thick towels also are not dry, so with diapers, pushing all the buttons for high heat, extra long etc…. still have to go out and restart the machine ! And, as with the washing machines, the cycle times on the energy efficient dryers is very long. Now, I dont personally own or use a clothes dryer, but if a person wants and buys one, they should work ! Many people with babies and toddlers find them useful in cold wet weather for the convenience of quickly getting some dry clothes, bedding and diapers for the little one if, as can happen, there are worse messes than planned.
— 1970’s tech to the rescue–
This is all a good example of mandating a solution that is not ideal for alot of people. Because there are alot of other solutions to the problem of water useage. First, municipal water is very expensive, at least around here, you realy dont need to convince people to save water, the billing already does that ! So many people might choose a washing machine that takes along time, breaks down alot, and doesnt rinse residue well just to save on the water bill. But, others might go to the old 1970’s California standby of re-using the water from the washing machine, grey-water. The drain pipe is diverted outside and distributed to flowers or fruit trees, we even had a detergent developed in coastal California in 1990 that is still around that can not only wash clothes well, but degrades into a good plant food to boot. Oasis Laundry detergent https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076ZZPSM9?ref=clp_hp_h_pc.
I sold my newish front loader a few years ago and use a retro 1970’s top loader, and I have a 1950’s wringer washer I havent put to use yet. The long term idea in power down times is to use the wringer washer, grey watering the waste of course, the machine right now has an AC motor, so either replace that with a universal motor to run off a solar panel direct, or do the retro pedal power conversion, running a belt from the stationary bike to the tub/wringer mechanism.
Look up Divya Washing Machine – hand cranked and repairable
Most of us take socks for granted, but what do we do when we lose access to this precious technology? A guy I knew in grad school faced precisely this situation. His wife was mad at him for some reason–possibly his habit of wistfully scrolling through websites devoted to mail-order brides from Kazakhstan–and consequently refused to do his laundry. He ran out of socks. Fortunately, our hero was inventive enough to scoop up from the floor, handfuls of fur from the ten beagles they kept in the house (he had intended to sell them as puppies, but delayed too long) and stuff it into his sneakers to serve as lining, absorbing the sweat of his feet. His classmates marveled at his ingenuity,–born, it seems, from his years of living in homeless-like conditions abroad–although it is fair to say that most would have addressed this problem some other way. I wonder whatever happened to him. I can’t imagine that he is still married, and hope their daughter is unscarred by all this.
Let us pray that civilization never collapses, is what I’m saying!
Athaia 192
> look into how to make the things that make the things, i.e. machines
Regarding metal, I believe that the word “machinist” is a man (traditionally a male vocation) who works (on) “a machine”; the action is called “machining.” JMG, correct me if I am wrong, but a machinist is one who makes metal tools using a machine.
For example, I hear tell that Jeff’s mother’s father, Grandpa Isaac, born about 1900, in the 1920s learned how “to machine” at Cooper Union (or some place related to that school). He learned how to make small machine parts using a standup machine, about 5.5 feet tall, which a man would stand at to hand-make a small metal “part.”
In the late 1920s and 1930s, Isaac invented a fish-tank something or other doohickey (call it an) oxygenator. In a workshop, probably alone or with a male cohort, he designed all the little itty-bitty metal and plastic parts that went into the construction of the oxygenator he invented. I don’t know if he contracted out the plastic parts, or maybe plastic parts were ready-made sold on store shelves.
At some point, I am sure he patented the oxygenator.
About 1980, Jeff and I visited Isaac’s factory in Queens, which was still running, but only just. Isaac had had a stroke in the late 1970s, and his son “Matt” took over managing the factory. Under Matt, the business floundered, and Jeff’s mother (referred to in previous posts as “Komodo dragon”) (also the bookkeeper) about 1984 sold off the business/factory and laid off existing employees, including machinists.
From the 1930s through about 1975, the oxygenator took off in the marketplace, and was a highly desirable device for anyone who wanted to have a fish aquarium at home. His son Matt specialized in marketing. Isaac supported a family of four during that time on profits he made. I suspect it was a sole proprietorship although I dunno.
Isaac learned how to be a machinist, molds and stuff. He then invented his oxygenator. He then made the parts on his machine. He put the parts together, and voila, in front of him, he had his oxygenator to sell. Then he had to arrange to make many oxygenators, and that is where other machinists came in. All the parts, as I understand it, were handmade by individual male machinists in his factory, as employees. Machinists were, and are, skilled labor. They were highly prized. To retain his machinists, I am quite sure Isaac had to pay them very well.
Machinist is one of the skilled trades that will definitely be in demand in the Long Descent. If one does not have a machinist, how does “a part” (later to be assembled with other parts to make a sellable object) get made? It doesn’t.
A machinist is a sub-division of metal worker. It is different from blacksmith and whitesmith (tinkerer), although now that I think about it, there may be overlap between whitesmith and machinist. Anybody of the commentariat know?
Also, I just remembered. Jeff told me that when he was a kid in the 1960s, the family would sit around their kitchen table assembling Isaac’s oxygenators, using parts that Isaac’s machinist-employees handmade in the factory. Then Isaac would sell the oxygenators and make a buck. It was a cottage industry in his family. The whole family, at times, was involved in “helping out” his Grandpa Isaac.
Isaac’s small business all happened in a relatively booming market. In down times, family pitched in. Isaac knew he was selling to “a man of the house who had enough discretionary income so as to make his children happy by buying whimsical things” like fish-tanks (which were expensive).
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Mark Grable 220
> back to Indiana
> tornado
I saw a tornado in Indiana in summer of 1973 (age 20) on one of the interstate highways. My friend Katie and I were driving via Volkswagen Beetle cross-country from New York State to California. It was the first, and last, tornado we ever saw. The tornado was definitely noticeable and definitely scary. It was south of us, and we were able to “whiz past” it on the right before it got to us. The experience was spooky. And unforgettable.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
…adding on to the fountain pen topic… Steel pen nibs may be easier to manufacture, and quill pens from actual birds are even easier to acquire. Ink chemistry– there are simple formulas out there that I wouldn’t trust in my nice pens. However, if I end up using iron gall ink and a quill pen, I guess that’s what happens! (Will old fashioned writing tools bring back old fashioned cursive letter forms?)
Does anyone make vacuum tubes as a hobby?
It’s after the fouth stage that retrovation shifts into retromancy! Great article!
” the drying cycle is not hot nor long enough to fully dry all items,”
Killing the eggs of head lice takes at least 130 F water or dryer heat. So energy efficiency standards let those annoying creatures get expand their victim list again. Another unintended consequence of efficiency.
Yes, jeans and towels take two dryer cycles. It’s not all bad because of the other stuff is dry at the end of the first cycle and can be unloaded..
The water pump on my 2001 vintage washer started leaking, but the jungle river place had a replacement for about $20. The “disable the spin cycle is the lid is open” switch dies a few years before that. That was bypassed with a 5 cent wire nut. The cat was far too smart to jump into a running washer. If the washer isn’t spinning it is full of “The Evil Substance” (as far as the cat is concerned) so he’s still not going in it.
Pyrrhus, trust me, I know. I like citing the fact that doctors stopped going on strike once it got out that every physician’s strike caused a measurable drop in the death rate…
Yogaandthetarot, I’ve been shopping with them since the 1980s, so yes, they’re on the list!
Ambrose, 250,000 words, which you can then feed straight into the shredder. Thanks.
Tim, thank you for this! I hope you’ll be up for writing a few 500-1000 word essays for complete beginners about the technologies you think are most useful — ram pumps very much among them.
Tyler, that’s even cooler, but no, I don’t think it suits the book. On the other hand, if you can find someone who’s done something practical with one and can walk people through the details, I’ll certainly consider changing my mind.
Atmospheric, no argument there. Reconditioned 1970s laundry gear is good to have.
Ken, thanks for this.
Ambrose, until quite recently socks were knitted all the time by hand. It’s not that difficult — you can find patterns quite easily in old books. Dog hair, by the way, can be spun into yarn.
Sylvia, yep. Curiously enough, I’m reading a book just now that covers that — it’s a history of espionage technologies from the Elizabethan era to the Restoration — and it’s quite easy to provide pens and ink on a low-tech basis. Paper’s a little fussier, but not much. As for homebuilt vacuum tubes, why, yes. Here’s one:
That’s one of the reasons I think radio technology is with us for the long haul.
Justin, ssshhh! Retromancy comes later. 😉
JMG, I will certainly keep posted. I still have my first shake, but because the wood had dried, I’m waiting to source some fresh timber that’s already cut, without taking down a fresh tree, to see how it goes, with easy to split green wood. I know the farm hand companion fellow who does the videos, and I talked some with him. We will see. It makes more sense than buying exotic premade shingles from Australia, anyway. In order to store them I’m told they need temp control so that’s the next nut to crack after making a few from a new fallen tree. I have learned that they are better insulation than asphalt shingles and maybe even than metal installed on runners as they don’t absorb a lot of heat and presumably don’t temp drop in the cold as much either.
@JMG
I would be happy write up technologies. Sounds fun!
Re Abacuses–
I once bought a Suan Pan (Chinese style abacus) from Big Muddy River. This is a larger one that fits my fingers well; the little Japanese sorobans are child-sized to me.
I found a really nice website that taught how to use an abacus; “The Mystery of the Bead”–
http://totton.idirect.com/abacus/PDF.htm ,
http://totton.idirect.com/abacus/PDF%20files/Abacus_Mystery_of_the_Beada.pdf
This site has gone through several moves since I found it and is not as extensive as its original form. Fortunately, I saved the original site at the time (and printed it out too). Arrange through JMG and I can send you a zipped file of it– let me know what zipping format you want.
On the original version of this abacus website, there was also an article about the ‘Shchoty’, the Russian spinoff of the abacus. The Russians used them in commerce and they were specialized for the (pre-Bolshevik) Russian money system.
The author proposed a 9-bead system abacus– each bar has 9 beads on it, with the 5th bead a different color. This might be easier to understand, especially for kids, than the suan pan or soroban styles with their ‘fives’ beads and ‘ones’ beads.
Then there is the traditional Mexican “nepohualtzintzin”, which was worn on the wrist and operated with base-20 numbers instead of our base-10.
You can spin dog hair, but I have not done so. What I have done and is easy is to felt it. I used to have a felted hat I made out of poodle hair, I had a neighbor with a full sized poodle, they dont shed but need to be clipped. I was so soft and pretty I asked her to save me some for a while. It was super easy to felt, I would not be surprised if humans used to felt dog hair more routinely in the distant past, and yes, to make sock equivalents, felted lower leg and feet covers. The only problem with my hat is it did smell a little of wet dog if I wore it out in the rain. Sheeps wool does this too, smells a bit of wet sheep, but we are more used to that then the dog hair felt these days. I believe we had companion dogs earlier than domesticating sheep
My 90-year-old friend in Michigan once commented to me that the reason all those 2-lane country roads had trees planted along them, which arched over the road in a canopy, was that the buggy horses could then go up and down the road in the shade in summer and not get so hot.
If we do that in the future with all kinds of nut trees and with sugar maples, said trees could also yield food crops.
Silver maples are another fast-growing tree I encountered growing up. I wondered if they would be a good firewood option, but this site says they are not as energy-dense as some other woods:
https://fireplaceadviser.com/is-silver-maple-good-firewood/
Black locust, although native to North America, is considered invasive in several states. It will form groves that expand via the roots, crowding out grasslands. OTOH this sounds like a good firewood candidate, the wood-cutting helping to keep it under control. Perhaps chunks of it could be mixed with cooler-burning woods in the stove.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia
There was a former cornfield near where I grew up that had Osage Orange planted along one edge. This is a neat tree– its branches grow in great arches and with a little tactical pruning, a row of these would make a cool tree-shaded walking lane underneath. (Too small for a horse and buggy though.) The fruit are softball-sized bumpy green spheres full of the seeds. One fall I happened upon a cock pheasant pecking the seeds out of one of these fruit, after the frosts had softened it up.
JMG, I’m glad you find my experiences of doing without interesting. Another fine aspect of doing without technique is that it gives you the opportunity to develop the capacities within. Just one example… Soviet grocery stores were thoroughly lacking in customer service.
A SOVIET GROCERY TRIP AS AN ARS MEMORATIVA EXERCISE
Starting from around the age of 7, my mom would send me to buy groceries. She never gave me written lists. She’d just say, “Get a chicken, 300 grams of cheese, a head of cabbage, a loaf of bread, and 1 kilo of sugar,” and off I went. The nearest grocery store was located in a large square building with various counters along the walls and a cash register in the middle. I would go to the meat counter, stand in line, and ask for a chicken. The guy would weigh it, say “3.75” (you had to be lucid and check his math), wrap it in paper, take a pencil from behind his ear, write “3.75 on the wrapping paper, and set it aside on the counter. I would then go to the dairy counter, stand in line again, and ask for 300 grams of cheese. The lady would cut a piece (it was never precise), say “1.20”, wrap it, write the number on it, and set it aside. Next stop – vegetable counter. The same process would repeat again, and I would remember 25 kopeikis for cabbage. Bread (always the same price) and sugar (weighed precisely) were easy. I just had to check if they were available. Then I would go to the cash register and stand in line there. When your turn came, you had to fire away quickly – the abacus lady was not known for her patience, and the people tired of long lines would happily shove you aside if you took too long. So I went like the AK-47:
chicken – 3.75
cheese – 1.20
cabbage – 25
bread – 14
sugar – 90
The lady would add everything on her abacus and say, “6.24” (I already knew that). I would give her 10 rubles, and she would give me back 3.76 (you had to know that number as well; otherwise, you would get less). The cash register was used for typing you a paper ribbon with 5 entries. You had to divide the ribbon into 5 parts and circle the store again to collect your items.
When decades later I came across Learning Ritual Magic, I thanked my lucky stars for that grocery store – memory exercises came effortlessly to me.
Early industrial work was done in workshops, and in large factories with a lineshaft and belt technology. Motive power from water wheels or later steam engines for large factories, and then later small farm set up were powered by a tractor. Makes sense, a man is not using a tractor in the field when he needs to do other work. So the tractor drove a belt that could then power things like a saw mill or other shop equipment.
Here is some of the physics and geometry of the power transfer https://www.old-engine.com/belts.htm
Here is a historical machine shop, https://sippyhistoricmachineshop.com/line-shaft-machines/ There is a smaller historical pelton water wheel machine shop by me, but they dont have a web page
Hi JMG
By a nice synchronicity I came across this (Important details written out in this comment, Link included as source): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GSmJ8QYAy3Q
He generated nitrogen fertilised water with a plasma arc to a large glass of water for 3 min. This seems like a promising potential technology. Especially if combined with “Lord Kelvin’s Thunderstorm” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper to generate the voltage with only running water and a few wires. The working principle is that N3 and O2 are broken apart by the arc (or even better if it’s a corona discharge) and when the short lived reactive chemicals produced meet water they turn into nitrates, nitrites and hydrogen peroxide.
He did a controlled experiment with radish seedlings and the group with the arc treated water had 75% more mass at the end of the experiment. Replication and further testing needed but certainly promising.
I’m looking forward to this project
Hi Again JMG
A good source for woodworking related simple tech might be Rex Krueger (https://www.rexkrueger.com/), he has even made a small business our of it. Things like how to make a wood working plane using a chisel as the blade, or a simple workbench made with hand tools.
Thanks
I also grew up with vinyl records; my parents had mostly 12-inch LPs, for 33-1/3 RPM playback. We used to have a 45-rpm record player and a few 45 records, but these fell by the wayside fairly early in my life.
Opposite from CDs, the playback starts at the outer rim of the record. The record player’s needle sits in the single spiral groove on that side of the record, and follows it inward to the center as the record rotates on the turntable. Eventually the groove joins itself to form a circular track next to the central label. Here the needle loiters when playback is complete, until retrieved — the arm is lifted and replaced on its docking station outside the perimeter of the record.
The “tracks” on a record for each song are visible as concentric darker areas where the groove’s loops are close together, separated by shiny areas about 2-3mm wide containing one or two more widely-spaced loops of the groove. It is possible to carefully put the record player’s needle down between tracks and let it find and fall into the groove; then it progressess into the next track inward for playback.
If a record is scratched, the scratch can join one loop of the groove with itself. On playback, this loop of the groove is played– this loop of the groove is played– this loop of the groove is played– over and over. This is what’s known as “broken record”.
Vinyl is staticky and attracts dust. It is necessary to clean the record carefully before playback to remove the dust. If you hear “snap crackle pop”, the record is dirty. Running the record player’s needle over dust in the grooves can damage them; don’t do that. A good clean record does not have pops and crackles at all. My family used a product called “Discwasher” to clean our records; it somewhat resembled a chalkboard eraser covered with soft velour. There was a little bottle of cleaning juice that you wetted one side of the Discwasher with, then you used the Discwasher to clean the record while it was being spun on the turntable. Aaaand.., thanks to the kids, they still exist:
https://www.amazon.com/Discwasher-Record-System-Cleaner-Cleaning/dp/B09BFTVTG6/
https://www.amazon.com/RD1007Z-Discwasher-Record-Cleaning-Solution/dp/B07YSTBGXZ/
Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_record#Structure), vinyl records are made with a mix of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl acetate, plus various additives. These are typical artificial chemicals, dependent on petroleum. However, there is a push to make LP records out of bio-based plastics instead.
Sound quality is affected by record material (one of the reasons they settled on vinyl originally), so getting a post-petroleum material that sounds good may turn out to be a balancing act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_record#Structure ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
My mother had a marvelous LP record collection– original Beatles, Bee Gees, Cream, Incredible String Band, Simon & Garfunkel, and more. After she died, when I dwelt across the country, my father sold them all to a local record store for $1 each. I was heartbroken. However, hopefully they went to an audiophile who took better care of them than it turned out I would have been able to.
Someone upthread was disparaging about TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine.
I have alot of experience using TCM and with great results, and I have never heard of any TCM herbalist adding chemical medicines to their offerings. You would know it in anycase as what they do is hand you a baggy of a bunch of dried plant matter of various types that you bring home and make a tea out of. This way is best, but not affordable for me for long term For short term, my accupuncturist can send me home with a tea that will knock out retro virus resurfacing in short order ! or other concoctions for other issues. I am going to reputable practitioners, there is a major TCM college in the county, so it is not hard to go there for student practioners or to call and get recommendations.
Even the pre-made tea pills I have good results from, if you have the right one. During COVID I was prescribed some of these with remote zoom call meetings, no hands on body treatment locally then. The thing is treatment for long term complex issues takes a long time, but in the short term I have seen some smaller issues just go away as incidental results. SO, for one example, I no longer wake up to use the bathroom nor have urgency issues at anytime. In addition, I had spontaneous remission of a wart on my leg. I was not specifically trying to treat these, they went away due to my system being more balanced, which is what TCM is aiming for. My skin is also in better shape, far from perfect, but improving. Also incidental to the larger health issues.
I was prescribed a commercial tea pill remedy for hay fever, and it worked so well and quickly, I now keep a bottle of it on hand. There are a few standard remedies for that, depending on other constitutional details the person has.
I would not be surprised if there was bad studies coming out from China on TCM results, we have bad studies here too, seems to be a thing these days.
The other part of TCM is of course accupuncture, and I get accupuncture with some tuina massage weekly. This works wonders on my pain issues, so I can do things, also helps somewhat for brain fog, helps with carpal tunnel so here I am typing on a laptop. But again, the main long term point of it is to work on constitutional issues, they use words like clearing damp heat or nourishing chi or whatever. This long term treatment helps with long term health issues, like my gallbladde I am keeping.
So, yep, I am a satisfied customer.
I have used homeopathy some in the past, and do want to learn more on how to apply cell salts as this is very cost effective and can be done with the cell salt materials I have, dont have to have exotic herbs or tea pills. I have had good results with homeopathy in the past, I used commercial products, including homeopathic doses of silver, gold, mistletoe. But, those are common substances and solutions can be made at home and used in the future.
I also have had good results using home made herbals from what is available in my yard or the local wood, it helped, but wasnt sufficient on its own. Trade of herbs will I think stay ongoing, at least in a wider network than just one property, that way we can get a better match of herbs we need.
I’d be happy to do that JMG, sounds like fun! Where would you like me to send them?
Best,
Oliver
@ #159, Robert Mathiesan – For lithographs, you need “lithographic limestone.”
Currier & Ives was in business, for almost 100 years (1835-1907), and cranked out millions of lithographic prints, on every topic imaginable. I have several. Huge piles of fruits or vegetables. Victorian “cheesecake.” 🙂 Civil War scenes. Sometimes sold in three sizes, colored or uncolored.
Interesting about the coloring. Long tables of immigrant women, would add one color to a lithograph, and then pass it on to the next woman, to add another color. So much for Henry Ford inventing the assembly line. 🙂
There are a lot of reproductions, kicking around. So, how to tell the difference? Carry a small magnifying glass. Rule of thumb, most reproductions are printed using small, colored dots. Lithographs, don’t. Lew
Lathechuck: It’s pretty clear that your knowledge of this topic is significantly more advanced than my own. I was trying in my own crude way to reach towards some of what you said there, in particular the part about how the sample rate must be a certain amount greater than a *significant component* of the input signal, although you said it better and in a more complete way. Thank you for contributing your expertise and helping me learn more about it! 😀
Ambrose: Ha! I probably should have got that. Septialist -> seven fold. I like it!
So, the question of what counts as material… I’m talking about “material” because that’s how JMG worded it in the post, but I think the real substance of the question is about whether a thing is well understood and accepted by conventional science, not whether it’s material, strictly speaking. Scientists don’t dispute that electrical impulses can affect materials, so I don’t think we need to get hung up on that. I think we can consider anything like that, that scientists don’t dispute, as honourary “materials” for the purpose of this question.
Hey JMG
I have two more sources that I think are well worth your time.
I was in Bent Books yesterday, and besides a secondhand edition of your “Encyclopaedia of natural magic” I found a book all about the Automat restaurant mentioned previously, and I found that its authors have a website devoted to it also.
https://www.theautomat.net/index_htm.html
Also, I think that in regards to old mathematical instruments, you absolutely must get in touch with Chris Staecker. He collects and posts YouTube videos all about how various mathematical tools were used, and not only is familiar with a lot of very nifty gadgets, which I have shared with you before I believe, but has also published paper printout versions of a few of them, such as a “quadratic formula nomogram” and a “dot planimeter.”
https://faculty.fairfield.edu/cstaecker/machines/
“Shall we give it a try?”
Yes please!!! This would be just about the most wished for project for me, from this community. May the Gods bless the endeavour.
JH
Sure JMG @233. I hope you don’t regret having asked me for 500-1000 words, at least I’ll keep it on the low side:
In my late 30’s, in the mid 1990’s, I was feeling pretty done with my engineering career, and was dipping my toes into various hobbies, to speak nothing of my long-shot bid to get into medical school. The soroban was one of those hobbies. Along with slide rules at which I’m adept, I loved how you could do so much with something so simple without consuming paper. Of course you can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Each operation is more complex than the last. My little book even covered the calculation of square roots, no mean feat.
