Inventions Before the Printing Press

One Hundred Eighty Ninth Post: Inventions Before the Printing Press

We all were watches. Some of them are digital but a lot are still mechanical. If you were to take your watch apart the chances are that you couldn’t fix it. It is a small mechanical marvel. Just as impressive as the combustion engine was to the 1900's. The question that needs to be ask is how this thing was invented relatively long ago.

First the gears that run the two hands need to be precise and they are so small. Add that to a power supply that is a wound spring. How did they even have the tools to make and assemble the machine? Well it is a fact that I don’t understand. Lesser inventions have come after the watch. One wound think that with such elaborate design other things would improve at the same rate, such as the industrial revolution occurring earlier.

It is definitely something to research. One thing that makes the invention so impressive is that we are better educated today. With our communications like the press, television, and Internet, we learn things that people in past centuries didn’t have the privilege to know. To invent a watch would take an educated or extremely gifted person.

In WWII when parachute drops were new, the American chute release to release the chute once the soldier landed didn’t work properly. Often the soldier would get drug by the chute. Meantime the German chute’s release worked fine. A German chute was captured, but the problem wasn’t solved until about 2 years later. At which time the war was over.

This leads to a question how can a fine machine like the watch be hundreds of years old and a simple release can’t be copied when a working part is available to be reversed engineered? I don’t understand. I have seen pictures of a machine shop from the 30's when I toured a machine shop. They were advanced for their time. It is just weird how inventions come about. And equally puzzling is the time at which they occur.

May the Creative Force and Holiday Spirit be with You