Working through the book, I went through the exercises and practiced them, as it was clear this is a skill akin to typing. You learn by burning a few simple patterns into your brain with copious and accurate physical repetition. So I practiced, focusing first on addition, and got reasonably proficient, though if I took a break from study and practice, I lost ground and had to go back to square one. Before I got far into subtraction, I received a letter informing me I was accepted into medical school, and so all hobbies were packed and stowed. Then marriage, kids, new career; and so my beautiful pair of sorobans, one desk-sized and one pocket, were forgotten.
Fast forward to July, 2026. My now former wife said enough is enough of my things being stored in HER (‘cough cough’) basement for the last six years, will I please take it out. Okay.
When I opened a box, my sorobans were on on top, pretty and elegant with as much wabi sabi as ever. I pulled them out, as I had a use for them.
My only routine math task now, actually arithmetic, is book-keeping for my medical practice: I still book-keep on paper and tally what I bill at the end of the workday. I’ve long used a calculator, but lately one of the keys lost its sensitivity, so I have to press it hard to get the digit to register, and it galls me to throw away a ferociously complex semiconductor device over a balky key (my Aspergers is that bad). Still, a few errors get through, and I redo a tally. The reappearance of my sorobans seemed like a divine response, and I began using one to do my tallies. Moving the beads IS the registering, as the ‘key’ and the ‘display’ are one with the soroban. It is less error prone. But I have to be diligent in moving the beads, as clumsy fingers will move them not as intended; at least practice improves that. Still, it’s satisfying to use.
A calculator enables you to calculate without skill, but it’s easy to make an error and not detect it. With the soroban, errors go down, but it requires skill, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. I’m sure learning as a child hugely facilitates lifelong retention; I learned slide-rules then, which are far more complex, and never lost the skill. For adult learners, the soroban can solve real DAILY problems, but it’s not friendly to dilettantes (‘cough cough’).
—Lunar Apprentice
Hi JMG,
what a terrific idea for a book – and frankly I think an ongoing series isn’t out of the question. I think it could prove surprisingly popular. One of my favourite sites is the below treasure:
https://www.survivorlibrary.com/index.php/main-category-index/
dozens of categories – at random, beekeeping, canning, herbalism, monasticism, soap – with scanned up PDFs from books of the 19th/20th centuries. There must be hundreds easily, probably thousands of rare and obscure books on interesting topics 🙂
@JMG, and all other who replied to my comment
Thank you for your kind replies.
1. JMG, Bryan Allen, Renaissanceman: I understand the concerns regarding airships that you’ve raised, but then again, it’s a question of experimentation and R&D. Those bugs will have to be worked out, and yes, computer simulations can play a big role here – back in the 1920s, people didn’t have them! Regarding airships being vulnerable to bad weather like sudden squalls and such, yes, that’s true, but then similar arguments could be made for sailing ships, and yet we consider them a viable technology, don’t we? I mean, no tech is going to be foolproof, there will be safety issues associated with at least some technologies. Here’s a link that you might find interesting: https://www.firstpost.com/business/bharat-forge-flying-whales-60-tonne-airships-india-defence-logistics-14033291.html
Bharat Forge is India’s largest forgings manufacturer and make some of the best 155 mm artillery guns in the world, among other things – I’m pretty sure they would have thought of these concerns while planning this venture. While this is obviously not the final destination, I see it as a first step on the road to what I think is a very worthwhile final destination.
2. AntonyFromWatertown, no problem. Just open libgen.li in your browser and enter 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.04.222 in the search bar, and hit Enter. You can download the PDF via either regular browser or via TOR by clicking on the appropriate links.
@JMG
While not exactly in the same bracket as technologies, I’m happy to note that in India, both traditions of Indian classical music – Hindustani and Carnatic – have been making a quiet comeback, a Renaissance of sorts, if you will (I mean, they always were there; it’s just that they have started moving into the popular consciousness, unlike earlier, when they were confined to a relatively small minority who loved and loves them fiercely, given that they’re a bit of an acquired taste). This is actually good news not just for me as a Hindustani music lover, but also from the resource POV – while I have nothing against rock music, EDM, etc. (I don’t enjoy them personally, but I know that many people do, so I live and let live:)), it cannot be denied that certain forms of rock music and almost all of EDM cannot be performed using equipment which will not be there in a post-fossil-fuel future. Hindustani and Carnatic music, OTOH, uses instruments that are made of different kinds of wood – and believe me, there’s a very high degree of craftsmanship involved in making them using complex, intricate and multi-step laborious processes – and thus renewable and sustainable. So that’s some good news on the arts front as well. I don’t know much about Western music – I read your essay on Music as a Magical Language – but obviously I would need a proper musical education in the Western classical tradition to be able to appreciate the music at more than just an aesthetic level; in the meantime, I delight myself by listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, among others – I really hope that this tradition gets carried forward into the future, not just because of its beauty, but also the fact that the resource budget involved is small enough to be easily sustainable and renewable.
“…. about Waldorf schools — every child I’ve known who went through such a school ended up reading ahead of grade level.”
Such as the now 6 year old son of my cousin and her husband, both Waldorf teachers, who have founded a school of their own. Their concepts are not without criticism, but her son taught *himself* reading last year, and even started learning before school.
But OK might be the influence of his teacher parents directly. Still, he is being raised in the spirit of Steiner no less.
@Chuaqin the ash trees in central Europe all suffer from this fungus, I know old ones where each year another branch dies, a slow death. Almost all ash trees in eastern to middle northern Austria have it, with the exception of one in the inner court garden of the building I stay here at in Vienna.
Similar to the ulms before them, nothing appears to stop the decimation of these trees, maybe not to zero, but naturally they are very common throughout Austria, both in the colder and wetter mountainous regions and here in the almost mediterrenean lowlands.
About horse and donkeys in forestry: Peter Wohlleben a german forestry manager who wrote books on conservational forestry has employed horses, and has a lot to say about the state of forestry today in central and western europe.
The endless spruce and fir monoculture plantations have flat roots, do not store water, promote forest fires…
but readers on Ecosophia will know all that.
In north eastern Upper Austria, where Spruce monocultures are rampant, the remaining farmers employ bigger and bigger machines, which compact the soil for millenia, they drive bigger and bigger forestry pathways through these sad monocultures, so they can access with their machines…
Even here in Vienna, where luckily vast stretches beech forests interspersed with linden, oak, ash, persist, sometimes the forest owners cut the whole beech forest slope of an eastern looking hill down, with the result of the slope drying out, and the remaining adult beeches dying from draught and heat.
Such practices are typical for modern forestry, where heavy machinery needs access.
Horses and donkeys allow for a more selective and careful type of forestry.
Thank you for the recommendation, Mr. Greer! I put in an order and it arrives Monday.
Ron M 274
> tool, die and mold industries
> machinist
‼️AHA‼️ You gave a name to the skilled worker “machinist” I talk about further down here (#363).
‼️TOOL, DIE, AND MOLD MAKERS‼️
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_and_die_maker
If I may, here is the first paragraph of what wiki says:
“Tool and die makers are highly skilled crafters working in the manufacturing industries. Tool and die makers work primarily in toolroom environments—sometimes literally in one room but more often in an environment with flexible, semipermeable boundaries from production work. They are artisans (craftspeople) who typically learn their trade through a combination of academic coursework and with substantial period of on-the-job training that is functionally an apprenticeship. They make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools, gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes.”
Honestly, the skill-set of this trade’s sounds “riveting.”🔩⚙️
💨🫥🔩⚙️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
(Slightly off topic?)
Some months ago, I found some books written by the Scottish veterinarian James Herriot. I knew this guy was famous in UK until now, after having written a lot of self-biographic novels about his job, mainly during his youth during the ’30s in North England. Even there’s a movie, methink.
Only some of his novels are translated to Spanish, but (in spite of not being a special fan of veterinary medicine) I liked them.
I’ve remembered some interesting topics in Herriot books. For example, beyond technological improvements in surgery tools, the silver bullet to improve animals survival against infectious illnesses, was of course the use of penicillin. It’s interesting to remember that first modern antibiotic only began to be made in an industrial scale during the ’40s, so heroic, early and scarce making of penicillin was used only for humans. So Herriot lived his first times as a veterinarian like the last vets generation before penicillin started to be used in non human animals…
However, during the ’30s, vets weren’t unarmed against bacteria. Herriot remembers he used against infections a drug named “sulfonamide”(I hope to have written it correctly), which was near infallible against infections…well, not always. He sometimes thinks some drugs and treatments used in those times were not more than placebos (?) for farmers, with dubious real effects for healing cattle and pets. If current slow pace into antibiotics resistance go on toward risky levels, I think there should be new-old drugs for healing people and cattle/pets.
Some vet proceedings seem rough and old fashioned seen from our century, but often succeeded. He also reminds there was in North England countryside in those times, some “healers” who did unfair competition against scientific vets (though he accepts relunctantly they sometimes healed animals, ha ha…). I won’t bore you telling you how many stories he tells the reader about bizarre healings, so I suggest you to read his books.
Nowadays vets prefer (at least here) to work with pets in towns; only a few vets want to help farmers with their cattle in the rural context. Of course, veterinary for big animals is harder than working in an urban pets clinic…and better paid, methink. This tendence was beginning in the ’30s England. Indeed, Herriot met a “town vet” who’s an animals clinic owner,and well, his car is more expensive and better than poor Mr. Herriot car.
I think this tendence of declinining vets interested in farms was partly due to agriculture mechanization, when tractors replaced work horses. It’s interesting Herriot during the ’30s noticed there were less and less “equine patients” than in ’20s. Tractors arrived in masse to England maybe before than in another European countries, I bet due to its bigger and earlier industrialization (in Spain, there were still work horses and mules in the ’50s). He mourns a bit this loss, but he supposes it’s the Progress. Well, in a future context of oil scarcity, tractors won’t seem the usual winners, so I guess that, in the long term, more horses working the fields mean more work for rural vets…
Finally, Mr. Herriot witnessed during his first years as a vet the English countryside changes from a heck of small farms toward bigger industrial farms; he sees this tendence specially in cow farming. He says old school little familiar farms were a more human system than industrial milk cows farms, not only for the animals but also for human workers there (including vets). He also thought it was a “natural” consequence of farms industrialization, but again I’ll say in the future the economy of scale maybe cannot work as well as in the present and recent past, due to the Long Descent.
Joan 276
In the USA, new mattresses prices range from the (euphemistically) “low” price of $1,000 to “high” price of $6,000. And THAT price is not even the highest. Plus these mattresses only have ONE side,— no more flipping a mattress… the bottom is a wooden frame. I was shocked when Jeff and I went mattress-hunting a couple years ago. I hear-tell one CAN still buy a two-sided mattress, but it is special-order and probably costs $2,000.
Outrageous — egads — jeez. No wonder people opt for buying spartan “4-inch thick” foam, which is what I used (it was affordable) around 1978 when in my 20s, just starting out. Four-inch foam sure beats sleeping on the floor.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
I’ll write a thousand words on that.
I also look forward to a lot of very promising writers learning for the first time how small a number a thousand can be when applied to words on a favorite topic. (Everyone learns how large it can be in school, of course.)
Clarke # 343:
“homes were built with high ceilings (where the heat in the room could pool harmlessly)”
It seems it isn’t exactly the same buildings technology, but those high ceilings “rhyme” with old buildings domes and tunnel vaults, which “casually” allows high ceilings, and usually are fresher in summer than more modern buildings…
—————————————-
JMG # 351:
Well, life is to some extent short enough for reading every book has been published in the past, but I think James Herriot books are IMHO good to grasp how was Veterinary Medicine before massive use of antibiotics (and a society before Internet); indirectly, you can do the math about the long term future after cheap oil and “infallible” antibiotics. By the way, Monty Python were funny…
————————————————-
Curt # 389:
Yes, ash tree fungal illness (acronecrosis) began in Europe during the ’90s, and it’s a serious problem in more and more countries like yours, and here. However, I don’t think it’s going to lead the ash tree into extinction in the future. A treatment could be discovered soon, or more likely, botanists could find a few ash trees with immunity against the fungus, and replicate them into new immune “children” for be planted then, replacing ill and dead ash trees.
********************************
“Peter Wohlleben a german forestry manager who wrote books on conservational forestry has employed horses, and has a lot to say about the state of forestry today in central and western europe.”
Oh, I know Wohlleben by some of his books about forests. In spite of having been mocked by “scientific” forests experts for decades, he’s managed to be seen as one of the greatest proffessionals in forests, not only in Germany…So his ideas must be heard paying them a lot of attention.
By the way, horses can”t cause wildfires in forests, heavy machines can provoke it (sparks and heat), as we knew here in one of the worst wildfires suffered in Spain and France these last weeks…
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2026/07/29/wildfires-slow-in-france-and-spain-but-worse-may-be-ahead/
@Lew (#381):
A quick web search turned up several sources for buying lithographic stones (mostly limestones) of different qualities, each better suited for one or another sort of lithography, as well as the other needed materials such as inks. Unlike stencils for mimeographs and other such machines, you can clean a lithography stone and reuse it over and over. And a stone seems to be both cheaper and less prone to failure than machines such as hectographs, mimeographs or Gestetners. So I’m confident that lithography would be a technology well worth reviving now, and keeping alive for the long descent. No complex machines are needed, only a few very simple hand tools.
And yes, they could and did print entire books by lithography. The lithographed book I mentioned in my earlier post was under 100 pages, but even so, a substantial contribution to its subject.
Celadon, glad to hear it. One of the houses I lived in during my childhood had a red cedar shake roof — those were fairly common in the Pacific Northwest back in the day, and the habit was inherited from the local Native peoples. The scent of aged cedar shingles shows up in my dreams sometimes.
Tom, thank you.
Cicada, fascinating. I see abaci are going to get quite a section. The shchoty and the nepohualtzintzin both deserve some discussion.
Atmospheric, a friend of mine had a dog hair sweater, which naturally felted over time — dog hair apparently felts very readily. It always smelled of wet dog after he wore it in the rain, but he said it was very warm and comfortable.
Cicada, thanks for all this.
Inna, that has to go into the essay!
Atmospheric, thanks for this.
Sea Spray, good heavens. This is great — thank you!
Cicada, this is a good first draft of the essay on records, for which thank you. Once the project starts going I’ll be in touch with a release form.
Harvester, once I get things set up I’ll post something on my Dreamwidth journal with the details. Stay tuned!
J.L.Mc12, thanks for both of these.
JH, that seems to be everybody’s reaction — well, with a couple of exceptions. I’ve rarely seen this kind of enthusiasm. So I think it’s a go.
Lunar, thanks for this. Once the project gets under way I’ll send you a release.
Beaches, thanks for this! Very fun.
Viduraawakened, I’m impressed by the material posted earlier about blimps, that is, nonrigid airships, and their remarkable power to handle bad weather. If a long term source of lifting gas can be had, that’s probably viable over the long term. As for classical Indian music, it has two huge advantages our classical Western music doesn’t have,. The first, as you’ve pointed out, is that Indian instruments are much more sustainable to make — a piano, just for starters, cannot be made without industrial processes, since the tension on its strings is so high (about 20 metric tons of pressure) and the steel frame has to support that. The second is that Indian ensembles are generally much smaller, about the size of a chamber music group, while a great deal of Western classical music requires very large orchestras and thus a much bigger ongoing financial outlay. The chance that Western classical music will survive the Long Descent as a living tradition is thus very small — by contrast, Indian classical music has already weathered dark ages with ease.
Walt, so am I!
My father didn’t allow us to get a record player, but our live-in domestic servant had a manual wind-up portable record player that could play 78s which we sometimes listened to. The rigid fast-spinning 78s put so much energy into the needle that the sound was loud enough without needing electric amplification. The drawback was the steel needles wore out pretty quickly, and also the person cranking the record player..
The standard 78 was 10″ across. There were bigger 12″ discs for classical music. My stepfather had boxed sets of 12″ discs featuring operatic arias. When he hauled those out we kids ran away with our hands over our ears. Pop music on the radio was so much nicer.
JMG,
Another technology from the past that will be in dire need in a post petroleum future is the 2-man ( person) crosscut saw, also its very intensive cousin the 2 man rip saw. Once the gas powered chain saw is gone these will be needed to cut up logs of any reasonable size for firewood before splitting by hand. They are also needed for felling and making lumber.
Then there is the incredibly labor intensive 2 man rip saw where one person is below the log in a pit and another stands on the log and they cut out planks using an up and down sawing motion. I imagine people will use steam, water, etc to power stationary saw mills for as long as possible to do this task but eventually the 2-man saw will be needed.
A few of the crosscut saws are still in use for trail work, where carrying a heavy chainsaw and fuel deep in to the woods to cut apart trees that have fallen over hiking trails is too much work. A few years ago I helped a friend of mine rehab an old one of these so that it could be used.
Related to this topic,
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/phfpjd/all_us_cities_which_used_to_have_more_than_100000/
I never heard of mimeograph, so I started digging and ended up discovering a small museum in the town of Mosty in Belarus. It’s a Museum of Pre-Computer Technology. Pretty cool idea isn’t it? I don’t link it since it’s in Russian.
@scotlyn #302: If I may, your statement of your position is so extreme that I am not sure I understand it. Are you denying that noradrenalin or atropin or an antibiotic will have objectively verifiable effects on an unconscious patient, that is without their consent? Such objectively verifiable effects (heart rate, bacterial count per mL etc.) will of course not always contribute to the healing of the patient, but in some cases they may be indispensable for healing.
Sundails, by Roy K. Marshall, 1963. Brief history, explanation about how to correct for latitude and longitude, and directions for making your own cutout sundial. Even has explanation of equation of time (with charts) so you can adapt for leap years. Points out that only the sun (sundial) accurately reflects how the earth is rotating. Mechanical devices and “corrections” are used to adjust to a universal worldwide standard.
Lots of diet and preventative health ideas, thoughI the topic may be too broad.
Gary Taubes, Rethinking Diabetes – links insulin resistance to modern foods, when societies intake of added sugar exceeds around 50 pounds (references follow various areas pre/post food “modernization”) This is associated with inflammatory, autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurologic disorders, and just feeling poorly from low energy.
Van Tullekin, Ultra-processed people. Common food additives and processing alterations reviewed, with resultant nutrient removal and misleading hunger signals. (It’s not just sugar)
Tim Spector – The Diet Myth, variable responses to foods, including some details on gut biome and genetics
Dave Montgomery and Anne Bikle, What Your Food Ate – ?Duh… more nutrients in healthy-soil raised vegetables, and healthier fats in livestock (eggs/milk) not raised in overcrowded conditions, on medications and junk food.
@Martin Back
I remember we had an old aluminum pot at the cabin that had to be thrown out. If I remember correctly there is research indicating that using aluminum pots and cooking can help cause Alzheimers.
Yes any impelement used with food or, being rubbed on the skin would, have to be carefully made. Copper used in copper pipes does have Trace elements and is not pure for example.
Inna,
Thank you for your snapshots of life in the USSR! I read them to my British-born husband.. He was born in 1952, and rationing was still a thing in the UK. Butter was in short supply, and kindly elderly neighbors gifted his parents with some. Of course husband got his toddler hands on it, and Mum’s plans for it went out the window. She baked a cake rather than waste. it. We’ve often wondered if the reason husband is the healthiest among his siblings, all born after rationing finally ended, is because he simply didn’t have access to much sugar as a young child.
His family also didn’t have access to a home phone in the 1950s. He well remembers going outside to the phone booth if calls needed to be made. As with your family, people knew no different and were fine with it.
OtterGirl
There has been some discussion here of which era of American houses are best for riding out the long decline. In my opinion, the best for the purposes of economy and self sufficiency are houses built in the 1970’s.
This is still a time ( in most of the us) where houses had full basements. Still had Masonary fireplaces, and the larger lot sizes needed if you want to garden etc. Unlike earlier eras they usually have full wall insulation and some attic insulation ( which can be supplemented). They have metal ductwork in the heating system ( unlike the flex vent of later years) and all the construction materials are traditional, no chipboard, LP siding, dryvit stucco etc. The average 1970’s house does not have the difficult rooflines ( hard to reroof) of the later 80’s and 90’s and don’t have the wasteful layouts of those years with things like grand entry ways. They also have modern wiring with built in ground and circuit breakers instead of fuses.
Any era can work, but I think the 70’s might be the easiest. But they are not usually the most architecturally appealing.
In my youth in the rural Midwest you would run across remnants of old technologies on farms, cisterns, windmills to pump water, spring houses, pieces of a hydraulic ram on one farm with a hillside spring, hay grapples – an apparatus that would be lowered from an end of the hayloft in a barn to grab a big hunk of dried hay from off a wagon and then would carry it along a track in the peak of the roof to where it would be dropped. A horse would power it. This what they would do before bales. I remember an old metal box that would shell an ear of car and release a stream of kernels. You would feed the ear in and turn a crank. There were archaric corn cribs made of wire mesh you would put whole ears in to store for the winter no longer used.
Thinking about visual arts. So much art making went digital, and now AI is making a mess everywhere and eating semiprofessional and beginner professional artists lunches.
I think a move back to traditional art is in order. So many options… if you really want to go retro in painting, how about doing as the ancient egyptians did, with egg tempera? You can use it on organically gesso’d boards, or hotpressed watercolor paper. For the paint, you need pigment (in a pinch, you can crush up non-oil pastels, they work fine and are the cheapest way to do it and come in a rainbow of colors), vinegar, and water. I experimented with it earlier this year so I could repair a damaged icon that had been done with egg tempera paint. So far, it seems to have worked fine.
Watercolors are also easy to get into, pretty inexpensive to run as a hobby, and have a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. They are also great for using outdoors. Highly recommended.
I also discovered brush pens with replaceable cartridges. Brilliant for carrying around to do outdoor stuff. So convenient, and I love the results – alone, combined with pencil, or with watercolor. Also great for calligraphy. I don’t like calligraphy pens with metal tips. They feel scratchy and nasty to me. But brush pen… I loved it instantly for the artwork side. Tried it in a class, loved it so much I ran out to buy my own that week and I’ve used it a lot since. Well worth the money (mine was over $20 Can for the pen and four cartridges). Pentel brush pen.
J.L.Mc12 383
I never used a dot planimeter (too inaccurate) but I used a mechanical polar planimeter many times as a civil engineering technician. It is an instrument for measuring the areas of irregular shapes. When planning a road we would draw cross sections across the proposed road say every 20 meters and measure the areas of cut and fill with the planimeter to calculate the total volume of material to be removed or imported. Very tedious work in the ’70s, no doubt done in a flash by computer these days.
JMG, how about a section on rustic twig furniture? It goes hand in hand with the coppice section. Withes are easier to come by, and more renewable if you’ve got a coppice plot, than good furniture-making wood (so much at the hardware store is simply doug fir and it’s not dried well and is twisted). I’ve seen some books by that name, though I have no experience making any such furniture.
Robert Mathiesen and Lew (sorry, no msg numbers) – lithography indeed sounds useful! Thanks for the tip – I may add lithography to my site, since it DOES seem to be a low-tech option!
Also, just wanted to cheer you on, Andy, with your letterpress and bookbinding endeavors – glad to hear that you’ve got a printshop going. The decreased availability of old machines on the west coast (US), plus the sheer size/weight/amount of supplies needed kept me from following up on that long-held dream. I loved my few years of doing letterpress in college, though, and have a soft spot for it.
Inna, I wouldn’t mind if you linked to the museum – I can add it to my website! I do get a lot of website visitors from Russia (I don’t think they’re ALL bots :D). Also, I really appreciate the stories you tell, of your time growing up and dealing with the decline of the USSR. Really valuable stories and tips.
So much very interesting info. Like drinking from a fire hose.
I have used a lot of the skills and low tech ideas that have been mentioned above, like an outdoors cloths line for drying and cloths racks for indoor drying. Cooling with fans only by timing the opening and closing of the house. I have a garden and can and use other preservation methods to preserve the produce. I sew for myself and husband on a very simple electric sewing machine that I inherited from my grandmother and sell some of the things I sew at craft fairs.
My husband is of like mind and spent 30years working as a letterpress man on presses older then he was. He still does a lot of the mechanical repairs on our vehicles and has built a wood fired pizza oven that turns out pretty good pizza, not to mention he makes good home brew. He also has some pretty good skills with shaping sheet metal and welding.
One thing I would add to the conversation about shorthand and the use of fountain pens is the study and use of calligraphy. For a time I was offering my service as a calligrapher to address wedding invitations. However, computers won out on that one. Some calligraphy hands were referred to as “secretary hands” as they were faster then many other styles and this was with dip pens. I believe that the cursive many of us learned in elementary school is a “secretary hand”. My grandmother had the most beautiful cursive hand.
I am definitely going to order the book and any other subsequent books on forbidden tech. Thanks everyone for sharing.
For clarification, regarding insulin resistance – around 50 pounds PER Year of added sugar tends to raise risk. It could be forty or sixty, research is vague, but somewhere in that range seems associated with modern chronic diseases. Further/continuing rise may be associated with added changes from refined carbs, modern growing/processing methods/chemicals, lifestyles/stress and more..
Cast iron cookware adds small amounts of iron to cooked foods. Iron deficiency is relatively common in the US (and many other countries).
Viduraawakened@387 and others speculating about the viability of large airships: there’s an excellent book by the novelist Nevil Shute (Norway was actually his last name; he used his middle name as his last name as an author) titled “Slide Rule”, first published 1954. In that book, he details the development of the successful privately designed and built R100 airship of 1930, and also makes mention of the British Air Ministry R101 which suffered a storm-provoked catastrophic structural failure and dived into the ground near Beauvais, France, on what was only its second flight in October of 1930; 48 of the 54 people onboard R101 were killed.
R100 was quite capable and innovative. Shute became over the course of its development and construction its chief engineer. The airship flew across the Atlantic in July of 1930, visiting several locations including Montreal and Niagara Falls, and returned to England in August of 1930. Shute’s writing in “Slide Rule” is engaging, in both its detailed engineering discussions and his astute assessment of the people and personalities around him. Well worth a read for any and all aviation enthusiasts!
Shute details the extensive use of computers in the R100 design and development. Yes, the time taken to get answers were sometimes measured in days or even months, but the results were solid. Oh, did I mention that the term “computers” in that day applied to carefully-chosen people, often women, with mechanical calculators and Fuller slide rules?
As per your link to the collaboration between Bharat Forge and Flying Whales: BIG groan. I have no doubt Bharat Forge is, as you say, a respected and capable company, but Flying Whales? They are a vaporware confab; check out their entry on Wikipedia for just a start. I’d not heard anything about them for years, and am frankly surprised they’re still (pardon the pun) “out there.”
@Clay Dennis (#399):
We still have the 2-man crosscut saw that my wife’s great-grandfather used when he worked as a lumberjack in Maine (near Skowhegan) in the 1800s. Likewise his axe-sharpening grindstone. The saw is quite an impressive piece of metal-work.
” a piano, just for starters, cannot be made without industrial processes, since the tension on its strings is so high (about 20 metric tons of pressure) and the steel frame has to support that.”
The first pianos were made around 1700. Steel isn’t necessary, cast iron will do fine at the cost of more weight. Iron stringed harpsichords are about a century older and also used a heavier frame than the earlier versions.
The Steinway pianos didn’t show up until the mid 1800’s, that may be what you are thinking about.
JMG and Cicada Grove #371,
I don’t think that shchoty is something uniquely Russian. To my knowledge, “shchoty” is just Russian for abacus. They were not “specialized for the (pre-Bolshevik) Russian money system”. They were actively used in the USSR. Here is a link to the picture. It’s exactly as I remember it in the 70s and 80s.
https://vk.ru/photo-94007501_457287447
“the idea was that the house would be wide open at night, with the fan doing its best to bring a breeze in through open (screened) windows, and sometime shortly after sunrise the whole house would be shut up tight,”
That still works. I use a couple box fans in the windows at night and blow cool air through the house. Then in the morning as soon as the outside temperature is the same as inside the house gets buttoned up. for the rest of the day.
When I lived in Winnemucca (Northern Nevada) I had a swamp cooler. That worked quite well too. In fact I changed the pulleys to reduce the speed of the blower as it could get really cold indoors. When you are used to the summer heat 70 F seems overly cold.
My understanding is that lithography is still widely used, at least artists here in NZ use it, and back in the mid-90s my father had a large old photo duplicated by a lithographer.
Re: Western musical tradition (#397)
It so happens that my favourite period of music is the 17th century. At that time, there were obviously no instruments that required industrial techniques – the cembalo does not have a steel frame. The ensembles were also much smaller, and composers didn’t usually require specific instruments for specific parts. Of course there were courts that could afford more luxury, but Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals or J.H. Schein’s Fontana d’Israel require nothing but five humans and (for the later ones) a lute or a harp. Schütz was court composer in Dresden and accustomed to bigger budgets, but the Thirty Years War destroyed all of that. He wrote one of my personal favourites when peace finally allowed him to resume composing, but one a much simpler level. It starts with one voice, then two, then a third one, then finally some more voices and a simple instrumental accompaniment.
So, if there are more people who share my musical taste, such music can certainly be kept alive through a dark age. String instruments continue to be made by hand as far as I know.
@Michael Martin #297,
I’m glad I’m not the only one who likes wristwatches!
@Chuaquin #346,
Lucky you! No one in my family owned a pocket watch – the older generations didn’t have the money, and the younger ones used wristwatches.
@Otter Girl #405,
Thank you for sharing your husband’s story – I can relate!
@TemporaryReality #411,
I’m glad you like my stories! Here is a link:
https://mostylib.by/%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8-%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B5%D0%B9-%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80-%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D1%8C%D1%8E%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA/
If you scroll down, you will see the picture of a mimeograph (Ротатор).
This is a follow up of sorts to my last comment, inspired by Jung’s Aion. The rallying cry of our economy is “growth! growth! growth!” and this seems to have led us into this present predicament. The Pillar of Mercy unchecked by the Pillar of Severity leads to this sort of endless detrimental growth that we find ourselves in. That seems to be partially influenced by the second myth of our Age, that of Christ, of which the Church’s privatio boni/absence of good philosophy seems to be pumping the gas on the Pillar of Mercy anabolism. Why can’t we simply shift gears to a rallying cry of “stable profits! stable profits! stable profits!” and “temperance!”!? This seems to be a sickness of our souls from denying the Pillar of Severity. The insistence that there is no substance to evil. The Christ is the symbol of wholeness for the Piscean Age and does not reflect the symbol of wholeness we need now, one that acknowledges the Shadow. I imagine that new symbol will be thrust into consciousness for the Aquarian Age when the old myths die.
@Ambrose and Mary Bennet re. education
I was going to write a longer reply here, but on balance I think I’ll save most of it for a later open post, since I won’t want to stray too far off topic. Still, a couple replies to a few specific points:
“Is it important to give kids the summer off? (They’d probably do a lot better without such a big break.)”
Yes. For sure. I don’t care if they’d do better academically without it. IMO it’s such an important and magical part of childhood, and I’d hate to see it sacrificed on the altar of better grades.
“Maybe others can opine on what level of computer mastery should be taught.”
There’s probably a lot to be said for not having computers at all until eighth grade, which is how the Waldorf schools handle it AFAIK. Still, “digital skills” are a mandatory part of the curriculum here, so my wish list would be something like this: I think every student finishing seventh grade should be able to install a basic Linux distribution like Ubuntu or Mint, update it from terminal, at least know what source code is and having tried to compile something from source and maybe the basics of how to assemble a desktop PC. Imagine the savings if the school gave each student a used laptop as old as him or her and had them install Linux rather than handing them brand new iPads…which would also be a way to reuse old hardware as per the theme of this week’s post.
PS: It is surely no coincidence that the scholars in the The Glass-bead Game play, study and analyze above all 17th century composers like J. H. Schein, Schütz and Froberger, with a bit of J.S. Bach and Mozart as the absolute temporal limit.
Oh my, if this trenchant analysis is correct the future changes and ongoing crises and declines JMG predict in his books are coming sooner than I thought due to current conflicts. Retro tech here we come. Yikes, not a sudden complete apocalypse, but soon coming downward lurches in the current system.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/no-oil-no-food
JMG: Regarding 1,000 words, I will investigate to see if I can find independent sources other than only my own testimony about the cooling of southern homes. Failing that, I’m not sure what to add to what I wrote besides a few clarifying words. Not nearly enough, I suspect. I’ll keep you informed.
I looked into getting a spinning wheel once, and I found out there is a device called a drop spindle, that is small enough to fit in a tall junk drawer. I have never used either, so I don’t know if there are drawbacks, but a spinning wheel is a piece of furniture and a drop spindle looks like a kitchen gadget, so that right there is a big difference.
I don’t know if there’s space in your book for how to build a haystack, but a lot of people have said the knowledge is completely lost, but I saw a video of the entire process being done in Romania, so there are still people that know how to do it. Actually, here it is, first result on youtube. Sorry it’s a YouTube video 🙁
https://youtu.be/wO0DVEpbUo4?is=HGFpxttODfbb4iM6
I haven’t had time to read comments so I don’t know if these are repeats. I’ll come back if I think of anything else, and I’ll keep an eye out for this book!!
John,
you really lit a fire with this one
My first thought on reading this weeks essay was a book you recommended earlier this year,
Todd Elliott’s The Cunning Farmer. In your review you said “ This book is not just a guide to farming, but to forging a relationship with the living land. It shows that we are surrounded by spiritual powers and, with their help, we can re-enchant and reconnect with the land that gives us life.”
Re-enchanting the world will be, I think, crucial to getting us through the long descent
@KAN (#418):
Indeed, lithography is widely used — but no longer to publish texts, rather just for publishing images and art. It’s that specific use — publishing readable texts — that I’m pushing to revive for the long descent. Lithographed texts can be made that will last longer, and remain more easily readable, than stenciled texts usually do.
I had a swamp cooler when I lived in Albuquerque. A good many people had them. Yes, they worked very well.
One thing the Vermont Country Store used to sell was wind-up wrist watches. However, the last one I had from them worked very poorly: one winding only lasted for less than 12 hours, and it was impossible to wind it any tighter. The store stopped carrying them after that. Gainesville’s House of Time couldn’t fix wind-up watches either. After that, I think they stopped being made altogether, after a short run of deteriorating quality. Pity.
As for wearing watches as sign of strangeness, I own a large battery-operated watch that fits my southwestern watch band, which I bought from the craftsman (Pueblo? Navajo?), and most people here who notice it, admire it; it’s my one signature piece of jewelry, and a blessing during power failures and hurricanes.
One underrated “technology”, IMO, are monorails. Not the bonafide electrified six car straddle beam ones, or even the suspension railway kind, but the single steel rail + stabilisers design. Addis single rail tramway and Boynton bicycle railroad. For a civilisation that has to use charcoal for steel, this may prove more economically viable, and more tolerant to imperfection.
In the area of medicine, there is frustratingly little research on fever therapy for cancer. Its like the industry got promising early results and then just… gave up.
Also in the area of medicine, the nervous system touches on basically everything. In my main worldbuilding (emberrun, magic returns / gets a lot stronger in 2014) thats the primary way healing magic works, as a logical extension to psychic powers (psychic powers interface with the brain, therefore they must be able to connect to other nerve cells), and thats also the way many diehard believers convince themselves its just a super placebo effect. Perhaps, though, irl there are insights to be gained from looking in that area?
Also, because emberrun magic is primarily extrasensory knowledge, its incredibly powerful in the hands of plant (and animal, and microbe) breeders, who can speedrun generations in weeks with the aid of a basic laboratory to manipulate growth of variants. Especially when they can scour the world for wild types with useful properties. And again, IRL I don’t think we’ve really come closen to all that could be achieved with directed selective breeding.
In construction, I think the Romans were onto something with their attitude to wall construction. Everyone focuses on the formula, but simply mixing up rubble and cement and piling it on seems to offer speed advantages too…
Comment #15 Anonymous says:
July 29, 2026 at 12:40 pm
JMG
While not a book, I did come across a group of looksmaxxers who had some interesting ideas about male pattern baldness a while back. These “hairmaxxers” are extremely skeptical of the current consensus that male pattern baldness is genetic and instead argue that it is epigenetic.
Could you please tell us a link or links to these types of groups? Thanks
I can chime in on a couple of technologies mentioned above, with some more info/details:
Lost Art Press publishes two excellent books on older technologies and ways of doing things (among the many that they publish):
– “Doormaking and Window-Making ” is a reprint of two pamphlets from the early Industrial era documenting – in careful and precise detail – the processes, design, and rationale behind classic western windows and doors, and their related framing. It is a beautiful, concise, and useful reference for anybody wanting to make windows and doors properly – that is, to correctly keep out weather, to remain durable and useful, and to be repairable.
– “Make Fresh Milk Paint” is exactly what it sounds like – how to make this durable, affordable, and absolutely non-toxic-at-all-stages paint. More flexible and durable than egg tempera (which, though brilliant in colour, gets brittle and requires a non-expanding substrate with time) and thus far more suitable for everyday items, this paint is making a strong comeback and can quite literally be made with some of the simplest things: milk, vinegar, pure ash or calcium hydroxide (aka the same ‘cal’ used in Mexican cooking) and richly coloured dirt (iron oxides, classical paint pigments, carbon black, etc.) are pretty much all you need.
A second note on paint: woodworkers, particularly those involved in the restoration of old historic buildings, swear by linseed oil paint as well. If it were marketed today by paint companies, the features would read as a modern miracle of high technology: non-toxic, renewable, non-petrochemical based, durable, needs no primer on most surfaces, needs a tiny fraction of the prep work modern acrylic enamels need for recoating in the future, low-cost and high coverage, rich colour… the list goes on and on. The one downside is the drying time – a lot of linseed oil paints sold commercially have toxic heavy metals added as drying agents (siccatives, they’re called) – this has given “boiled” linseed oil a bad name in recent times. Leave those out, as the better brands who make true non-toxic linseed oil products do, and the dry time can sometimes be measured in days or even weeks. But even so, buildings, barns, windows and doors, trim, interior and exterior furniture can all be coated with the stuff efficiently and practically. Better yet, it supports the longevity of the wood (or stone, or plaster, or metal, or…) under it because it permits breathing and thus does not trap water under it like petrochemical formulations tend to do. There are tons of books on the subject, and making it is as simple as making any seed oil – though it does require the usual careful separation of water, contaminants, and proteins that many forms of seed-oil processing require. I’ve used it to excellent effect on many woodworking projects.
In addition, I saw that water pumps are mentioned. There’s another type well worth considering: the spiral water pump attributed to H.A. Wirtz around 1746 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-73234-w). It is another remarkably capable pump and while I haven’t made or used one, I recall reading an article where someone experimented rather heavily with them and ended up finding them exceptionally capable and useful. The advantage is that these only need ordinary horizontal riverflow to operate, and not exceptionally fast flow at that. No actual drop in water (other than the gradual slope of the river itself) is needed.
Another technology that’s starting to make a comeback: trunnels (aka tree-nails, wooden nails, or pegs) instead of metal nails. Cut, and forged, nails are also still made by a couple factories who maintain ancient equipment in working order for that purpose. and they do perform exceptionally well.
Wire-drawing is a technology that I worry about lasting past the modern industrial age, though I have no idea if anybody is even thinking about retrovating older ways to do it.
There may still be some people who remember how to make decent rope and cordage by hand, and “ropewalks” for doing so in very long lengths still exist in some old-fashioned waterfronts for that purpose (tall ships need an absolutely astounding amount of running and standing rigging – these days a lot of the standing rigging is steel wire, but the running rigging is still quite often good old rope of various kinds, depending on the ship and the spirit in which she is operated). Sisal, jute, and hemp are very common natural fibres for such purposes, and no doubt there are many others used in various parts of the world with equal success.
Horsepower units have been mentioned upthread, and The Small Farmer’s Journal is a superb resource on that topic, along with eloquent and delightful (and heartbreaking) essays on the state of farming and farmers, quite often in the sense – if not the style – of Wendell Berry and Aldo Leopold’s writings on ecology and human economy. Reading it makes me long for horses and other forms of draft animal labour to become more commonplace – but with the caveat that all owners maintain the love and compassion for their animals that these fine folk clearly have! When a working animal is treated well and with compassion, it turns out that just like humans they often find the work thoroughly enjoyable and are happy to do it. Who’da thunk it?
—
As a serious-hobbyist woodworker using almost exclusively pre-industrial techniques and hand tools, the topics of woodworking, homebuilding, and general “making” are near and dear to my heart. A few other books that I think are well worth recommending along those lines:
“Another work is possible” by Joshua A. Klein – on timber framing, traditional comradeship, and with asides on the French guild system and some issues with the modern equivalent (“Les Compagnons du Devoir”). No actual “how to” in this one (I can recommend many other titles on that, timber framing is seeing something of a revival right now), but a lot about the variety of tools and their uses, logistics and social requirements for a framing build, what can reasonably be accomplished in how much time, etc.
“The Handyman’s Book”, a modern reprint of the book originally published in 1903 by Paul Nooncree Hasluck, is a thorough summary of hand tools, how to use and apply them, and the judgements and thought processes behind daily and ordinary repairs. Like “Doormaking and Window-making”, this one was also written by an expert craftsman in the early Industrial era, documenting the fast-declining skills and knowledge used daily by nearly any homeowner of any sort only decades prior.
Most of the books written or published by Lost Art Press and Mortise and Tenon are highly valuable for exactly this sort of preservation or retrovation of techniques and methods, often with the advantage that the methods have been tried out to the letter by skilled craftsmen of today, who can then intelligently comment on them in a more modern language and with often very helpful photographs.
One thing that I think hasn’t gotten much discussion here yet is that of how to make the foundational tooling and materials needed. I’m not sure what the scope of your project intends to be and what assumptions about resources and material availability are being made, but everything from charcoal/bio-char – extremely useful to blacksmithing and smelting, among many other uses, to how to make a pencil (which is a product of the global supply chain and is a remarkably difficult thing to manufacture, all things considered – at least in any quantity) might be needed. I’ll assume that making various grades of metals and alloys is beyond the scope, but they’re essential for quality tools, and there’s a lot that’s very hard to DIY without good tools.
—
Oil lamps are a far superior technology to candles for lighting – putting out more lumens per btu burned as well as being safer and more fuel-flexible. Diesel fuel (though it smells ghastly), kerosene of various grades (range in smell from “good gods that’s horrid” to “hm, someone lit an oil lamp!”), some of the lighter fractions of vegetable oils, etc. can all be burned in them. The “modern” cold blast variant was invented and perfected in the late 1800’s and uses the hot exhaust of the flame to drive a ram-air flow that effectively “supercharges” the cold intake air to the flame, giving increased oxygenation and thus both a cleaner and more efficient – hence brighter – flame. A bonus feature is that for most of these types of lamps, the fuel is not able to flash-ignite (so a spill won’t catch fire from vapors), and most of these types of lamps go out harmlessly if they’re knocked over (though you’ll have a large puddle of fuel to clean up). With good clean lamp oil, though, they’re just as pleasant to burn indoors as a candle and far more useful to read or work by due to the greater light output, and fuel is often much cheaper than candlewax (unless you keep bees and get the stuff for nearly free). I use them quite often, especially in the winter.
—
Speaking of beeswax, food wraps made from a fairly tight-weave lightweight cloth soaked in beeswax work as well or better than plastic wrap and are renewable in both the sense that you can renew their air-and-water tightness as the wax degrades over time by a light re-coating of the wax, and in the sense that the fibre in the cloth and the beeswax are both made anew by other organisms in the course of a year. Having made my own beeswax food wraps now, I haven’t bought plastic wrap in years, and see no need, ever, to do so again.
—
Regarding cast iron and food, if your cast iron is properly and well seasoned, it won’t leach much, if any, iron into your food. The seasoning provides a polymer barrier between the metal and the food. Trace amounts may leach under some conditions, but I recall (I apologize, I don’t have links handy at the moment) many studies being made of properly seasoned cookware not leaching detectable amounts at all, even into well-simmered tomato sauce.
However, stainless steel -does- leach…. nickel and chromium into your food (search stainless steel food leaching for a plethora of studies, alternately bunked and debunked endlessly as The Internet likes to do). Depending on what you’re cooking and how sensitive you are to these elements (people’s sensitivities, particularly to nickel, vary widely), these amounts may be significant, or they may not be meaningful at all to you. That doesn’t mean that all stainless steel is toxic or should be avoided, but chromium poisoning is known to cause a variety of skin disorders and may be one of many cause-factors for eczema according to some research, and nickel is a known allergen and carcinogen.
—
I can perseverate far too much on any of these topics, so I’ll hold off unless the discussion needs more information.
Hope some of this is useful or at least interesting!
— V.O.G
MD #172: Re: the efficiency of bulk-cooking for the community. The Communist Chinese tried it. The result was famine. Iron cookware was collected from all the individual kitchens and fed to primitive “Great Leap Forward” steel furnaces, which made poor quality steel. Food that was supposed to be shipped to the communal kitchens failed to arrive, so the whole community went hungry. Farms that produced less grain than was promised (by optimistic party apparatchiks) were accused of hoarding, and what little grain they had set aside as seed for the next year was confiscated.
According to Wikipedia’s article on the Great Leap Forward, between 15 and 55 million people died of famine.
While it may seem intuitively true that community cooking is more efficient than individual, if that were actually true, why is home cooking so much cheaper than restaurant cooking?
Martin, hmm. Now I’m wondering what the 78s were made of.
Clay, I used a two-person crosscut saw when I was a Boy Scout. There’s a reason the lumberjacks used to call them “friendship breakers.” 😉
Siliconguy, oof. That’s quite a map of the Rust Belt.
Gardener, thanks for these!
Clay, I think it depends on where you are. Everyone I know on this side of the continent and is aware of such issues favors houses older than that — those tend to be optimized for air flow in pre-air conditioning conditions.
BeardTree, yeah, we’ve lost a lot.
Pygmycory, if I ever have the spare time, drawing with a pencil and watercolor painting are high on my get-to list.
Temporary, I’ll certainly consider that.
Kay, thanks for this. Calligraphy? Hmm! I’ll consider that, too.
Siliconguy, so noted. I should have said “modern pianos” — of course there are also other, older keyboard instruments that are much less demanding. I don’t imagine I’ll ever be able to afford one, but I have a longtime fascination with the clavichord — that’s why Dr. Moravec has one in my occult-detective novels.
Inna, I wonder if there was an earlier design before 1917.
Aldarion, that’s quite another matter, of course. Renaissance and early Baroque music, as you point out, was generally played with much smaller ensembles and less expensive instruments; I note that the first opera ever composed had an orchestra of five instruments. It depends, though, on whether enough people share your tastes and will put in the work to keep the music alive as a living tradition. I certainly hope so!
Luke, that’s the inner side of the challenge of our time, of course. It’s likely to be a rough road.
Aldarion, Hesse knew his music. Once you get much past Bach you lose the deep mathematical structures that give the Glasperlenspiel whatever plausibility it has.
BeardTree, well, we’ll see. That same sharp drop in food availability has been being predicted every few years throughout my life.
Clarke, fair enough. Thank you!
Jessi, there is indeed such a thing as a drop spindle — my late wife used one, and was very good at it. It’s still commonly in use in various corners of the world, and well worth including in the book.
Caracara, there’s that! Something on reenchantment — or as I like to think of it, recognizing the enchantments that never went away at all — belongs in the spooky section.
Alice, thanks for these.
VOG, and thanks for these!
I absolutely love the idea of a Technonomicon!
Not sure if these are what you have in mind, but here are some pre-industrial texts you might find interesting (available on archive.org of course) that I found while conducting my own research on lost artistic technology:
1. The Construction and Principal Uses of Mathematical Instruments by Nicholas Bion (1709) – describes all sorts of forgotten mathematical tools, and more importantly, how to make them from first principles.
2. The Handmaid to the Arts [2 vols.] by an Anonymous author assumed to be Robert Dossie (1764) – a massive collection of artistic tools, techniques, and recipes.
3. Don’t forget the original Encyclopédie! Some great articles in there, the camera obscura is particularly detailed.
Wow, that’s a neat memory. I don’t know if this will come through but they’re using them again at least in some places.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zaMxtzt828ScvU517
I don’t think can get better than wood or slate, even with chemistry!
Lathechuck @ 434. community cooking requires a lot of time, energy and effort, by many cooks, who may very well have other urgent tasks such as small child care, tending a garden, caring for a sick child or elder and so on. Furthermore, the practice takes almost no account of different tastes and physiques–tiny women expected to eat heavily carnivorous meals–, let alone allergies.
It is appropriate for holiday and festival gatherings, such as harvest, Christmas, wedding and so on and as part of monastic life. It makes no sense to expect families to leave their homes, fields and workshops every day to join in the community meal.
V.O.G., I would like to try the beeswax treated cloths. Could I brush on melted beeswax, or must the cloths be soaked?
“We’ve often wondered if the reason husband is the healthiest among his siblings, all born after rationing finally ended, is because he simply didn’t have access to much sugar as a young child.”
When I was at an ashram in India in the late 1970s, the Americans were all fussy eaters and needed supplements but the Germans ate anything and everything but were healthier. They would complain sometime about the “bad food” they had to eat as children (in the early post-war years), for example whole wheat bread. When we got on into the 1980s, I noticed that the younger Germans, who had had access to much the same foods as Americans, were not as robust as those a few years older.
When I was in Russia in the late 1990s, I had the sense that on average, folks there were little bit more intelligent than in the West, which I attributed to them reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky while we were watching Gilligan’s Island on TV.
It isn’t exactly and outdated technology, but I think this humble thing has been slowly pushed toward being obsolete, more or less from ten years ago. I’m thinking in bottles corks. Natural cork has been partly replaced by metal caps in some bottles, and especially in wine bottles, by the infamous silicon fake corks.
Supposed advantages for prefering silicon instead of natural cork from trees seems fake for me (“hygienical” reasons and durableness). Natural cork is a clean stuff, sustainable and ecological, and it lets air going through it (wine oxygenation). It resists moisture, heat and it doesn’t rot easily.
Cork trees bark is also used to make isolating panels, which indeed, are tough against fire.
Cynthia Christie (no. 382) “Scientists don’t dispute that electrical impulses can affect materials, so I don’t think we need to get hung up on that.”
I agree (although some New Agers think that souls and auras are made of electromagnetism). So one way to look at it is, whether our subjective sense of awareness might be those very electrical impulses, in much the same way that this text you’re reading now is not separate from the electrical patterns on our computer screens. Your earlier post referred to an “antenna” in the brain, but this is misleading–it suggests that consciousness is being transmitted like radio or TV signals, which a materialist would deny. (A few monists are mental-monists rather than material-monists–these must be New Thought people and weird Buddhists.) For example, we ordinarily suppose that we “will” our arm to rise, and it does, but the neurons apparently fire well before we think we’ve made the decision to raise the arm.
Atmospheric River (no. 379)”Someone upthread was disparaging about TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine.”
Oh hi!
“I have alot of experience using TCM and with great results, and I have never heard of any TCM herbalist adding chemical medicines to their offerings.”
Well, it happened. I think they wanted their brews to have that extra zing. I’m not saying they *all* do it. Anyway, *every* alternative health notion (even snake oil) has people who will vouch for it. It is possible to wonder how many of them really did benefit, or only think they have. (The fact that mainstream Western medicine is full of problems too doesn’t change this.)
JMG # 397:
“The chance that Western classical music will survive the Long Descent as a living tradition is thus very small — by contrast, Indian classical music has already weathered dark ages with ease.”
I’m afraid I agree. Western classical music is usually played better by large orchestras. These large musicians groups, (according what I read somewehere a long time ago), are more or less correlative of plants work division within first Industrial Revolution. You can see big orchestras thrived more or less when the Contemporary Age began. Before them, rich and noble people prefered to hire camera orchestras for private concerts.
If big orchestras are partly a “fruit” form the modern industrial age “tree”, you can do the math: their future is doomed.
Indian classical music has small groups of musicians playing together, so I also bet they’ll survive well the Long Descent.
————————————————————
Lithography:
I can tell you this technology was widely used to print massive color posters (bullfighting spectacles, theater and movies) in Spain during first half of past century. Indeed, propagandists in the two sides of our last civil war (until 1939) liked to use lithography for their “patriotic” posters. I think it was a popular technology across all Europe at least until the ’50s.
—————————————————————
Ottergirl # 405:
“He was born in 1952, and rationing was still a thing in the UK. Butter was in short supply, and kindly elderly neighbors gifted his parents with some.”
Oh, I didn’t knew that fact about UK. Evidently, the WW2 consequences…I can tell you my parents (who were born in early ’40s) knew and suffered the rationing, too. Spain had a hard postwar (due to Civil War); indeed, rationing lasted until the end of ’50s. I can say they lived in small village until they went during the ’60s to my town, and in the countryside hunger was a lesser motive of concern for people than in towns (self-production was then very common). Indeed, my grandparents had small gardens and small cattle near their home, so my parents never went hungry (though not always ate healthy and balanced food during their childhood).
——————————————————————–
Pygmycory # 408:
Thank you for your suggestions. I’m an amateur painter, so I take note of the egg tempera technique for my near future.
—————————–
Siliconguy # 416:
“The first pianos were made around 1700. Steel isn’t necessary, cast iron will do fine at the cost of more weight. Iron stringed harpsichords are about a century older and also used a heavier frame than the earlier versions.”
Yes, I knew that fact. I studied it in my high school in a class named “History of Music”. First pianos were called “Pianoforte”, and made by Cristofori; but some scholars think there were no real pianos, but the “father” of real modern pianos; so they say real first piano was Silbermann one, methink. I’ ve got some reasonable doubts about this difference, because piano history is more a technological “evolution” (for example, Silbermann and Steinway) more than sudden revolutions…So I agree with you; indeed, if you “sacrifice” accurate technique for simpler technologies, piano (in his “pianoforte” retrovation) could survive in the future.
—————————-
(To be continued)
Inna # 421:
“Lucky you! No one in my family owned a pocket watch – the older generations didn’t have the money, and the younger ones used wristwatches.”
Oh, it’s a pity, they’re wonderful and beautiful machines, even when they don’t work anymore. I knew pocket watches used to be more expensive than modern massive cheap wristwatches, but I can tell you my grandpa was the last children of a farmer couple in a mountain area, and they owned a few (rocky) fields and a couple of cows. They were “a bit” poor. My granpa migrated to another bigger town and then he always worked as a trucks and tractors mechanic, so he saw himself (correctly) as a worker man. So he wasn’t exactly rich, and I tend to think he spent a good part of his savings during the ’20s to buy his pocket watch.
Ironically, not much years later, this old school watches were oldfashioned and he bought his first wristwatch, in the ’30s.
——————————————————————————–
Baldness within men:
I tend to think genetics help for not losing hair, but hey don’t explain everything. Some people for example, think that bad quality food, drinking alcohol and drugs abuse lead men into baldness. And some others points anxiety and depression make you a bald man (an hypothesis who doesn’t fit my own case, I’ve had some mental problems like those ones, and now in my middle age I’ve got still a lot of hair in my head…). Well, on the other hand I’ve seen a lot of policemen in my town are bald, it seems more common within these man than within average men…maybe due to their job stress?
Finally, I also think epigenetics is a factor which must be taken into consideration, too. It would be interesting to study how collective traumas (like wars consequences) and family and personal ones can affect men hair, and another more serious health problems.
———————————————
It’s a bit off topic, but someone has commented about strategic oil reserves depletion in USA, so I’ve remembered by association of ideas that UE centralizes its own oil reseves to some extent, but each country member can manage its own reserves to some extent.
According last Antonio Turiel post (“No pasa nada”-That’s all right), it seems spanish government has been clever enough to stop exporting fuels like gasoline and diesel to another countries. We lose money with this behavior, but my country saves a lot of fuel for hard times likely in a near future…
Of course, this measure has losers, because I bet all the countries who bought spanish refined gasoline aren’t exactly happy with us.
I won’t link you to Turiel blog, because it’s only available in Spanish. For Spanish speakers, his blogs name is Crashoil.blogspot.
Speaking of my old Toyota, it still has a cassette player. And a six-disc CD changer. I don’t keep cassettes or CDs in the car anymore, but the tape deck does come in handy: I bought a $2 generic bluetooth receiver with an auxiliary output, which is hooked up to a cassette adaptor*, which is connected to the cassette deck. The audio quality is very good (on par with CD quality), and the current crop of 5G cell phones are much less prone to interfering with the setup than 15 years ago when I first attached an iPod nano to it.
The funny thing is that it’s much easier to use than the “integrated” infotainment systems in modern cars. I turn on the stereo and select cassette mode; that just takes 2-3 seconds. From the phone of whomever wants to play music, they just need to find my receiver and pair with it. The pairing will be accompanied by an audible beep, after which the music will start playing from the car’s stereo.
In modern cars, one has to find the right sequence of taps and swipes. And the Bluetooth menu takes much longer to load than my entire stereo takes to power up (and that’s with the infotainment system already powered on). Then sometimes the thing just refuses to play because you haven’t selected the right paired device, or whatever.
Not sure if this is falls under retrovation, but it’s ironic how a patchwork retrofit over old tech ends up making new tech easier to use than contemporary stuff that is supposed to “natively” support it.
*The cassette adaptor is one of those things that was originally intended to connect portable CD players with car stereos, before car CD changers became common. Mine is actually Sony Discman branded and is actually older than the car itself (!) but new ones are still available. Some new ones have the bluetooth receiver built-in, but those are more fiddly as they have an internal battery that you need to keep charged.
@BorealBear (#305): “As a casual typewriter enthusiast, it’s been my impression that they’re fairly complex industrial products that wouldn’t be feasible to make on a small scale.”
Well, that’s exactly my point. What do you do when the timeline has progressed far enough that used typewriters are hard to find anymore, and yours starts to act up? Just like with mimeography, we need to look up further in the production line, and figure out how to make these things ourselves. When typewriters (and of course that goes for other machines, as well) came into existence, they weren’t made in high-tech industrial plants. The future retrovated typewriters may be more primitive than today’s but as long as they do the job, that’s enough, isn’t it? So if someone is already doing metal-work, could they expand their skillset to include casting those small parts and learn to assemble them?
Same goes for mechanical clocks, btw. Like many here, I’ve been futilely looking for a wind-up alarm clock. I’m making do with a battery-powered one, it’s still better than using your phone for that, but I loathe the fact that we only get shoddy crap from China now.
*
Humanure: I’m sorry, but no. It’s not icky because it’s from “down there,” but because I don’t fancy getting tapeworm and similiar side effects. Maybe if I’d only use my own product, but call me a cynic, most people are, well, let’s say I wouldn’t trust their output. Either you’d have to make sure that you treat said manure at high enough temperatures to kill off all parasites, their eggs, cysts, and other enduring forms, or introduce mandatory deworming of the population every three months, like we have for dogs and cats now (hey, now you can drink absinthe “medicinally”!). Until then, no way, José!
*
Mainstream medicine: you’d have to be deaf and blind to not notice the consensus about it here, and probably for good reason and based on personal experience, but may I remind the commentariat of the wisdom of JMG who told us that the opposite of a bad idea is another bad idea? I don’t think shunning modern medicine in favor of going back to the old herbal ways completely is a bright idea. Some, of course purely anecdotal examples from my own experience:
1. When my sister worked as student assistant at the veterinary university of Hanover, she was scraped (not even bitten) by a rescue dog from North Africa. Although every veterinarian there reassured her that the symptoms of the dog pointed to distemper, she suspected rabies, and got a post-exposition vaccination series for herself and her fellow student who had also been injured that night. Lo and behold, later testing confirmed that the dog did in fact have rabies! The fellow student was already arranging to get her affairs in order, including who would take her dog after her death! Fortunately, the vaccination prevented both her and my sister’s death. Rabies, unless you get vaccinated immediately after exposition, is deadly in all cases. There is no cure.
2. In my line of work as a veterinary nurse, I’ve been bitten both by dogs and by cats. Each time, I tried to treat the wound with herbs and essential oils, and each time, I had to resort to antibiotics (doxycyclin and cephalexin, respectively), who took care of the infection in a matter of days. The usual treatment for a cat bite, because they are so infectious, is to go to the hospital immediately, and get your hand cut open, lavaged, and then you’re out of commission for three to six weeks. I didn’t do that, I just applied iodine solution for up to an hour for several days, but my hand was still swollen up to the wrist, until I took the cepha.
3. Incidentally, I had to take cepha for about six weeks, while we tried to save a tooth (it got pulled eventually) that had infected my jaw bone. After those six weeks of antibiotics, I was cured of a gut dysbiosis that had resisted every treatment for twenty years. The irony is that no doctor ever would’ve prescribed this antibiotic for this malady, because cepha has a reputation for disrupting your gut biome pretty badly. But cepha and I seem to get along exceptionally well, which made me wonder if there isn’t a spirit residing in each of these antibiotics, too, similar to plant spirits and homeopathic miasmic remedies.
All this is just to say, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. None of this is meant as medical advice, or to get you to love antibiotics and vaccinations. I didn’t get any covid shots myself, either, and the only vaccination I’m keeping renewed is for Tetanus. I just don’t like extremism in any direction. I don’t think it’s wise.
For our retrotechnic future, I’d like to keep antibiotics and vaccines (at least for nasty stuff like tetanus and rabies) up and running. I’m sure if we use them as the last line of defense instead of the first, they’d be effective and beneficial. You’d just have to pry them loose from the industry racket.
As for James Herriot’s books, the chapter I remember most vividly is how he tried to save a dog with scabies, had to put her down, and reminisced how just a few years later, new antibiotics were introduced that would’ve saved that dog’s life. He had to keep her quarantined in the shed, and she was a lovely soul. That chapter was heartbreaking.
Despite all that’s wrong with modern medicine, reading those books should be a certain cure against romanticizing the past. Belief in progress, driven to extremes, may have become a myth, but some things really did get better. I love this space, and I’m the last one to shill for today’s parody of progress, but some takes I read here are something else.
Reflexology – if you can reach your feet, you can reach every organ of your body while giving yourself a foot massage.
All the good Kneipp stuff, the water treatments are actually only a tiny part of it. He also had a full system of herbalism, diet, and a philosophy of ‘right living’. Oh, and Felke – he was called the ‘mud doctor’, just like Kneipp was called the ‘water doctor’.
An overview of home remedies, like how to apply compresses (see above, Kneipp), that honey-onion-mix to treat coughs, making your own salves and tinctures, and so on.
Oil lamps
I had some olive oil I had managed to contaminate so I couldn’t use it for cooking. Remembering the illustrations of oil lamps in biblical days I cobbled together something similar with string for a wick. To my surprise it made a pretty good flame, bright with no smoke.
I’m assuming pressure lamps and cookers like the Coleman lantern and Primus stove are still manufactured so not candidates for retroversion.
Bulk cooking
Communal cooking might be a failure but communal bread ovens were once commonplace and are being revived in places like Portugal.
The Revival of Communal Breadmaking in Portugal
78s
Google: “Old 78 rpm records were primarily made of a brittle composite material containing shellac resin, fine mineral fillers like powdered slate or limestone, cotton fibers, and carbon black for color”
JMG,
You know another thing that works in a system like Tai Chi is that it is built around “daily practice” in that the intensity is set to a level that facilitates recovery and repair of the body in a 24 hour cycle. There is a reason , a good reason, it doesn’t look frantic or time consuming.
That reason is that you can only go to high intensity (the point of total failure) if you are setting much longer recovery times otherwise you get weaker as your body fails to repair itself. High intensity would not be a daily routine. High intensity would be about 30 minutes every couple of days for a workable interval.
I use irons and bodyweight at high intensity but my rest intervals are long and getting longer as I age. I can’t sustain that program much longer so I am learning a new routine with far less weight but a higher frequency. The goal is still to wrap my joints in as much muscle as I can but doing so in frantic bursts…. well that’s not viable for me.
I don’t know about bulk-cooking for everybody. Tastes vary widely, and sitting as a family around one’s table at least once a day is an important ritual!
However, I can vouch for tasty and healthy bulk-cooking being possible at schools and universities. The secret is simply cooking on premises. The university at Rio de Janeiro where I used to work served nutritious and equilibrated plates for dinner: rice, beans, some vegetables, some protein (animal or not), some dessert (usually a fruit) and a juice (this last one artificial). Prices were somewhat subsidized by the university, but so are other forms of providing work-place food. Cooking at home will be cheaper if using the same ingredients because there, the work of cooking and washing up is unpaid, but then, one would need both cold storage and microwave ovens for everybody to heat up their own food brought from home.
The former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, required all public schools in his city to source all major ingredients from family farms in the region. I think that was a marvellous policy on all levels. Unfortunately, his successor axed it and introduced astronaut-like “human fodder”.
Joby, thank you for these!
Celadon, especially not with chemistry.
Chuaquin, and where you are, it grows on trees. 😉
Athaia, if you’re using human manure and you don’t get compost hot enough that you have to wet it down regularly to keep it from bursting into flames, you’re doing it wrong. Tapeworm eggs and other parasites don’t survive more than a few hours in the blistering heat and savagely Darwinian microbial environment of a properly managed compost bin. I’ve known people who were into competitive composting — how fast can you reduce wastes to clean soil? — and manure, human or otherwise, was their secret ingredient; turn it daily, make sure plenty of oxygen gets in, and 2-3 weeks is midrange. (The fastest I’ve heard is 12 days.). You do have to watch your bin or heap carefully on any hot day, though, and hose it down with cold water, or you quite literally get this:
As for modern medicine, I freely grant that it does some things quite well — in addition to your examples, dental surgery and traumatic injury care are among the high points. I hope we can keep those. Do you by any chance know enough about the Kneipp system, btw, to write 500-1000 words on it?
Martin, thanks for this. I’ve used canning jar olive oil lamps with excellent results.
GlassHammer, an excellent point. I’ve done weightlifting in the past, with two workouts per week, but I find that daily tai chi gets better results overall.
I’ve decided to come out of the woodwork for this one. I will definitely preorder your book!
I want to second, the comments on hand sewing and mending. We need more people that have the skills to repair their own cloth items and maybe it could be a good sideline. Quilting, too. Just a week ago or so, I went into a quilt shop in a nearby town and it had all the expected supplies, but it was also full of machines. The owner and workers there we shocked that I did all my piecing and quilting by hand. They use enormous machines that use who knows how much electricity. My understanding is that lots of people just do the piecing and then hire out the quilting.
There is also crocheting, knitting, and weaving.
Candle and soap making. Both of which can save a family lots of money and/or be a money maker. The cost of soaps in the stores have gotten ridiculous. Deodorant and salves are also very easy to make. I don’t personally use deodorant, stay healthy and don’t over wash and it shouldn’t be an issue.
Care for firearms and bows can be very helpful. As can butchering. It takes some practice, but gets easier the more you do it. There are a few modern books out there on this subject, but I learned as a kid, so I haven’t read any of the books, so I don’t have specific recommendations.
Food preservation skills like dehydrating, salt curing, and fermentation.
Really, a lot of this is a change in mindset.
Another thing that I am beginning to look into myself is learning about different structures. Modern buildings might as well be built to make electric companies money. However, strawbale, cob, and log cabin type buildings if placed with the correct orientation can be kept fairly cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Being in Texas, we are considering an altered version of a dog trot house. Then adding other buildings as needed such as a smoke house, maybe a spring house too. Oh, and a workshop.
I believe that I saw a comment on carnivore or a meat-based diet. I completely agree. Not near enough people are aware, at least around me, that know it is an option. I myself made amazing improvements with carnivore. So much so, that I will never go back to with way I was eating, which by most people’s standards was considered pretty healthy. If anyone is interested in my experience, I can answer questions, but I don’t want to take up too much space here.
If you think my comment about James Herriot adventures as a countryside veterinarian after 1930 isn’t “old school” enough, I can also tell you, there’s a novel about a vet during Middle Age, whose title is “El sanador de caballos”(The Horse Healer), written by Gonzalo Giner. It was translated some years ago to English.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25154365-the-horse-healer
Its main character is a fictional man, but his story (more os less around 1200 A.D.) is very well supported by a heck of real historical facts and events from the “Dark Age”.
This historical novel is interesting for me, because it shows how worked Veterinary Medicine in medieval ages, before penicillin. It was a low tech art/science, but proceedings were simillar (in a rougher way) as nowadays vets work.
Some cases I remember from this book:
A work horse had an anal prolapse (it sounds bad and it may look like even worse) due to a bad effort; so the vet had to put again its intestin again into the poor horse anus. It seems easier to say it than doing it…I will spare the nasty details of this action.
Helping mares to give birth their foals. And remove a spear wood chip from the neck of a war horse, which was near its jugular vein, after having made a cautious small tourniquet for evident reasons.
Main character starts to learn Veterinary with a “mudéjar” man (Muslim who lived in one of the Spanish Christian Kingdoms during our Middle Age), which is a believable fiction. Indeed, in medieval times, sometimes some Muslims and Jews knew more scientifical facts than a lot of Christian doctors and vets. I think it’s a good story if you like vets and horses, and medieval times stories.
As a hand weaver, I’m happy to report that most of the technologies I use are old or even ancient e.g. thousands of years ago the Egyptians were using warping boards exactly like the pegged one I use to wind my warps . Although some of the modern looms use techsolv (plastic) or metal heddles , the Swedish loom I recently bought has the old string kind, which I can make myself if they need replacing. There are 2 folks in my weaving guild who use computerized looms to make very complex and intricate (and admittedly beautiful) textiles, but most of our 50+ members are happy on our jack or countermarche looms, which haven’t changed much over the past 100+ years. Neither have the shuttles, hand-cranked bobbin winders, reeds, etc. All of these things tend to be made by very small manufacturers who are more than happy to help you with set up repair, etc., so that anyone with basic mechnical knowledge get a loom, even an old one, in working order.
A couple of our guild members are experimenting with growing bast fibers (flax and hemp) for processing and weaving. Growing hemp for fiber has recently become legal again (after DuPont lobbied the government to outlaw it on the pretext that it was chemically similar to marijuana, though it contains little THC). So I am hoping that hemp for textiles and rope is one of the literally “forbidden technologies” that comes back during the Long Descent.
Another one for the list of what was better 50 or 60 years ago:
– Chalkboards: These are at schools mostly but also used at home. The good chalkboards at schools would last forever, the material and coating. The writing medium, chalks, had been improved to a very good point, it was called dustless chalk and it is not dusty when writing. ( Clapping erasures is different and should be done outside by non-asthmatics) Chalk is abundant and cheap. I have asthma as does my brother and 2 of my children, we have no problem using modern chalk on chalkboards. I never heard of anyone with issues, although there may have been one if no one ever took the erasures out and clapped them, the solution then being to not have that child by erasure dust, dont have him do the erasing ! The felt erasures are also very durable and inexpensive.
What it was replaced by: Plastic white boards and markers. This costs more overall as the white boards wear out and are damaged easier and the markers cost alot more to purchase than chalk. As a technology, the white boards and markers need alot more chemical industry inputs. The markers are a bigger money maker for suppliers and producers than the chalk was, which must have been the whole point. That industry convinced schools to change over, at great expense to the schools. The dirty secret no one talks about is that more people, kids especially, have trouble with the chemical markers than anyone ever did with chalk ! Even the low odor markers are bad. My asthma kicks off with those, as well as brain fogging/concentration issues with the longer time, lower exposures. I postulate that at least one child per class is having impaired thinking and concentration, if not behavior issues, from this chemical exposure. And, being a small child, they dont know that they are or the reason. This is all they know. When in class they understand and learn at this speed, or dont learn. And the teachers just figure that is one that is slower. ( besides markers, there could be scented hand sanitizer or cleaning products adding to the brain fog issues for those children affected)
Contrast. For those remembering their school days, there are also better contrast blackboards, so a black blackboard with white chalk is easier to read from than a green chalkboard with beige chalk. And there are lovely colored chalks when needed, although too busy of a board is hard to learn from for alot of children. Waldorf schools have some wonderful chalkboards. Green chalkboards were likely done that way as nostalgia for when they were made out of slate, that being a common slate color back east.
Older technology: I have around here a few small slate boards, and maybe one slate pencil left. A slate pencil is a worked piece of slate in thin pencil like shape, it is fragile, but cheap to replace. These individual slate boards and slate pencils are what our forbearers used to work their lessons on. The slate board is an appropriate type/color piece of slate in a simple wooden frame. The slate pencil easily makes marks on the slate board, and makes thinner marks than chalk, it is more similar to writing with a pencil. So you also can do more work, fit more, on the board, and you dont need manufactured chalk cylinders. If you are careful with your slate pencil it lasts for a very long time. You erase the marks by wiping with any rag. Larger slate boards mounted on a classroom wall would also have been marked with a small sliver of slate, the slate pencil. It was kind of amazing to us, me and my kids, how well this worked, given that the normal went to chalk.
@Chuaqin
So you have read more books of Wohlleben than I, as I just remember dimly him having conflicts with the other forestry agents crowd, but all that makes sense.
Similarly with Sepp Holzer the Permaculturist who had endless feuds with other farmers and the bureaucracy.
Human swarm behaviour even if it means degradaton.
Yes, I implied ash trees would not go extinct, they still procreate from what I know, but they don’t mature well.
Right now, due to heat and draught, many other species of trees in north eastern Austria alos lose their leaves and show dead branches, by the way.
Just today I talked to a forest owner and carpenter and his son (also carpenter), on the border of Vienna. He also criticised the use of harvester machinery in our forests and commented, firstly how they compact the soil broadly, and you can see no trees grow in a diameter from where they have driven through, for approx 50 years he says, and also: conventional forestry becomes more and more unprofitable here in Austria, in the steep slopes especially, because the logistics, the thirst for diesel and personel are all so expensive that the profit margin for wood has actually diminished!
Also our conventional agriculture becomes more and more unprofitable, due to enourmous diesel use, among other factors like increased bureaucracy pressuring small farms and soon MERCOSUR, free trade with South America where farm products are imported, and the producers due not have to submit to standards of chemical use and food safety like our farmers.
It is both, the bureaucracy and the diminishing returns of modern industrial technology.
Even I personally from these very few and limited examples I know see how agriculture and forestry in marginal areas become unprofitable or otherwise ever more destructive.
In some areas like the one I often visit, industrial hinterland, the end of agriculture and forestry really does not seem to be that far off at all!
Traditional methods of agriculture might be viable again, economically, but there arent enough able bodied experienced people, and the bureaucracy does not will it, at least for now.
@Athaia
Yes I think the point wasn’t to villify modern medicine as such, although a good part will become unviable nolens volens anyways.
A friend told me how he stepped on a rusty nail one summer, his foot swole like a ball. Antibiotics where the answer, otherwise necrosis and wound fever and amputation or death would have been a logical consequence.
It’s not a black and white matter – it is like with planned obsolescence and other things in modernity, where you do things, but sloppily and badly with intent because there is no big profit otherwise, and you repress other things.
I am not sure about natural antibiotics – spruce needles as an example, are apparently effective as a natural antibiotic.
photo for previous comment, slate board and slate pencil
https://bleistift.blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/slate.jpg
The photo shows a slate board and a very nice slate pencil ( my slate pencil is less refined and cheaper than this one) You can see they are made from the same stone. The top writing sample is from the slate pencil, the next two writing samples are from very modern chalk art pencils.
Athaia # 445:
“Humanure”
I think you’re quite right about likely parasites problems due to a dumb use of human excreta as fertilizer for fields, but I also think it if you doubt you did a right composting process, you could use it to fertilize decorative gardens, if they survive to the Long Descent (?).
If you manage to pile up enough poo to heat it by itself, high temperature very likely will kill every bad bacteria and worms eggs.
On the other hand, as soon as work horses and mules are going to be more common after oil in the countryside, because oil isn’t no longer easily available in the future, you can guess their manure could be used as a cheap and plentiful fertilizer, after composting it.
—————————————————
# 446:
I’m glad you’ve read Mr. Herriot books. OK, I also remember that vet story, it was really sad…
“Despite all that’s wrong with modern medicine, reading those books should be a certain cure against romanticizing the past.”
I agree. Indeed, sometimes Herriot complains about his youth as a vet, that part of the treatments and surgery he learned and did with animals were near fake science and “snake oil”, not very far from “healers” tricks…On the other hand, some practices he did in the epic ’30s, were near the same as they were made by Middle Ages vets and nowadays proffessionals (maybe with more hi tech today).
—————————————————
JMG # 451:
Yes, in a literal sense, cork grows in cork trees. According my fast online search, Portugal is the champion in cork production (near 2/3 of corks are from Portuguese trees), in Spain we are the second one (near 30% of the world), and the third is Italia with a humble 6%.
Homeschooling.
These are the main books that I used to homeschool my children.
Original McGuffey Eclectic Readers Series, written in the 1830’s by William Holmes McGuffey
Ray’s Arithmetic Set by Joseph Ray
Harvey’s Grammer by Thomas W. Harvey
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Englemann
@Athaia #445
Re. typewriters
That’s a fair point, and I agree that finding ways to make replacement parts on a smaller scale would be valuable. I guess my possible objection is that typewriters (and sewing machines et al?) seem to requite a certain high baseline level of industrial complexity, and if you drop below that it’s no longer really recognizable as a “typewriter” as we know it anymore. It’s some other kind of writing machine that can do some of the same functions at a much lower level, which could of course have value in itself, but it’s a different beasts. And at some point you start asking whether it’s worth the trouble over handwriting.
Re. humanure
Not sure if you’ve read it, and of course you might still disagree, but for what it’s worth Jenkins does address your objections in some depth in his “Humanure Handbook”.
Re. mainstream medicine, babies and bathwater
Agreed, and I’m glad to see another regular bring this up here. You’re right that many people in the “alternative” sphere seem to fall for the temptation to embrace an unhelpful binary by rejecting everything from the mainstream in a kneejerk way. Climate change denialism is another good example here. Like our host often says, it’s perfectly possible to acknowledge both that human-induced climate change is happening and that the Al Gores and Klaus Schwabs of the world are using it as a propaganda tool for their own ends. Anyway, I think you’re right to insist on a separation between actual proven, worthwhile practices and “the industry racket”. I also suspect older vaccines are more likely to be worth using than ones from the last 20-30 years, but it’s not a subject I’m prepared to speak on with any firm authority. So I suppose what I’m saying is that your warning against extremism is timely and appreciated by this reader, at least.
@Aldarion #450
“However, I can vouch for tasty and healthy bulk-cooking being possible at schools and universities. The secret is simply cooking on premises.”
Indeed. And in the case of schools, how about having the students themselves doing most of the cooking? That would be another way to make schools more practical and less academic, and since there’s already “food and health” classes (as they’re called here) involving cooking, I don’t see why they’re not doing that already. Seems like a no-brainer to me…
@JMG: “As for DC-3s, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if those ended up being manufactured again.”
Very close. Here’s a company that’s rebuilding scrap DC-3s. They retain about 10% of the original aircraft and sidestep most of the paperwork:
https://aeroreport.de/en/aviation/making-old-new-again-reinventing-the-legendary-douglas-dc-3
There are a few new flourishes such as turboprop engines, but fundamentally they’re making DC-3s again.
I’m just catching up on posts and have only read a few of the comments here, but wanted to contribute before the week gets any older. Searching the past for useful but forgotten ideas has been the focus of my work for the last few years. Right now I’m focusing on the whole suite of analog intellectual techniques that were developed throughout the Middle Ages: discursive meditation, yes, but also all of the supporting practices that help make discursive meditation effective. Memory work and effective information management are also on the menu. Finally, I have been working with a small group of people to understand the Lullian Art and figure out ways that it can be put to use in the current time.
I would be happy to contribute information on any of this if it fits the scope of the proposed book. Either way, if it comes to fruition I will definitely buy a copy!
Mel
Lost Arts Press is a treasure, and they are based right in my bioregion.
Their slim book, How to Build a Chair from Bullshale, is fun, and talks about how to make durable things from the kind of crap material you find at Lowes and Home Repo.
It’s modeled on the similar slim, same shaped hardcover essay On Bullshale by Harry G. Frankfurt which is about “a theory of bullshale that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshale in the context of communication.”
My maternal grandpas favorite word seemed to be bullshale and he could expound at length on why this or that was bullshale, so the books have a special place in my heart.
I just finished mixing up a batch of golden beet, red cabbage, habanero, ginger, garlic & tumeric kraut in my crock. It might be a crock of shale to some, but I like it.
The beets were from our garden.
Mary Bennet #438
Yes, you can brush on melted beeswax – that’s what I do – sparingly in a thin layer, then put the cloth on a baking sheet in a 300F (ish) oven for a few minutes to let it melt the beeswax into the cloth thoroughly – all fibers must be completely saturated. Re-brush to cover any dry spots or move around/off any excess puddled wax. Then hang the cloth to cool. Once cool, it’s ready to use. Rinse it with cold water only, between uses, and it will stay fresh for a very long time – I store cheese, fruits/veg, etc. with direct contact and have no issues with transfer or contamination. It also works very well as a bowl or dish cover in place of plastic wrap and seals very well against glass and ceramic – I haven’t tried sealing it against plastic.
To renew the cloth once the beeswax layer starts getting a little thin after a lot of folding and rinsing, etc, just repeat the process – brush on any extra beeswax thinly and sparingly, re-warm flat in the oven on a sheet, hang to cool.
You can make a lot of them in series by rotating them through the oven on the same sheet.
@JMG #435: 78s were made of shellac.
JMG, my problem will be to restrict myself to a mere 1000 words 😅.
@Industrial Alchemy, do you have a blog somewhere with your findings? I’d absolutely read it, I find those skills fascinating and would love some kind of guidance on how to train my brain!
Which makes me ponder if a section on “thinking skills” shouldn’t be included, too. Starting with basic logical thinking, problem solving, etc. Or maybe that could become the companion volume to the Technonomicon… Call it the Mentatonomicon…
Tom Fitzpatrick #153
Just about every military base of any size that I have been to has an auto repair shop. Service members can rent a stall with a lift and tools by the hour to do any sort work on a car. I’ve done everything from oil changes to head gaskets. Some shops have enough staff to help you with whatever needs to be done.
Another old tech that we’ll want to revive is grinding grain at home. I wrote a blog post on this, but I won’t link to it because it needs updating, now that I have found a much better grinder for the second stage of the process and figured out how to grind maize, the easiest grain to grow and process at a home scale where it will grow, into as fine a powder as commercial maize flour. I’ll make that update and post it to my Dreamwidth page as soon as I can get to it.
Regarding wind-up watches, I have a wind-up antique wristwatch and a wind-up antique pocket watch that I use and that work well. My husband Mike found the former at a yard sale. A good friend of ours found the latter at an estate auction and sold it to me for what he paid for it. I recommend that anyone who is interested in either item look for old versions at yard and estate sales and estate auctions. First, though, make sure there is someone in your area who can repair them. If there is, you can buy one that isn’t working and have it repaired, which lowers the cost to purchase. Plus they need occasional maintenance and replacement of parts that break to work their best. You’ll be much happier with an older wind-up watch even though the price to buy, and to repair if needed, is higher, and you’ll help to keep jewelers in business.
Speaking of retromancy, I have a new article out, published on Romanticon’s substack imprint… entitled What You Should Know to Be A Bard. (They changed the title on me and called it How to Be A Bard. Oh well.)
https://romanticon.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-bard
Anyway, I offer it here as a reminder of the technology of stories and poetry. Also, I quoted from one of your articles on the Druid Revival, John (with attribution of course).
I had originally written a version of this that was little more than a sketch back in 2013 when I was hosting a series of poetry readings and I gave it away as a pamphlet. It looks “The Persistence of Druidry and Bardic Song during the Romantic Revival and in the Work of Gary Snyder” according to their subtitle, and is basically taking Snyder’s poem “What You Should Know to Be A Poet” line by line as if it were a curriculum for the Bardic arts.
While I revised this during the last mercury retrograde, it has very little of my original in the text. I have had a lot more experiences and learning over the past 13 years and more to say on the matter.
Armpit licking. (Maybe that should be a banned topic.) I actually saw that in a movie once. I won’t name the movie, and I wish I hadn’t watched it. I think it featured some of Bartok’s music in the soundtrack.
Musical instruments
A musician I knew built a small harpsichord from a kit. The strings are plucked, not hammered as in a piano. It had a gentle medieval-type sound.
In small country churches one used to find pedal-operated organs. No electricity needed.
Records
Apart from LPs and 78s, there was the 45 rpm 7-inch single made of vinyl, popular in the 60s. I hitched a ride with a guy who had a 7-single player in his car dashboard. The needle was spring-loaded to keep contact over bumps (and rapidly wear out the record). The unique feature was it would slow down in left-hand turns, and speed up in right-hand turns (or vice versa).
Diet
Cut out sugar and cut out seed oils. I did that and now I weigh the same as I did in university. Otherwise I eat a pretty normal diet, not low carb or anything, and don’t do much exercise beyond walking to the shops and some calisthenics. Oh, and no snacking between meals.
Hi JMG,
I shared your June 17 post with Charles Hugh Smith, and he wrote this –
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly26/class-taxonomy7-26.html
Also, I wrote a short post on something related but complementary –
https://wwiii.substack.com/p/where-is-the-warrior-class
Speaking of humanure. Decades ago I visiting the Green Gulch Zen Center north of San Francisco. They had newer composting toilets and were using the product on decorative landscaping and flowers. The gardener told me it seemed to make the flower colors brighter.
my ‘go to’ for retro tech is: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
over a period of time I’ve read most of the articles, try starting with the ‘obsolete technology’ section.
The community where my cabin is uses all compost toilets. The main one has two large chambers. After using it, one puts in sawdust or other duff. When one fills it is covered and the toilet moved over to the other one. When that fills the first one is emptied, and the toilet moved back.Depending on usage this is probably done twice per year. The humanure plus chicken and goat manure and kitchen scraps is then piled and turned and watered regularly for a year or 18 months and used on trees and non food plants., although I think it would probably be fine for things other than greens or something that grows right on the ground..
Stephen
This place sells motor conversions for vintage maytag wringer washing machines, option are getting a 12V DC motor, a compressed air powered motor, a gasline ( generator type) motor, and on another page, a motor or adaptor to use corldess tool batteries. https://cottagecraftworks.com/maytag-wringer-washer-off-grid-motors They also sell replacement parts for those types washers and various other sustainable living stuff. Not cheap but the only place I have seen to sell this range of parts and tools for the wringer washers
JMG,
“I wonder if there was an earlier design before 1917.”
Yes, you are right. I did some research. I stand corrected. There are two versions of abaci in Russia – the older Russian one and the simplified Soviet one. They are both called shchoty, which is abacus in Russian. I think that phonetically and semantically the closer spelling in English would be schety or schoty (счёты) . It’s from the word schet (счёт), which means counting… but I digress. 😊
Thank you for pointing this out. That was an interesting rabbit hole. 😉
Aubrey, delighted to hear it. Maybe you can start making a list of resources that will help people learn how to sew, mend, make their own soap, etc. — all that’s excellent fodder for the book.
Teresa, there’s good reason to think that basic weaving dates back to the Paleolithic; my late wife used to roll her eyes at the “ceremonial beads” on display in museums that, from their wear patterns, were pretty clearly Stone Age drop spindles. If you and your friends can come up with a list of good resources for the beginning handweaver, and 500-1000 words to explain why people ought to take up that craft, that will be of great help for the book project.
Atmospheric, hmm! Chalkboards I’m very familiar with, but slates and slate pencils — excellent. Please point me to some resources! Why waste paper on note pads?
Aubrey, many thanks for these. 500-1000 words on homeschooling?
Industrial, I’m delighted to hear this, and my book on the subject — Renaissance Mind Training — will be out next year. It’s very introductory, so there’s plenty of room for your work!
VOG, thanks for this.
Athaia, I know! Just cover the basics and then point people to books on the subject. (Or I can do that — most books on the Kniepp system are long out of copyright.)
SLClaire, thanks for these.
Justin, thanks for this. I’m not a fan of Snyder generally but that has some good advice.
Phutatorius, yes, it should be a banned topic, and now it is. No further comments on it will be put through. Ick.
Martin, thanks for these.
A Reader, ah, you were the one! I saw his discussion — more to the point, about twenty of my other readers pointed me to it. I have no objection to his class taxonomy: different schemes for different purposes, you know.
Matt, yep — you and a bunch of others. 😉
Atmospheric, thanks for this!
Re: old wind-up watches, consider my experience, here, and proceed with caution: https://www.mimeographrevival.com/posts/the-vintage-stopwatch-predicament/
Re: the slide rule and the abacus – They might seem like siblings, but they have completely different domains. The slide rule is great for engineering problems, where we have a variety of mathematical functions (e.g, sin, tan, log), as well as multiplication and division, AND where 3-4 digits of accuracy is sufficient. (There’s a saying about calculating a length to four digits, marking it with chalk, then cutting it with an axe.) 3-4 digits would not be enough for commerce, though. That’s where the abacus excels. We want our accounts to balance to the penny (even if we don’t exchange 1-cent coins anymore), and adding and subtracting are the most common operations (probably followed by multiplying the unit price by a small integer number of units, which is easy enough with repeated addition).
There are also machines built of gears and linkages to perform specific computations, such as the (excessively famous) Norden bombsight, which computed bomb release timing based on altitude, velocity, cross-wind, and human aim on a target.
In my library, I have “Graphical and Mechanical Computation”, by Joseph Lipka, 1918. It includes a description of a slide-rule to solve the equation 1/a + 1/b = 1/c, which applies to resistors in parallel, capacitors in series, and lenses, and mechanisms for drawing the integral or differential curves of a given function.
Ambrose 281
> Everybody seems to agree on math, but how important is algebra? Should *everybody* be required to take it? Should it come before geometry, or after?
Reply 01: It is important to teach reading and writing to 8th grade level, in the kid’s native language; in the USA, that would be English. When I read firsthand census images dating from 1850 to 1950, the VAST MAJORITY of those listed could read and write at an 8th grade level. As JMG has mentioned, some parts of the USA will likely break off, like Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and make Spanish the official language. I don’t know what Texas will do.
I have read actual census images by the tens of thousands. I bet I have viewed (in the census-takers’ handwriting) 20,000 census images in the twenty-five years census images have been online (as an amateur genealogist and family historian).
It was only as late as the 1950 census that showed an uptick to anyone having graduated 12th grade, and not only that, it was only a very rare few who had four years of college, much less a graduate degree. The only people who had graduate degrees with either medical doctors, clergy, or college professors.
Reply 02:
Jeff used geometry all the time doing woodworking. However, I seem to recall that geometry uses algebra, which would mean algebra comes first, then geometry.
I loved algebra and geometry. Algebra I got taught by a 70-odd year old teacher who had been a teacher for at least 40 (maybe 50) years in the same school district. Everyone, I mean, EVERYONE, respected her. If a kid grew inattentive or surly, she gave him/her one stiff poke in the soft muscle between the breast and armpit, and man, did that ever hurt — it hurt like heck (it was called “the iron finger”). Try it, and if you don’t wince, you didn’t poke the right spot, or hard enough. The iron finger got EVERY kid’s attention.
Every kid who got the iron finger and wised up and stayed compliant for the rest of the school year. I got the iron finger only once, and that was quite enough. She was born about 1895, and I think she started teaching algebra in the 1930s, maybe even the 1920s. She stayed unmarried her whole life; I heard-tell that her beau got killed in World War I, and after that trauma, she was finished with men, and dedicated her life-force to teaching kids math. But she also taught other subjects, like the English language, both reading and writing.
If I mentioned the teacher’s name, over the time she was there teaching, she became famous in that small city of upstate New York (near Albany) and is still mentioned on the Internet by former students. In some cases, she taught three generations of the same families. Ironically, the vast majority of her students loved her. [‘iron’-ically; iron finger]
This was the early 1960s, so in those days, ‘reasonable’ corporal punishment was still allowed.
I am sure absolutely sure that “the iron finger” will come back. It will be instrumental in keeping students’ surliness and staring out the window at bay.
I was a dismal failure at trigonometry. I failed the first time around, because that was the year my father died, so there was a good reason. I had to take trig twice.
Later on in college: calculus 101. I barely scraped by with a “C.” I appreciate the concept of calculus, but never actually used it even once in my life.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Ambrose 281
> Is it important to give kids the summer off? (They’d probably do a lot better without such a big break.)
During summer, time-off was non-negotiable for children. Largely being farm families, kids HAD to be free (as in ’not having school demands’) to work the farm.
“Not going to school in the summer” was not a matter of choice. Summer was not vacation-time; summer was all business. Children worked like heck from May until first-frost (November); it was not optional. Kids acquired muscles during summers, lifting hay bales, for example. This held/holds true for northern climates like New York State and New England, but in Southern states like Mississippi and Georgia (the USA state), it was different because their climates were/are so much hotter. For this reason, Europe’s Sweden and Germany (the north) are totally different than Italy and Spain (the south).
The Christian year liturgically divides the calendar year into Sacred Time and Ordinary Time. During Ordinary Time (“summer”): kids were off doing farm-chores, as well as doing other food-related things to make sure the family wouldn‘t starve (like canning) later on in the year, during the upcoming Sacred Time (“winter”). I reckon that farmers here know all about the two parts of the year: ‘the summer’ and ‘the winter.’
Right now, in early August, here in the Northern Hemisphere, summer has already started to wind down. Even before plants’s leaves change color, plants and animals have already ‘started thinking about’ (as in preparing for) winter. In the Southern Hemisphere, on the other side of the world (like Australia and South America), right now in early August, it is early spring.
By the way, I believe GEOGRAPHY is an important subject to teach youngsters before 8th grade.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Thanks for checking it out. I thought Mountains & Rivers Without End and some of his others fibe work… but you know, dissensus, and all that. I enjoyed hos conversations with Wendell Berry too. He’s still with us, in his 90s. Amazing for someone who hung around the Beats.
Another book to add: The Toilet Papers by Sim Van Der Ryn …. Integral Urban Home people.
I’d dine at an Automat btw. Seems worth retrovating. I might scour the library for old tech books as time allows.
@Northwind Grandma (#482):
In the 1950s I was in Junior High School (7th-9th grades) and High School (10th-12th grades) in Berkeley, CA. It was still legal then for any child to leave off schooling after completing the 8th grade (usually age 13). The kicker was, to get a job before you turned 18, you needed to have a city-issued Work Permit. And that meant convincing the administrators that you wouldn’t be taking a job away from someone older, who needed it more than you did. So most of us stayed in school through 12th grade.
There was only one public high school in Berkeley, and about 1/3 of its building space was given over to actual full-scale shops where a school-child could learn the rudiments of a trade hands-on. The automobile shop courses were, if memory serves me right, the most popular of those trade courses, but far from the only ones. (There were very few private high schools in the East Bay then, and most were for girls only.)
@Atmospheric River (#457):
I think one can still buy writing slates and slate pencils like the ones in your picture. At any rate, I have a set that I bought quite cheaply in the gift shop at either Old Sturbridge Village or Plimoth Plantation maybe 20 years ago.
@Lathechuck (#481):
Ah, the Norden Bombsight! I’m delighted to see that it is still remembered. My father, James C. Mathiesen, was one of the lead engineers working on its design in the 1940s.
Ambrose: Misleading? Ok, I don’t know what you think I said, but I’m not out to mislead anyone.
> Waldorf education, Rudolph Steiner schools
I interpret Waldorf schools as elite. Am I right?
Children’s educations during the Long Descent will default to the basics. One-room schoolhouse; long blackboard; chalk; teacher’s desk; geographical maps that unroll like window shades; individual chalkboard (“slates“) for the kids. Wood-burning stove (or other suitable heat) in center of room. Reversing ceiling fan for cooling. Heating and cooling is peculiar to locality.
Two doors. Coat hooks. Bell. Windows. Perhaps double-hung windows, transoms, and shutters, to catch breezes, mentioned earlier among the commentariat. Simple country curtains on windows. Wood slat floor. Outhouse, to be cleaned by those kids who have been surly or uncooperative, as punishment. Cut-to-size firewood provided by parents. Insulation in walls.
Beatification along the exterior of the school-building by the women of the community planting scrubs and flowers. Teen boy do snow removal on paths, they way they do on their farms. Same as with weed removal, as they do on their farms.
Governing body of the school are the parents. They physically build the buildings,— barn-raising and such. Gain carpentry house-framing skills.
If have a two-room schoolhouse, the second room is a library. Parents furnish library. Books, large reading table. Windows. Door that shuts out sound.
Every setup is different because different people are involved.
Reading, writing, the English language; arithmetic. 8th grade stops most of the kids’ schooling.
Staying alive will be the highest concern; life will be barebones. Children must work. Neighbors will need to pool resources to help each other, pitching in to assist.
In my opinion, only the rich will be able to educate children in, pardon me, such a frivolous fashion as Waldorf, unless Waldorf-characteristics begin immediately when the institution starts up.
Just my 2¢.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hi JMG
Two more technologies
First another source of passive nitrogen fixation: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127131554.htm
Titanium dioxide fixing nitrogen from the air using sunlight.
The English wheel, a hand powered tool for puting complex compound curves in sheet metal. It fell out of use with heavy industrial presses and mass production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_wheel
And one resource:
Many GB of old books, freely downloadable. Collected for those who need to figure out how to do things after the industrial economy goes away.
https://www.survivorlibrary.com/index.php/main-category-index/
I hope these help.
@ David PGH “Is this even still true anymore? I think there’s a strong generational divide here defined by lived experience, and the abiding faith in progress you described only holds among boomers.”
A few weeks back I saw a video come up all about low cost recipes. It was made by someone in their early 20’s with a few hundred thousand views. But they opened with something like “As we are living in a dying empire, technology isn’t going to save us as decline is setting in, here are some ways to stretch your food budget.”
It was not done to be edgy or controversial, it was just there to frame the video. That was a big shock as it has become so apparent just how far things has shifted.
I still come across true believers in the future both the “Technology will save everything!” and the “AI/robots will kill us all!” but much less than I did even five years ago.
It is one of the most encouraging signs I have seen that the next generation coming up now are at least getting some reasonable signalling on the path of the future. That we see things like Cottagecore and Solarpunk, good and bad, is an example of folks at least being aware of which way the wind that is blowing.
@ Aldarion #402
“Are you denying that noradrenalin or atropin or an antibiotic will have objectively verifiable effects on an unconscious patient, that is without their consent?”
There is a subtle wording in your question which makes it impossible for me to answer with a yes or a no. And that is the phrase “objectively verifiable”. So I hope you will bear with me for a longer answer.
I am not at all sure If I know how to judge whether anything is “objective”. I know this is the Holy Grail of modern day science, and modern day medicine which considers itself a scientific enterprise. On the other hand, the complete objectivity that is sought here is indistinguishable (to me) from a “God’s eye point of view (POV)”… ie, scientists aspire to be able to “see” the way God can, without being swayed by how a human, with a limited here and now POV, sees. I have come to reduce my aspiration considerably, to where I recognise that I, and other humans, generally “see” from our own limited POV’s, and these are not “objective” in the Holy Grail sense, so, for the purposes of this conversation, lets call them subjective.
OTOH, I do not deny that such results are indeed “verifiable”. If administering noradrenaline (for example) can obtain a [subjectively] verifiable result it is because it can “work with” the heart of a patient. Even if the patient is unconscious, a heart which can make us of noradrenaline will not be unconscious, and can be interacted with. If it can be helped – by proper and prompt feeding of a familiar-to-hearts-substance – to retain an interest in continuing to beat, then the flow of blood and new nourishment to other parts (eg organs, tissues, etc) of the patient may also regain their interest in restarting and re-organising their respective domains, and ultimately, the whole person may come back to whole person consciousness – which is what you are limiting yourself to in thinking about the word “consent” – may also regain a whole person interest in coming back to life and self.
Note I use words “may” and “might” because relationships and interactions can always go in many ways, sometimes in good synchrony, sometimes at cross purposes. There are no guarantees. However, what actually happens is indeed verifiable. And some things are verifiable with a certain regularity and frequency, which allows statisticians to develop “objective” models.
But every verifiable result is downstream of something that has “worked with” (in a relational, intersubjective sense), with some aspect of a person, – of which there are many.
Hi John Michael,
> Chris, 500 to 1000 words on herbal dog care would be great.
Cool! Out of curiosity, have you got any preferences as to the format the text should take?
Did the Whole Earth Catalogue have a consistent vibe to it, as in like did someone review and edit the text?
Cheers
Chris
@ Aldarion #402
Perhaps, thinking through our exchange to date, it would be helpful if I also changed some of my wording.
Perhaps it would be closer to my thinking to say this. It is not possible for healing to take place without a person’s active *participation* (instead of “consent’)….
Also, participation may be occurring at many levels, and at different scales than the ones we think of as whole person waking consciousness.
🙂
Atmospheric R. # 455:
“Chalk is abundant and cheap.”
I agree. Indeed, my favorite “artistic work” during my childhood is a castle scale model I made during my primary school, and chalk pieces worked as the castle “stones”. My parents bought me some chalk packets (whose main use was using chalk for writing at chalkboards at schools), and they were cheap (in the ’80s). I cut in 2-3 pieces each chalk and glued them over a wooden panel, with wood glue, and then I painted it witha yellow tempera. I’ve been always proud of my “chalk castle”, so even today it’s in my storage room. Of course, you can guess I don’t suffer asthma.
——————————————————————————–
Curt # 456:
Thank you for your comment about forests and agriculture from your Austrian point of view. I can also tell you P. Wohlleben is very admired not only by Spain ecologists, but by a growing group of forest proffessionals here. Some of his books are translated to Spanish, not only all of them yet. I think he’s a good ecological science popularizer. I don’t share all his views (for example, cattle raising isn’t always a curse for forests, it depends how it’s made), but his criticisms against “business as usual” forestry seems to be right. Unfortunately, some forests engineers in Germany and another countries which imitate the German “good” practices”, are big wood industrial capitalism serfs. So they don’t want to change their model towards one more respectful with the environment. So you can see heavy machinery across all Europe, and German advisors promoting masive loggings in the last primary forest in Romania (Wohlleben has denounced this madness).
**************************
Ash trees illness across all Europe seems IMHO simillar, to some extent, with elms (“Ulmus”) “graphiosis”, another fungal illness which has decimated elm trees, in Spain too. On the short form, I can tell you old elms were killed in masse during ’80s and ’90s especially by that fungus. New elms plantations in towns have been made using “Siberian elms”, which are quite resistent to the illness, but they aren’t native. More recently, botanists here have managed to grow some resistent native elms, with a lot of patience. It seems Darwinian natural selection works again, so it lets a few resistant trees survive well…One problem is to find them and grow/clone them massively. Another one, is that big scale reforestation with resistent elms is difficult and it will take a lot of time…
————————————————————————-
Justin P. # 463:
“How to Build a Chair from Bullshale”
I agree. When a book has such an eye-catching and frank title, I bet it can be funny in its contents…Ha, ha…
————————————————————————-
Athaia # 467:
“Which makes me ponder if a section on “thinking skills” shouldn’t be included, too. Starting with basic logical thinking, problem solving, etc.”
OK, good idea! By the way, I can tell you the first thing everybody must do before trying to solve a problem is to recognize there’s a problem (it seems silly, but it’s necessary). If you see every problem with others as a conflict (like current politicians, ahem), you’ll think you need to win it against your “enemies”. However, if you and other people agree there’s a problem to solve, your point of view will be more constructive (though maybe you’ll have some arguments, but softer than in a conflict). I read this idea in a book about philosophy some time ago, and it has worked for me in my recent life.
—————————————————————–
One more comment about humanure and manure:
I think (hu)manure composting it’s more than an ecologist fashion. Maybe you’ve noticed it, but mineral phosphates used for current industrial agriculture have their own peak and decline, like oil and gas. So the Long Descent is going to be a phosphate growing scarcity time. Manure and humanure seem quite rich in natural phosphates, so do the math. Composting them is going to be a need for future agriculture. It seems very evident, but nowadays a lot of people haven’t noticed it yet, beyond usual ecologist and “post peaker” people.
Math class thoughts from the ’70s;
Four function arithmetic through the fourth grade, fractions in fifth, the only thing I remember from sixth grade was square roots by hand. Seventh grade was construction geometry, as in bisecting angles with compass and straight edge. There was also right triangle geometry.
Eighth grade was a seeming pointless exercise in alternate number systems (Egyptian lotus flowers?) and also different bases which turned out to be useful when the computers arrived.
Ninth grade was algebra 1, and finally having a math teacher who actually knew the subject caused a revelation. There was a reason behind the manipulations!
Tenth grade was geometry again, eleventh was algebra 2, and trigonometry was a one semester class for college bound seniors which I did not take.
There was an alternative math track too, one part of that was Shop Math where they learned techniques to lay out parts on standard stock to leave the least waste.
As for calculus, the principles behind it are very important. The number of times I actually used it on the job were minimal. When you do need an integral you discover you have to approximate it with Runge-Kutta or something else. One particularly annoying problem I had to solve using a secant search. It took between four and seven seconds for a 2010 pc to hammer out a solution.
The most useful math class I took in college was applied numerical methods. Second most useful was linear algebra. The calculus 1, calculus 2, differential equations, and calculus 3 in that order. I also took Boolean algebra which wasn’t all that useful but it was the most fun math class I took.
Not a physical technology, but important: when it comes to fixing stuff, one of the biggest problems is mental. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been told “Oh, that technology is just too complex; you’ll have to take it to an expert or just replace the product.” I’ve found that in most cases a bit of confidence and a lot of research (or is it the other way around?) will get me there. I regularly repair automobiles (including my current electric vehicle), appliances, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, computers, and cell phones. The Bene Gesserit were right: fear is the mind-killer.
@ Athaia # 445
“I don’t think shunning modern medicine in favor of going back to the old herbal ways completely is a bright idea.”
Actually, I entirely agree with this. (Are you surprised?) 😉
Well, the reason is similar to why (as a polytheist) JMG does not “shun” Christianity, which avows monotheism. As he once said (and I paraphrase from memory), “the advantage of being a polytheist is that I am not obliged to disbelieve in or deprecate anyone else’s god.”
And I say, there are advantages to being a “poly-snakeoil-ist.” I am not obliged to disbelieve in or deprecate anyone else’s medical model or map. To my certain knowledge, all of them have the power to elicit and/or recruit a patient’s healing powers by some means or other – and I mean ALL of them.
However, for the “mainstream” model, it is the effects of patient participation that are precisely what the double-blind random grouped placebo controlled trials are designed to exclude from the variables being studied, and, although it does not follow that they do not exist, tolerably often the deliberately excluded effects of patient participation are then seen, by implication, to be “less real”).
In assuming an exclusive and correct view of what, in the domain of healing, is “real” and what is only “thought to be real”, the mono-snakeoil-ist claims exclusive access to truth, and it is only this exclusive truth claim that I dispute. There are many medicines that work, and that certainly includes the mono-snakeoil-ist one, which is why I would not consider it wise to entirely shun it. 🙂
There are two aspects of mainstream medicine that are truly relevant to this post (while I recognise that some of my commenting has been more of a working out of a hobby horse or two).
1. Much of what constitutes mainstream medical care relies on cheap fossil fuel – expensive bio-scanning machines, powered life-support systems, large pharmaceutical processing plants and supply chains.
2. Much of what constitutes mainstream medical care relies on highly complex, many layered hierarchies of organisation.
Whether we trust or distrust it, love it or hate it, want to see more of it or less of it, much of mainstream medicine’s capacity to deliver its products and services will dwindle along with the availability of cheap fossil fuel and the highly structured organisational complexity it supports.
Therefore there are uses for all of us in discovering/retrovating/remembering and practicing those medical techniques that require less of both.
In relation to mainstream medicine, I suspect many of the practical techniques which, even now, require doctors to learn via practical apprenticeships – eg. setting bones, staunching bleeding, stablising vital signs and so on, will continue to be both useful and practical, and also available (so long as the skillsets continue to be transmitted) through the long descent.
“Now I’m wondering what the 78s were made of.” Shellac. Yup, the same stuff used for a furniture finish. It would survive the long descent better than vinyl, but it’s brittle and noisy. (It’s probably best to not get me started on music reproduction and preservation – I used to work at a manufacturer of phono cartridges and know far too much about the limitations of the medium!)
Mary Bennett,
“Mathematics up to basic algebra and geometry.”
I’d say also a class teaching people how to apply algebra and geometry to model the real world would be useful, since most of the time algebra and geometry are taught as basic rote equation solving and memorization with hardly any relation to the real world, and students are bored out of their minds and don’t find the math useful.
Recently there’s been a trend across the United States to introduce a high school mathematics class that’s called “Mathematical Modeling & Reasoning” or “Advanced Quantitative Reasoning” depending on the state, taught either after geometry as a replacement for algebra 2 or as the final fourth year elective class, and the class is about how you use the techniques taught in algebra 1 and geometry to model and reason about the real world. And so far students have found the classes more enjoyable, relatable, and useful in their lives than the stuff taught in the usual traditional mathematics curriculum.
@ Jessie #427
Re Haystacks. Actually a very big, and very important topic here on the farm. 🙂
From what I have gathered and seen, around here there were three traditional sizes of haystacks.
There were small ones called “handcocks” around waist high, which were made quickly to protect hay still being processed (ie not finished drying) from bad weather. There were “fieldcocks” built out of finished hay, slightly higher than a person’s head, each making up a “load” on a donkey or horse cart or tractor to get it to its final destination (although it could safely stay in that stage for weeks if necessary) Both of these sizes could be made by one person, and I’ve often watched my husband make both. (The haystack being made in your video link looks to be about the size of the second. )
The third size is what around here used to be called your “haystack” (there was usually only one per farm). These are no longer being made, because hay is generally stored in barns, whether baled first, or taken up as whole “fieldcocks”. The haystack could often be as high as a two-story building, and would be built by a “meitheal” (neighbourhood gathering) of men. My husband owns a picture of one being built in the 1940’s and there are thirteen strong and fit looking men in that picture, ranging in age from 15 to 60. There are ladders in the picture and horse drawn carts, so it was a big enterprise. The result would be all of your winter fodder in one place, self-thatched to protect it from the worst the winter could throw at you.
The reason the fieldcocks are not left overlong in the field (although they can be), is that the field will be wanted for grazing.
There is a story my husband tells, from when he was a young lad, and his uncle had a half- used haystack not far from the house. A haystack was “used” by tunneling into it from the “lee” side (the less windy side), and scooping out a day’s fodder a bit at a time. One morning his uncle went out to feed his animals and found an old traveller couple sleeping in it. The just fit into the hollow that he had made in the stack. 🙂 He brought them in for a breakfast, and they went on their way.
However, you would not be leaving these haystacks in your
@ Athaia # 445
“But cepha and I seem to get along exceptionally well, which made me wonder if there isn’t a spirit residing in each of these antibiotics, too, similar to plant spirits and homeopathic miasmic remedies.”
Well, see… now you are talking my “poly-snakeoil-ist” language! 🙂
One children’s classic novel, “Understood Betsy,” is a vivid portrayal of the difference between urban life (in 1916), and that of the backwoods Vermont, where Betsy is shuffled off to her country cousins in an emergency. She’s thrown into exactly the sort of world – totally alien to her – that we’re discussing here, of one-room schoolhouses, churning butter, doing things by hand, that “an ounce (of butter) is something real, and not just something for little girls to be tested on,” and so on.
I had it from Project Gutenberg in the days before the source of my e-reader could and did mess with content already downloaded; I’m going to try to side-load it back via USB
There was an entire genre of “City kids improve after being sent to the country,” when this was written, but the others had some sort of subtext that blurs what I’m talking about here.
@Chuaqin
Ah yes “elms”. I did not know they were used for forestry purpose, but then I did not know much about them anyways.
On huge machinery and malpractice in agriculture and forestry – I once told the old farmer about soil compaction from his son’s harvester, his answer was (with some undertone I cannot repeat in writing but Austrians may know): “Yes…you know anyways, how all that is”. In short, that is confirming what I said, and in some ways an admission to defeat.
I would not say these people are ignorant as such. They aren’t economically big either; rather, they used to be full time farmers, that is long past, some are even only farming due to nostalgia, a little, they either earn their wages driving big machinery, managing explosives (for construction, in rocky terrain), or the major employer of the region, VOEST Alpine (united Austrian steel works in Linz), an industrial complex that is allegedly even booming economically right now, despite all else.
The big land owners allegedly are giving up forestry in that area, because it is not profitable anymore (steep rocky terrain, expensive logistics).
These “farmers” I know, nowadays more like “industrial contractors” or simply, “machine drivers”, are really trying to ear a living somehow, but it is an increasingly losing battle;
I don’t think they are ignorant as such; they do what everyone says is proper, exotic ideas are risky after all, and they hope they can sustain all that. My conscious impressions from the region, since about 1993, are what this blog here is about: in the late stage of civilizations, the peripheral country side empties until abandonment follows.
@Northwind Grandma
“Ironically, the vast majority of her students loved her. [‘iron’-ically; iron finger]”
You see and hear often, children do not appreciate laissez faire and how to put it in fitting words, cotton sugar softyness in grown ups at all.
Children do apreciate strict buit competent (and predictable and fair) leadership!
“I interpret Waldorf schools as elite. Am I right?”
Yes it is the case. I remember the step son of the hemp grow shop hippie owner I often saw, he went to Waldorf, his hippie mother was often invited by other rich parents from children in that school to the Dominican Republic where they have their private premises. In Austria, the most prominent man was Falco who liked to reside there, and as a side note, rich Austrians in the 1990s were always drawn to the Dominican Republic.
The two sons of my Cousin and her husban are certainly hippie kids, they are healthy and not too drawn and immersed with electronic devices, a plus, creative and lively.
Not very tough, is a bit my impression, sheltered.
Her neighbour, my friend of ages, has tow daughters. They are very healthy and strong, definitely they do something right there. They tell me they choose not to send the older one to the school of my cousin, as “she should be confronted with real life to some extent”.
My friend learned in the Auto workshop, worked in construction, then in the hard ware store, now he also sits in front of a glowing rectangle for business like me (sigh), as there aren’t that many left in Austria who know to read and write, know the country’s offical language sufficiently well, and are otherwise competent.
However, they are certainly more conventional and working class than my cousin. My cousin does good things, has vital interests that I support, a certain wisdom (has worked with very difficult children as has her husband).
However, I do not share her ideas about education at all times; young boys should not know about guns and warfare? Umberto Eco once wrote an essay, how the little ones actually should get a good dose of reality there.
I don’t know how I am a good or bad example at this or that, I lead a healthy and stable life at least, in these times, but as a kid, I was not spared grisly stories of all the kinds.
I knew well what “whore” meant by the age of six (although not in all aspects), and the horrors of torture, child abduction and such things were present in my mind. I grew up in a relatively peaceful and stable country no less, I did not directly experience warfare, but the world was a dark and grisly and abusive place from early on.
One of my favourite people, a good friend of mine in his late twenties, comes from the country side, very down to Earth, came to the city for the first time with a slightly liberal attitude, has since been quite irritated with much of what he has seen of modern “liberalism” and whathave you.
He told me he heard stories from his grandparents, who were educated in a single room all ages school around WWII, and they were educated well enough.
In short, I agree with you.
My condolences also, and god speed to you.
I have been an avid reader of Ecosophia for several years, but have only lurked, as I never felt that I had an original comment to offer. I am writing in support of the projected Technonomicon, which I would certainly purchase, as I have several other books by Mr. Greer. Thanks to Mr. Greer and the many wonderful commenters here, I have been introduced to scythes, solar cooking, various gardening and composting practices, and more fascinating books, blogs, and podcasts than I can manage to keep up with. Many thanks to you all. –Jennifer in the Ohio River Valley
A helpful book about curtains, The Shade Book by Judy Lindahl, 1978. How to make Roller, Roman, Balloon and Austrian Shades. These are easy to make, though finding hardware may require mail order.
Addition to that is the use of mylar reflective (currently cheap on rolls) as a liner for roller shade, close to the glass.. The reflective side can be turned towards the sun in summer (blocking extra heat during day), and towards the interior in winter (limiting heat loss during evenings/night), for those in temperate zones. Combine with an insulated Roman type shade that lays against (or is sealed to close air leakage) the most interior portion of the window frame. The air pocket between the two layers provides extra insulation. If very tightly fitted, regular condensation removal may be required (from humidity, associated with increased savings).
Re: Humanure. Many of the humanure books were written in times when chronic prescription medications were less common. Composting kills bacteria and most viruses, but may not break down synthetics (including pharmaceuticals , plastics, forever chemicals and some agricultural chemicals), nor heavy metals or elements (lithium, arsenic). Pyralids and ivermectin are known to persist in animal manures (intact and functional). One way of testing is to plant some bean seeds in the compost, watch and see if they germinate in the expected timeframe. If so, it is likely OK, especially for ornamentals. If the manure donor is taking potentially high-risk medications, consider diverting it from potential crop compost, and keeping it well away from your water supply. Alternatively, try to find actual data about breakdown characteristics, including if the metabolites are biologically active – this type of research seems limited and/or behind paywalls.
@scotlyn: Yes, rewording to “participation” instead of “consent” makes it easier for me to understand your position.
In line with Patricia Mathews’ recommendation of Understood Betsy, I would mention Grandma Called it Carnal by Bertha Damon. It’s the somewhat “artified” autobiography of the author, who as a young girl was sent to live with her grandmother and aunt in rural Connecticut. It’s a very enjoyable read. (Northwind Grandma, it’s very much in the same “retro” vein as much of what you’ve been saying here, too.)
Grandma ran a very small family farmstead. Her husband had died not long after coming home from the War between the States. And Grandma ran her farm in much the way as her own grandparents had run a similar farm in the late 1700s She still cooked all their meals, around 1900, over an open fire in a big hearth, and she still cooked the things her grandparents had cooked in their young married years. She and the aunt still made and mended their clothes, and young Bertha’s, too. Grandma mended the fences that kept her cow on her land. The house had no electricity or heating system, so you went to bed in the winter with a ceramic jug of boiling water, very tightly stoppered. Woe to you if the stopper worked its way out during the night. And so forth … And she made young Bertha learn how to do all these things, since the children one had around one’s house were expected to help out with as much of the grown-up work as they were capable of doing..
Temporary, thanks for this.
Lathechuck, oh, I know. The abacus is for shopkeepers, the slide rule is for engineers.
Justin, anything by van der Ryn is welcome!
Sea Spray, thanks for these.
Michael, thank you! This is very encouraging.
Chris, nope. I’ll be doing final edits on everything but different voices are fine, as they were in the Whole Earth Catalog.
Roldy, excellent. Can you write 500 words on that, with an example or two from your own experience? It’ll go at the beginning of the repairs and repurposing section.
Patricia M, if you take your Kindle and keep it permanently on airplane mode you can put things on it using the USB and the Big Slimy River will leave you alone. Just saying…
Jennifer, delighted to hear this! Thank you. It’s comments like this that make it easy to keep going.
Gardener, these are good points — thank you.
Great piece & an interesting idea!
Here are a couple things this reminded me of (though I’m not sure if they match exactly with what you’re looking for):
1) Old (really old) medicines to deal with drug resistance bacteria :
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/medieval-potion-kills-stubborn-bacteria-180975459/
2) Nintendo had a design philosophy called “Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology” (coined by Gunpei Yokoi) which was trying to find new uses for technology that was mature and could be cheaply bought or made instead of getting into fights with other companies to make the newest, cutting edge tech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Design_philosophy
@ Northwind grandma waldorf schools
They are not elite, but many are private, and there are some public charter. Dont let the fact that some parents with money send some of their kids there to put you off the philosophy and methodology. And, not all of them are this way, the best ones let in students blind of income of family, then later have a discussion as to what the family is able to contribute. Because they dont want to be elite. But it does take money as taxes do not contribute.
The vision you lay out of a future simple school is very very Waldorf !
The various Waldorf schools I have been part of, private and charter, are cleaned by the students for day to day sweeping, taking out the trash, etc…and the parents signing up for one weekend day a year to vacuum and clean more in their childs classroom. There are work days to paint, volunteers to sew curtains. Some have store bought expensive desks, some made by the parent body, and for my middle childs waldorf high school, Ikea Tabletops assembled by parents and students. They dont have textbooks or computers for the students, they may buy blank notebooks for student work, or they may hole punch paper together and tie with yarn. A simple aesthetic is important but it does not have to have alot of money to achieve. Excepting good crayons and colored pencils and such, but the overall yearly cost is low if the student takes care of their supplies, which are bought by the parent and replace by the parent so that is up to them. Mine could keep a set of art implements in great shape for years.
But, all of that can be gone and it would still be Waldorf in terms of the philosophies of child development and world outlook ! You can Waldorf educate, Steiner philosophy, without good art materials if they are not available. ( They would probably then play with plant colors from their surroundings, like black walnut leaf or beet root extract and water…. Because color and light are a first things to study in sciences ) What do I mean, well, like Waldorf teaching from the whole to the parts, for example here we have a tree. We are very young , we play in trees, we walk under trees, we harvest from trees we observe them, we get a bit older we start to notice the differences and similarities of trees, we then start to categorize trees. By 4th grade, we are learning the plant families ( the lily and the rose, the redwood vs the oak, what are the physical differences to then categorize) standard western biological names. And drawing them (Even if no money for fancy art supplies, there is charcoal, they would make the charcoal as a chemistry lesson). Then, a little older and then the cells inside. Public school tells little kids about cells first and trys to tell them that is all a tree is.
A waldorf way to start thinking of chemistry can be seen in this series of lectures by Faraday from the 1800s, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_History_of_a_Candle. You can buy that book. You need no special materials, if you dont have a candle, then an oil lamp a warming fire . We CAN keep knowledge going if we choose to in simple ways.
As far as not being worldly, maybe that is a function of who chooses to send kids to those schools in particular areas. The Santa Cruz Waldorf High school boys stood up to local gang members. They were certainly not thought to be unworldly. But that is older kids. WHen young, they were singing to the fairies in the school garden. The teachers there for the first few weeks of freshman year had them down in the commercial farm fields in south county to help harvest, first it was giving back to the community, second it is educational of where food comes from, third it is good for them to work a bit and it is the natural progression from their garden of childhood, here is how we are feeding everyone at scale.
My last post reminded me of this good book for a good introduction to chemistry for the lay person or someone wanting to get into science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_History_of_a_Candle
You can buy the book of that name, a reprint of the lecture series in paperback for cheap
Chauquin 310
> I think current widespread electrification won’t last forever, in the long term; so I’ve remembered electric scissors replaced old school sheep scissors
From 2008 to 2016, Jeff and I adopted 45 elderly former-breeder-mom longhair Persian cats, rescued after breeders brought to veterinarians after their “useful” lives were over (they got too old to birth kittens) but most were in perfect health — equivalent to a 50-year old woman. Breeders surrendered them to be unceremoniously euthanized. We had 27 cats at one time (the rest were intermittent) (big empty house). The cats WERE our kids.
I didn‘t know what I was in for. All of a sudden, I had to figure out how to trim umpteen longhair coats. I had to get good at cutting fur without cutting skin. I evolved from electric clippers with several attachments — I never could figure out which attachment I needed for which cat‘s particular fur.
About 2012, I gave up electrical clippers completely — there was too big a chance of cutting skin. I tried several style MANUAL (non-electrical) scissors. I settled on the following, and currently use them on our one remaining Persian cat:
Ball-Tipped Scissor for Dog, Cat and all Pet Grooming – Ear, Nose, Face & Paw – Scaredy Cut’s small Safety Scissor.
There is a ball at both tips — quite necessary. I bought several pairs, and they are a rugged scissors.
I think I spent a minor fortune on every scissors imaginable (manual) before I bumped into these.
FOR SHEEP ENTHUSIASTS
Anyway, my point. Size this small scissors to “sheep size,” and they might do well on sheep. Guessing here. At least start with a ball-tip, then try different scissors’ until one settles on a favorite. Test out scissors during when all kinds of scissors are still available, like now.
For someone coming from the Persian longhair cat direction, and not the sheep direction, a ball-tip could be a clue. Longhair Persian cats don’t have the bulky ‘fur’ that a sheep has. If not trimmed every three months or so, Persian cats’ coats get mighty matted, big-time; NOT trimming IS NOT AN OPTION, if one wants a happy Persian cat. Not trimming = miserable cat. I never saw the benefit in combing out a Persian cat’s coat; combing took considerably longer than just clip the fur off (competently and carefully).
Thinkin’.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Waldorf/Elites
To be clear, yes, there are families with money who send their kids there. Which is interesting too as they are purposefully choosing this way of looking at the world for their kids !
But, the method, the philosophy is not elite and Steiner developed this for factory worker children and to be taught with the most basic of materials, with an eye towards the simple beauty. The name Waldorf used in the USA is from the Waldorf cigarrette factory in Germany. Steiner insisted that all children must be allowed. So, the way of educating is not elite even if some parents in some areas are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Waldorf_schools
Since Meccano/Erector was mentioned upthread, I’ll mention another familiar but rare-today construction toy that could and should make a comeback: Tinkertoy, in its original form (without the large plastic pieces). As a kid I used them to build all kinds of mechanical contraptions, but they’re quite different from Erector in a complementary way. Erector models, once you manage to tighten all ten million of those fiddly little nuts and bolts, are super strong compared to the real thing. Knock over an Erector model of a construction crane, and you can set it upright again with no harm. If a real construction crane falls over, it smashes into pieces. The steel is the same, but the difference in scale means that unless you’re building models on a museum-exhibit scale, you don’t have to worry about how strong any part is.
Tinkertoy pieces connect only as tightly as you’d expect from plugging wooden dowels into drilled wooden holes. If you don’t pay attention to the stresses on your constructions, they’ll fall apart. I once built a mechanical arm with four joints, “remote controlled” via strings and levers. The “finger” end was a single stick that moved up and down on a hinge; but the hinge needed three wooden connectors, so the “forearm” that they (and the finger) were attached to had to be quite a bit stronger than just one rod, and so forth, until the largest (“upper arm”) section had to be made of multiple interconnected trusses counterweighted with all the leftover pieces I had. (This is how I learned how much of engineering, ironically, is about understanding, and adapting to, limits.)
Another major difference, especially from a retrotech standpoint, is the relative ease of manufacture for Tinkteroy. It’s notched wooden dowels and lathed disc-shaped wooden connectors (the latter referred to, in the earlier versions of the toy, as spools) with drilled radial and axial holes. A few other lathed parts of similar or lower complexity. Some parts painted (just the rods in my 1960s sets, just the spools in my father’s 1930s sets). You could almost (not quite, unfortunately) build a Tinkertoy factory out of Tinkertoy.
At this page is the full list of all of the non-faith-specific requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 7/7). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Angelica’s heart be soothed and blessed as she grieves the sudden loss of her cat, Sophie.
May 12-year-old Amya from Lake County, Ohio make a speedy recovery for a pair of sprained wrists after a fall from her scooter.
May Gary of Geauga County, Ohio’s carpal tunnel surgery be successful, and may he return to mobility as full as his circumstances allow.
May Holly of Geauga County, Ohio’s back tunnel surgery be successful, and may she return to mobility as full as her circumstances allow.
May Northwind Grandma’s husband Jeff, who passed away unexpectedly on July 22, be blessed and make a peaceful transition to his next destination; may he be healed of the “wound in his heart” that he held in life.
May Jeff’s cat Henry accept, twice a day, Northwind’s giving him his Flovent inhaler dose and pill, and let her take him to the veterinarian once a month for an injection.
May Anonymuz get the strength and resolve he needs in his endeavors for justice, and may truth and justice be served.
May Lukeszy’s father’s post-surgery swelling be healed.
May Helen in Oz be free of inflammation in her biceps and shoulder, and may she be successful in the slow process of regaining pain-free range of movement and increased muscle mass and strength therein.
May JC of Geauga County, Ohio, who is fighting cancer, be blessed and uplifted so that he may receive the healing he needs and recover as best as possible.
May 1Wanderers’s partner Cathy, who is still undergoing chemotherapy in preparation for a surgery, be given the physical and mental strength to fight it, and tolerate the treatment; may she enjoy a full and permanent recovery.
May Dustin, a relative of Brenainn, who still has some lingering issues in his ongoing recovery from a heart condition, be healed and strengthened.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis’s reconstructive surgery on his left ureter go well; may his right kidney heal; and may his empty nose syndrome abate.
May Brother Kornhoer be able to afford his son’s international surgery.
May Alex R. be blessed in his efforts to resolve his financial situation, and successfully get completely out of debt within the current year 2026; may he find opportunities toward that end, and also the wisdom to recognize and seize them when they come.
May a safe and happy home environment be enjoyed by Laurelmirror, her daughter, and her mother, as well as protection from evil influences. May their family situation be resolved in such a way that Laurelmirror’s mother will get a chance to recover physically and mentally from the stresses it has caused.
May Kallianeira come to understand or face the entity or issue that seems to have trapped her, causing problems in her material circumstances, causing expensive troubles that threaten to force her out of home and mind, and leaving her burnt out and overwhelmed despite every attempt to find real help. May she quickly find out what to do and how to act to overcome these hardships.
May Geoff G’s sister Lindsay, who suffered a stroke at the end of May, recover to the fullest extent possible, and be blessed and supported in her mental wellbeing throughout.
May Mathew Damon Gallowglass, who has been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, be treated successfully for his condition and make a full recovery.
May Lisa C be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from breast cancer.
May 6 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Bob W of Lake County, Ohio’s treatment for cancer go well so that he may heal and recover as quickly as possible.
May Larry Mulford, who has entered hospice after a year battling with pancreatic cancer, pass in the smoothest possible manner, and may his wife be enveloped in our love.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
@Roldy #487,
Absolutely! And there’s a critical difference between respectful fear of what you don’t know how to do safely (I’m afraid to eat random wild mushrooms I encounter; Joe is afraid to go sticking tools into electrical junction boxes; as we both should be!) and fear of learning how to do those things safely.
I sometimes wonder how much of that kind of fear comes from countless comedy scenes in sitcoms and cartoons where the stereotypically dullard husband attempts to fix either a leaky faucet or a blown fuse, and hilariously causes either a kitchen flood or a local power outage. And then I wonder, from the opposite side, how many of those scenes are part of someone’s deliberate agenda to discourage self-reliance.
(The same book that gave us “Fear is the mind killer…” also has this gem of dialog: Paul: “They tried and failed?” Reverend Mother: “They tried and died.”)
Your range is impressive. By domestic necessity this summer I’m finally learning to deal with the coolant connections in HVAC systems, something I’ve been eager to keep my hands off of for many years! (Baby’s First Manifold Gauge Set.)
As I hinted in #325, getting past the fear of failure or of the unknown was something I thought I might have to cover briefly in my own piece on repair, but it’s such a huge topic overall and 500-1000 words are so few, I’ll omit it completely if you’ll be addressing it.
Cynthia Christie (no. 488), not you personally, just the “antenna” analogy.
@JMG
Regarding smelting and casting: yep I have made a start at it and have a working systen. Am getting my youngest involved, she wants to make a silver pendant. A bladesmith down the street has an interest in making ornate hilts via casting as well.
There does seem to be efforts in advancing small home devices: commercial all in one multi-purpose smelter and casting machine available to the public made by VEVOR https://img.vevorstatic.com/us%2FZBDMJ2LDRJL0UMPBZ001V1%2Fgoods_img-v2%2Fcasting-machine-m100-12.jpg?timestamp=1743497689000&format=webp&format=webp
Its look reminds me of radionics machines.
JMG, I think you should also not forget seed saving and plant propagation.
Also, anyone looking for a career change/side money might want to consider nursery stock, both ornamental and food plants. I once made an informal survey of all nurseries in a five mile radius of where I lived. I found all nurseries, 10 or so, had pretty much the same plants offered. That is because they all bought from the same wholesaler. Small plants are usually offered in spring at farm markets; I have noticed that unusual varieties sell out quickly.
Hi JMG
Another resource that may be useful is: http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-knowledge-how-to-rebuild-our-world-from-scratch_lewis-dartnell/1296565/
“If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the post-apocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilisation as quickly as possible?”
Here’s the contents from my copy:
1 The end of the world as we know it.
2 The Grace period.
3 Agriculture.
4 Food and Clothing.
5 Substances.
6 Materials.
7 Power to the people.
8 Transport.
9 Communication.
10 Advanced chemistry.
12 Time and place.
13 The greatest invention.
Hi all,
I have made some shoes by adding a medieval turn shoe upper to a salvaged tyre sole, with usable but not amazing results. Is anyone else working on this kind of old technology?
I used the basic method here, which is nice in that you don’t have to buy lasts to construct the shoe: http://www.aidan-campbell.co.uk/PDFs/Guide%20to%20Viking%20turnshoes.pdf
I like the idea of 100% sewing construction, as shoe glues are usually toxic, and may be hard to get hold of as we trundle through the Long Descent.
@Scotly, well, I consider myself to be a poly-snakeoil-ist, too. I was addressing the tendency to be a purist of one kind or the other.
@JMG, when and where are we to send in our essays?
I’m currently experimenting with DMSO, which made me think of how we’re going to still have access to it five hundred years from now…. So, chemistry should be part of the Technonomicon, IMO. I mean, I use iodine solution for almost any wound (even cat bites…), but I have no idea how it’s made, or if it would even be possible to DIY. And we’re using quite a range of chemical substances that we’d sorely miss if production would stop.
Hi John Michael,
Righteo, I’ll get on with it. Expect it over the next two weeks.
I read a report that the Japanese began offloading US treasuries a few days ago in order to save the Yen. Pushed up bond yields in your country, apparently – that would be expensive with I believe $8tn of the $39tn maturing this year. Ouch! And I also believe that the US then had to buy Japanese Yen in order to support their currency, probably added to the debt load, a lot. And around and around it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.
Oh well, strange days my friend.
Cheers
Chris
Michael Gray #491 Please. Could you paste the link of the récipes chanel wich you refer ?
Northwind G.# 489:
“In my opinion, only the rich will be able to educate children in, pardon me, such a frivolous fashion as Waldorf, unless Waldorf-characteristics begin immediately when the institution starts up.”
I’m afraid I disagree. I think you’ve identified Waldorf schools system as an elitist one, but I think you’ve missed the point. Rudolf Steiner ideas aren’t a fashion, if you realize he had a philosophy which has lasted for more than a century (with effects not only in occultism and education, but in agriculture too), though I don’t have to share all the Steinerian views.
It seems you mistake elite with minority. I met some years ago a guy who studied in a Waldorf school during his childhood, and he and his parents were middle-low class, so do the math. His family wasn’t really rich, but they prefered to “invest” in their son education instead of another “needs”. He “casually” seemed a very smart guy as an adult.
Waldorf students have been, are, and maybe will always minoritarian, because Steiner (as mainly an occultist philosopher) isn’t suited for majorities. Governments aren’t interested in spreading his ideas. However, this minority isn’t as minoritarian (nor elitist) as we can think: for example, there are more than 70 Waldorf centers in Spain, beyond current and boring bipartisan education dichotomy between “public”(state) schools and “private”(which usually means Catholic schools).
———————————————————————————————-
Scotlyn # 492:
“the complete objectivity that is sought here is indistinguishable (to me) from a “God’s eye point of view (POV)”… ie, scientists aspire to be able to “see” the way God can, without being swayed by how a human, with a limited here and now POV, see”
There’s some truth in your paragraph, because I remember an apparently arrogant quote made by Stephen Hawking, who wrote during its life: “We should know the Mind of God”. Oops! By the way, it’s interesting how Mr. Hawkings (being an atheist) spoke about a “ficticious being” in which he evidently didn’t believe. I’m scratching my head…maybe a rhetoric trick?
Full phrase:
“If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”(“A Brief Story of Time”: I don’t remember exact page).
Well, naïve trust in almighty human brain using almighty science is a bit embarrassing when you notice that the own science (in its Darwinian-evolutive branch) explains us that human brain is programmed by evolution mainly to survive, so it’s dubious we’re going to be able to understand the whole Universe. Like Scotlyn has written, believing in the almighty human mind for explaining everything in detail is like adopting the God(s) point of view: an absurd purport.
***************************
#498:
“Much of what constitutes mainstream medical care relies on highly complex, many layered hierarchies of organisation.”
Yes, after reading your phrase I’m thinking now in massive current industrial-like universities, which seem doomed in the long term by the Lond Descent. However, during the final centuries of Middle Age there were universities across all Europe with an evident lower technological and social complexity level than today. Of course, who was able to study there? The upper classes…
Before first medieval universities, it seems doctors (and vets) learned from “masters” and/or monks as apprentices. There were “healers” for humans and another animals, too, usually for low class people.
I guess to some extent, tension between surgeons and main doctors may come from medieval times, when first university doctors (with more theory than practice) argued with war surgeons (more skilled in practice than in theory), until they were unified later.
———————————————————————
Curt # 504:
“Ah yes “elms”. I did not know they were used for forestry purpose, but then I did not know much about them anyways.”
I’d like to qualify my comment about elms here, telling you elm trees in Spain usually live near rivers and canals, in every case in wet micro-climates. There’s been some small elms forest, called “olmedas”, but they were very punished by graphiosis in recent past, and in general terms, they’re a shadow now compared with their past: in the best cases, elms grow there in small size, being near dwarf trees . More commonly, elms live mixed with another wet soils trees, like willows (“Salix”) and poplars (“Populus alba”)…and ash trees (“Fraxinus Angustifolia”).
————————————————————-
Northwind G. # 513:
“Size this small scissors to “sheep size,” and they might do well on sheep. Guessing here. At least start with a ball-tip, then try different scissors’ until one settles on a favorite. Test out scissors during when all kinds of scissors are still available, like now.”
Thank you for answering my comment about old school shearing scissors for sheep. I’m glad you found the best suitable scissors for your cats, but I also think hand sheep scissors are a sound and long time lasting technology which has survived until today, so I’ve got plenty of models to choose, if I’d try to be a sheep shearer tomorrow (an unlikely case) or I’d need to recomend these or those scissors to someone.
For example:
(not for commercial use, only as an example)
https://www.todocoleccion.net/antiguedades-tecnicas/antiguas-tijeras-inglesas-esquilar-sin-usar~x368309736
(“English” style old school hand sheep scissors)
https://www.onbuy.com/es/p/tijeras-para-esquilar-ovejas-hoja-clasica-con-resorte-faciles-de-transportar-diseno-ergonomico-para-uso-profesional-acero-duradero-de-50~p201451336/?cjdata=MXxZfDB8WXww&exta=cjunctes&source=cj&AID=17243764&CJEVENT=e9b31e2d901211f183d001060a18b8f7&extac=6423508
(New modern hand sheep scissors. It’s interesting it follows near the same old scissors models design).
Finally, I know people in my town who take care of a few cats, but well, I can’t imagine your work to feed and harboring 27 cats…I see you love very much cats!
Household first aid has changed enormously since I was a boy in the 1940s. Back then, for instance, minor cuts and wounds were treated against potential infection by applying tincture of iodine. (Salves like neosporin or bacitracin weren’t available back then.) It worked well enough on me in those days. And it’s simple enough to prepare for oneself in one’s kitchen, though we bought our supply in a drug store.
Which makes me think also that one might well lay in, against the long descent, a reprint of one of the editions of the US Pharmocopoeia and the National Formulary from the 1930s or 1940s, and also a modest supply of laboratory glassware (flasks, beakers, glass stirring rods, a small porcelain mortar and pestle, a glass retort, and so forth) as well as some basic chemicals. One may need them when the pharmaceutical industry goes belly-up. (I think that will likely happen within the lifetime of the younger commenters here.)
Knowledge of other old home remedies ought to be preserved as well. How many people now remember that a fish-bone stuck in the throat could be softened by slowly drinking lemon juice, so that it could be swallowed or coughed up?
And of course, there is also herbal medicine, which was the most common form of medication back in the 1800s. A herbalist named Joseph Ernest Myer (1878-1950) of the Indiana Botanic Gardens (Hammond, IN) published several comprehensive books on medicinal herbalism in the first half of the 20th century: The Herb Doctor and Medicine Man: A Collection of Valuable Medicinal Foprmulae and Guide to the Manufacture of Botanical Medicines, The Herbalist and Herb Doctor, Nature’s Remedies: Early History and Uses of Botanic Drugs, The Old Herb Doctor, and Old Tamarack’s Collection. Most of all of them can be downloaded from archive.org
Sam, thanks for both of these!
Walt, oh, there’s a blast from the past! Yes, my sister and I played with Tinkertoys a lot. I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve always been good at reasoning out spatial relationships. They’re fun, and very sustainable to produce.
(This isn’t a photo of me at that age but it might as well be.)
Ecoprayer, thanks for this as always.
Ian, I’m delighted to hear this.
Mary, that’s an excellent point. Can I encourage you to write 500-1000 words on the subject, drawing on your own experiences?
Sea Spray, interesting. I’ll put it on the look-at list.
Russell, that’s exactly the sort of thing I want in the book. Will you write up 500-1000 words on your experience, with some book or internet resources (incuding that article)?
Athaia, I’ll be sorting that out over the next week. I plan on getting a Dreamwidth post up within that time frame giving the details.
Chris, thank you!
Robert, many thanks for this. I certainly didn’t know the trick with the lemon juice…
One technology which seems not to heve been mentioned is ink-making. Inks can be pigmented inks like the soot inks which were used in Qntiquity, or iron-gall inks, which were used in later times, or other kinds of inks similar to modern color inks (walnut juice, for example). It is importnant to notice that these kinds of inks usually are not suited for fountain pens.
@ Ecoprayer to be added to prayer list
I am not very good at figuring out wording, which is why I have delayed getting on the list, so I can use help with wording ! I have a gallbladder “full of gallstones” and have had at this time manageable attacks. But it would be nice to have them…. resolve, shrink, dissolve in size and amount and have her gallbladder area heal and become full of vitality so it moves things along without making more stones so that I may eat without censure and worry of potential pain or life threatening attacks.
May Atmospheric River’s Gallstones ….. what I said above but maybe it could be shorter ?
Hey JMG
Should have mentioned this earlier, but there’s a website i used to go to that will definitely be a goldmine for your next project. It’s a collection of websites, articles and patents of various outdated, forbidden and abandoned technology that’s a bit crazy but still worth looking into.
https://rexresearch.com/
Also, I’ve read that book by Lewis Dartnell, and have definitely mentioned it to you previously. It’s a decent and enjoyable introductory book concerning various technologies that we take for granted, but you would need way more detail for it to be incredibly useful for the task of rebooting civilisation.
I was annoyed with someone so I said some things. Then I removed the parts that were unworthy of me, or likely to do more harm than the little bit of satisfaction I’d get from it was worth. The part that remains is as follows:
“”
May I put up for inclusion in the retro technology collection:- the Shaving horse, and no it’s not a horse that will give you a quick shave.
It’s a woodland craft device for clamping a piece of round wood that is shaped using a drawknife by peeling thin shavings from it. When reduced to size the work piece is finished on a pole lathe to produce chair legs and runners. The shaving horse itself is a bench that is sat astride, hence the horse part of the name. There is a platform on which the work piece is placed. Athwart the bench is a pivoting device, when pushed away by the feet it brings a block of wood down on the work piece clamping it in position. The big advantage of the shaving horse is that it is very quick to clamp and unclamp the work piece using the feet, leaving the hands free to alter the position or face of the work piece. Usually just one hand is needed to reposition the work piece, the other hand holding the drawknife or another tool saving the nuisance of picking tools up and down.
There are variations on the shaving horse but all use the feet to operate the clamp.
1. Bench Horse. The pivoting device is fitted to a normal work bench and operated by the craftsman while standing.
2. Spoon horse. Used to hold wooden spoon blanks while carving.
3. Bowl horse, used to hold a block of wood to be carved. Differs in clamping the work piece against an upright post that is in front of the carver.
4. Lap shave, similar to a shaving horse but much small with the bench part sitting in your lamp, rather than you sitting on it.
5. Stick shave, the simplest shaving clamp, which uses a loop of cord pushed through a hole in the stick ( 2 to 3 feet long by 2″ dia) which is attached to a cross piece that slides in a slot in the other end of the stick. Pushing down on the crosspiece with feet tightens the cord loop around the work piece holding it in place.
6. Shaving ladder. As it name suggests it looks like a ladder. It has long bed that pivots on one rung to hold the work piece against the next rung up. The design is for working long thin pieces of hazel or ash for basket rims.
There are many other designs modified by individual craftsmen to there purpose. My own I have had for many years, with modifications!
Such devices above seem to be historically the preserve of green wood craftsmen. They are bulky devices more suited to space of the woods than the work shop.
JMG
I have to say I both strongly agree with you and strongly disagree with you.
Overall, yes so much tech out there is retrograde and should be avoided. And there are many simple technologies that work perfectly well but are perhaps not fashionable, or profitable and thus ignored.
On CD’s, I suspect you might not understand how digital music is sampled and mathematically reproduced. It is basically a perfect signal reproduction, so any “tinnyness” has to do with how the type of music and how it was engineered/produced. Also CD’s have a wider dynamic range and vinyl physically cannot reproduce low bass. The most important part of a stereo system is the speakers, followed by the source, followed by the amp. I suggest therefore the quality of your system has more to do with having decent speakers, and music that is well produced that you like. The sound quality of compressed formats like mp3 is definitely not as good, but it is an efficiency gain in smaller file size. More on efficiency below.
As for cars, I suggest if we went back to the mustang you mention, or similar people would get a shock with their fuel bill with abysmal fuel efficiency and the toxic fumes emminating from the tailpipe. Much higher Nox, CO and unburned hydrocarbons, all of which are highly carcinogenic. Going back to old simple cars would be retrograde I’m afraid. We should however re localise (we will have to anyhow) and walk or use bicycles which are one of the finest inventions ever.
Given that we are in the dying days of civilisation, efficiency cannot be ignored. In fact efficiency so far has obscured the decline in net energy, but it has compromises (as discussed) and limits. We can either give up efficiency gains of electronics, or we can do without the thing altogether.
Not sure if it is mentioned in comments, but also see survivorlibrary.com
Regards,
Derek
If I recall correctly, sheep shearing shears were springy steel squeezed by hand, not hinged like regular scissors.
Harvester 332
SWALES
> There are great examples of miles and miles of swales that the CCC built
Researching how to get water off one’s property, when there is too much water, I found out about swales in landscaping books. I have opportunity of putting swales onto two pieces of real estate.
I swear by swales.
Basically, “think brooks” (creeks). Human-made brooks. I have had landscapers put swales in the land near my houses heading down the hills, to get water that even thinks about getting into my basement,– OUT OF THERE.
I ENJOY seeing too-much-water-on-the-surface leave the area, quite unlike underground tubing. Dig a shallow brook on surface-ground, have the pathway head downhill, line it with river rock, and down and out,— the water goes.
It makes no sense to have water leave an area any other way, — it is so very (relatively) easy. No digging deep ditches, no laying underground tubing, and whatever other nonsense. (Dig only shallow ditches!)
I could easily create a button to hook onto my t-shirts saying, “I love swales…” I can’t think of anything else catchy, but maybe something meaning “…and watchin’ that water depart.” (I am not a wordsmith.)
I just LOVE swales. I do cartwheels (“flip”) over swales. Give me a good swale, and I am a happy-cat. Swales are fun.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Chronojourner 335
> fountain pens
I used a fountain pen when I was a kid. I don’t remember why I used one. I don’t remember why I stopped. I don’t think it was typical for a kid to use a fountain pen in the 1960s. I loved using that pen.
It was the kind that had a little sack in it. I don’t remember how I refilled the pen. I just looked on Amz and I think mine had ink cartridges. I remember getting “inky” more than once; maybe I got ink on a shirt or dress one too many times, and called it quits. The ink didn’t wash out, so I was stuck with ink on said garments forever. Are there ways to wash ink out of fabrics? If so, what category of fabric?
At some antique fair in Connecticut in the early 1980s, because it was all I could afford, the only thing I bought was a (what felt like ancient), original long white feather quill with accompanying (empty) inkwell. What decade did quills and inkwells go out of use/style? 1860? I have not a clue.
I still have the quill and inkwell in the bottom of a box around somewhere.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@Anselmo # 526. Sorry, unfortunately I have my browsing history automatically cleared every 7 days so I cannot find who it was. I do this as a means of trimming useless stuff. If it was genuinely important, I will go back to it. Alas, this one didn’t make the grade. Searching stuff on youtube, is next to useless nowadays.
SPECIAL DIETS
As an amateur genealogist, having viewed tens of thousands of USA census images from 1850 to 1950, as well as a good number of England’s censuses, plus read a good many history books, it was that prior to 1930, roughly five of ten children died. The age mentioned varies. I don’t know which is more accurate. Five out of ten died before the age of 5? Age of 10? Age of 15? Dunno.
Anyway, let’s say for argument’s sake, it was 10.
My sense is that those today who stay alive, or live relatively well, eating special diets, during the Long Descent and later, will die as a child by age 10. Special diets will not be an issue.
Children dying was the way of the world.
Any child who wasn’t born in tip-top shape (able-bodied), died. Congenital conditions, communicable diseases, accidents, malnutrition, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, all the rest kind of disabilities. If it wasn’t one thing killin’ kids, it was another.
Children dying was more of a thing than children surviving.
What I am saying is that the concept of special diets will die out fairly fast, let’s say, in fifty-odd years from now, by 2080, if that long. If a kid can’t digest/take in/get nourished by the food that the rest of the family eats, (s)he dies. The family won’t be able to do a thing about it, except say goodbye, grieve, and move on.
I am talking about “typical” families here. The rich may have different statistics.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@JMG – I got my Kindle into airline mode when I was sitting in the shuttle bus, where there was no wi-fi. That option didn’t show up in my room or anywhere on campus or in the grocery store – The Slimy River apparently protects itself these days. Will start side-loading in my ?copious? spare time.” Thanks for the advice.
I know I’m terribly late, but my father just sent me a story about his father that I want to share.
Grandpa (I never called him that. Everyone called him “Doc” because he was probably the only person they knew who had a PhD (Chemical Engineering, has like 19 Patents in his name, but that’s the wrong story)), so Doc, born in 1911, set off in 1936 from Illinois with his cousin to see The West in a 1929, 5-cylinder, Nash. Going through the Dakotas, one of the cylinders blew. But they had tools, so they camped by the side of the road, took out the piston and push rod, incapacitated the valves, and put the engine back together with only 4 pistons, and went about their way. You can’t do that anymore!
Earlier this week I was thinking of chiming in just to say how much I miss the old, simple, no computer, fix it yourself cars. One of my first ones was a 1977 Honda Civic. That, was a really great car! I drove it for 330,000 miles and wish I had just put a new engine in it when it died. Manual everything. Even had a choke! But it got 37 miles to the gallon. And I could fix many things myself, even by the side of the road (I carried a tool box). I shake my head when I see these billboards/ads claiming 35 MPG. To me that looks like zero progress, 1977 was almost 50 years ago! It’s true, new cars are a little safer (that civic was like a soda can with an engine and wheels, but I will say, it had actual bumpers that you could hit stuff with and not hurt your car), but I’m not impressed. At least not in a good way.
@Chuaquin @Northwind,
There are actually smaller versions of the traditional sheep shears, they are made the same and are about half the size. Traditionaly they have yellow handles while the bigger ones have black handles. Most of the use for these today and the reason you kind find them still made is for trimming show sheep ( not shearing them). This is in programs like 4H or FFA or open class shows at fairs and such. The sheep is washed multiple times till they are nice and white. Then the wool is carded out so that it is tight, full and even , then the shears are used to snip it to the desired shape.
I spent many hours doing this before annual trips to the county fair or the state fair.
Almost no-one actually shears sheep with these manual shears. Cheap electric shears are available for small scale use and the professionals use big shaft powered ones that hang on the wall so that the handpiece can be as small and light as possible.
The the shears in the second picture are junk. The handle bolted on like that is a huge problem as the bolt heads will collect lanolin from the wool and then chunks of wool will adhere. The good ones all have the handles brazed or crimped to the handle. I
JMG, in case you or your readers wanted a chance to make $50K, the Berggruen foundation ia having its annual essay competition on the Axial Age that is supposedly coming. They are even accepting fiction. It’s a ROP outfit, but they might be shocked enough by blasphemers that they award you the prize. The deadline is in less than 2 weeks though.
Off topic (actually anti-topic) but possibly useful for future reference;
“The ERCOT interconnection queue currently includes more than 1,800 projects representing over 474 gigawatts’ worth of requests to connect to the Texas grid—more than five times Texas’ record peak electricity demand—and about 90 percent of those power connection requests come from data centers.”
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/texas-halts-data-center-connections-to-power-grid-amid-overwhelming-demand/
Bubble bubble toil and trouble.
@ Stephen Pearson # 536
“If I recall correctly, sheep shearing shears were springy steel squeezed by hand, not hinged like regular scissors.”
Yes. And they still are. 🙂
Although my husband stopped doing the summer shearing of all of his sheep by hand using said shears around 5 or 6 years ago (it was starting to give him a lengthy “sore back” hangover), he still uses them for a winter “hiplock” treatment. This involves shearing the longest of the belly and crotch wool most likely to tangle a sheep up in briars, and/or get dirty, wet and cold. He can do a “hiplock” more quickly, without suffering backache, and the old style, springy shears work just fine.
@ Northwind Grandma
Re swales: Be careful of concentrating water and turning it onto your neighbor’s property. You can be sued for damages. At least here you can, and I’m sure it’s even worse in the famously litigious US of A.
Re pens: In Junior school we learned cursive writing with dipping pens. Press hard on the downstroke, light on the upstroke, copy the copperplate example. Supply your own blotting paper. Inkwells in the desks were filled every morning by the class monitor.
In high school we were forced to use fountain pens. Ball-points would ruin our handwriting, they said. Our science master kept a big jar of oxalic acid for the people who spilled ink on their school clothes. Eventually the authorities gave up and we were all using ball points by the ’60s.
But when I wrote my engineering finals in university, for some reason I got it in my head that I had to use a fountain pen and black ink or it would be a disaster. So I bought a fountain pen and black ink and used it for the first exam. The exam went well and I switched to a ball-point for all the other exams. I have no idea what happened to the fountain pen and ink. I never used them again.
PS: Please accept my sympathies for your recent loss.
Have never been motivated to post anything anywhere on the internet, but this thread has made me smile. So many people with exactly the same thoughts as me- utterly fab!
Sorry if these have been suggested already, but I’d like to give a shout out to the non-electronic versions of: thermometers, barometers, weighing scales and watches. I’ve been irked enough by needing to replace/dispose of batteries (sick kid needs temperature taken- stupid battery is flat- grrr!) to adopt “the old” versions.
I’d also like to mention the superiority of “old tech” (non-electronic) toys in child development. There’s quite a bit of research that shows better quality play (from kids and their parents) but in my experience (speech pathologist) kids respond for more time and with more interest to toys that have a “physicality” -here’s a small and exact example- my old Fisher Price train has a whistle that works by forcing air when you push it down. There’s something more rewarding for kids about the sound than an electronic noise, AND it allows exploration of what pushing with different force and speed does to the noise. Invaluable information for any mind, but especially young ones.
All the best.
Whisthled languaje from the island of Gomera (Canary Islands), It allows comunication till a distance of five kilometers in mountanious and scarcely populated terrain.
https://ich.unesco.org/es/RL/el-silbo-gomero-lenguaje-silbado-de-la-isla-de-la-gomera-islas-canarias-00172
Sepherd’s leap from Canary.
An ancient technique wich allow the quick movement in mountanious terrains .
https://youtu.be/0eUg9vDkhCA?is=0rwYlcs15oZYWrM8
Not sure this counts as a technology, but the regular use of an apron to protect clothing is incredibly useful, and if the apron has big deep pockets it is even better. My kitchen aprons come all the way up, like an overalls bib, so spatters and spills hit the apron instead of my clothes. The apron I use for outdoor work has big enough pockets to carry clothespins out to the line when I am hanging up laundry to dry. It also can carry a lot of harvested produce while protecting my clothes from dirt.
I also will echo the usefulness of natural fiber fabrics in durability and antibacterial properties. I am making some linen underclothes using a reproduction of an older pattern (that does not use stretchy fabric). The underpants are hilariously large, even though I am a normal-weight woman. I am accustomed to stretchy underwear that looks much smaller!
Late entry that I only thought of because of Silent Hermit’s very on point words about the importance of the physicality of children’s toys.
Bring back real fire alarms! Clanging bells! Shrill noise that tells you there’s a danged emergency going on!
None of this speaker-alarm crap that you might easily mistake for elevator music.
If anyone even sees this. The next post is already up. Well, FWIW, there that is. Please excuse me if someone already said this, there was just too much to even skim everything this week.
John, I would be happy to help. I will put together a list of resources and the 500 to 1000 words. It will take me a few days, I’m a bit swamped right now. Where do I need to send it?
Aubrey, I’m setting up something for that right now. I’ll have a post up later this week on my Dreamwidth account, ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, with the details.
John, thank you for the quick response. I will keep my eye open for that.
John, kind of a related question – I see your comment above about the fridge outstanding time itself (lol). I know some of this is survivorship bias, where we are seeing the units that, for whatever reason, stood the test of time, and there are millions of otherwise identical units that did not stand the test of time and are moldering in some junkyard somewhere. However, I strongly suspect that the refrigerators of today, for instance, will not have a similar following in 50+ years because there won’t be any of them that stick around for anyone to have that kind of survivorship bias, for future people to say “Look how much better things were in the 2020s!”. It feels like there is a qualitative difference between appliances built today and those built a couple of generations ago, and I’m wondering how we can gain more insight on that topic, but I admit I don’t have any solid ideas of how to proceed.
John, I believe it may have been from an appropriate technology home weatherization manual that you uploaded to the old blog many years ago, but I remember reading that if you add up all the holes allowing air transfer with the outside from a residence, you get the equivalent of a hole about a square meter in the side of your house! I’d be much obliged if you were able to identify that manual and reupload it. Sensible technologies like simple weatherization, rather than installing the latest triple-glazed windows and high-efficiency heat pumps, will go a long way to improving circumstances.
The Scythe Book – David Tresemer – 2nd Edition 2001 – ISBN 0-911469-19-2
Woodland Craft – Ben Law – 2015 – ISBN 978 1 86108 936 6
Primitive Technology (A Book of Earth Skills) – The Society of Primitive Technology – 1999 – ISBN 10:0-87905-911-7
Seed to Seed – Suzanne Ashworth – 2002 – ISBN 1-882424-58-1
Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture – Rosemary Morrow – 2006 – ISBN 978 1 85623 051 3
The Foxfire Book – 1971 – ISBN 0-385-07353-4
The Modern Herbal Dispensatory – Thomas Easley & Steven Horne – 2016 – North Atlantic Books
Perennial Vegetables – Eric Toensmeier – 2007 – ISBN-10: 1-931498-40-7
🌳
Quick thought about a benefit of vinyl records: how low-tech are they? They are so low tech that I remember playing them spinning them by hand and a curled up cone of paper. (No, the sound quality was not very high. But it was kinda cool.)
Basically, one does not even need electricity, since the original disks from the early 20th century were played on a gramophone which used internal springs to turn the record and a tube to amplify the sound.
Incidentally, since there was no volume control, this was achieved by stuffing a sock into the trumped to tone it down, hence the expression ‘put a sock in it’.
Bruce
There’s so many comments I haven’t time to read them all, so I don’t know if anybody mentioned this one already.
Mechanical scales. It’s getting really hard to find scales that aren’t electronic digital ones. Accurate weights are so important for so many different things. From a few milligams all the way up to a few tons, scales that use just counterweights and springs to get the measurement.
Hi JMG,
the book in question is “Abenteuer Homöopathie” by Heinrich Zeeden, in it he describes cases where he has applied his method and the reader also gets to know what methods he used to build his own method but the cases ar like two pages long in a usual paper-back size with lots of space in between. Your German might be up to it.
His development was that he does a VERY simple massage ( German description https://www.praxis-im-moos.com/single-project ) and during diagnosis he used among other things Kinesiologie (arm strongness) to define the needed Globuli. Some of his healings lets me think of some of the things I read/learned over at your MM´s (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/377441.html).
Best wishes,
Emily07