Quotulatiousness

November 4, 2019

A Tale of Swords and Gunpowder – Weapons in Ancient China l HISTORY OF CHINA

Filed under: China, History, Military, Science, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

IT’S HISTORY
Published 12 Aug 2015

Dao, Gun, Jian and Quiang are the four main traditional fighting weapons of China. Even though, the Chinese had already invented gunpowder by the end of the tenth century. So besides of having an arsenal of swords, spears, sabres, crossbows and bow and arrows, the Chinese military could also choose from cannons, rockets, mines and even handheld firearms. Still, close combat would remain the favoured means of battle for a long time. All about the history of Chinas weaponry now on IT’S HISTORY!

» SOURCES
Videos: British Pathé (https://www.youtube.com/user/britishp…)
Pictures: mainly Picture Alliance
Content:
Lu Gwei-Djen, Joseph Needham and Phan Chi-Hsing (1988): “The Oldest Representation of a Bombard”. In:
Technology and Culture 29 (3), pp. 594-605
Needham, Joseph (1986): Science and Civilization in China. Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology; the Gunpowder Epic. Taipei
Tittmann, Wilfried/ Nibler, Ferdinand & John, Wolfgang ()
“Salpeter und Salpetergewinnung im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit”: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/technik…
Wang Ling (1947): “On the Invention and Use of Gunpowder and Firearms in China”. In: Isis 37 (3/4), 160-178

» ABOUT US
IT’S HISTORY is a ride through history – Join us discovering the world’s most important eras in IN TIME, BIOGRAPHIES of the GREATEST MINDS and the most important INVENTIONS.

» HOW CAN I SUPPORT YOUR CHANNEL?
You can support us by sharing our videos with your friends and spreading the word about our work.

» CAN I EMBED YOUR VIDEOS ON MY WEBSITE?
Of course, you can embed our videos on your website. We are happy if you show our channel to your friends, fellow students, classmates, professors, teachers or neighbors. Or just share our videos on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. Subscribe to our channel and like our videos with a thumbs up.

» CAN I SHOW YOUR VIDEOS IN CLASS?
Of course! Tell your teachers or professors about our channel and our videos. We’re happy if we can contribute with our videos.

» CREDITS
Presented by: Guy Kiddey
Script by: Martin Haldenmair
Directed by: Daniel Czepelczauer
Director of Photography: Markus Kretzschmar
Music: Markus Kretzschmar
Sound Design: Bojan Novic
Editing: Franz Jänich

A Mediakraft Networks original channel
Based on a concept by Florian Wittig and Daniel Czepelczauer
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard-Olsson, Spartacus Olsson
Head of Production: Michael Wendt
Producer: Daniel Czepelczauer
Social Media Manager: Laura Pagan and Florian Wittig

Contains material licensed from British Pathé
All rights reserved – © Mediakraft Networks GmbH, 2015

November 2, 2019

Notepad++ release 7.8.1, also known as the “Free Uyghur” edition, draws unfriendly Chinese attention

Filed under: China, Liberty, Religion, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve been using Notepad++ as one of my text editor options for a long time. It’s a very useful tool, and I heartily commend it to anyone needing a Windows text editor that can do a lot more than just edit text. I hadn’t downloaded the most recent version, so I was unaware that the developer was under attack from Chinese government supporters for his explicit designation of version 7.8.1 as the Free Uyghur edition:

On Tuesday, Don HO, the developer of Notepad++, a free GPL source code editor and notepad application for Microsoft Windows, released version 7.8.1, prompting a social media firestorm and a distributed denial of service attack.

Notepad++ v7.8.1 was designated “the Free Uyghur edition,” in reference to the predominantly Muslim ethnic group in western China that faces ongoing human rights violations and persecution at the hands of Beijing.

“The site notepad-plus-plus.org has suffered DDoS attack from 1230 to 1330 Paris time,” HO said in an email to The Register. “I saw the [reduced] amount of visitors via Google analytics then the support of my host confirmed the attack. The DDoS attack has been stopped by an anti-DDoS service provided by our host [Cloudflare].”

Previous politically-themed Notepad++ releases have focused on Tiananmen Square and the terrorist attack on French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo.

A post on the project’s website explains HO’s decision to criticize the Chinese government, something companies with business interests in China generally try not to do for fear of retribution.

From the Notepad++ website:

Human rights in China is always a hotly contested topic. Since 2017, numerous reports have emerged of the Uyghur people being detained in extrajudicial “re-education camps”, subjected to political indoctrination, and sometimes even torture. 2018 estimates place the number of detainees in the hundreds of thousands.

The Uyghurs are not ethnically Chinese but live in China’s so-called autonomous Xinjiang region. The region’s name suggests the Uyghurs have autonomy and self-governance. But similarly to Tibet, Xinjiang is a tightly controlled region of China. After the recent Xinjiang conflict, Beijing has recast the Uyghur ethnic group as a terrorist collective. This has allowed Beijing to justify its transformation of Xinjiang into a surveillance state. There has also been a marked rise of Islamophobia across China.

At least 120,000 members of Kashgar’s Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in Xinjiang’s re-education camps which aim to change the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. Reports from the World Uyghur Congress submitted to the United Nations in July 2018 suggest that 1 million Uyghurs are currently being held in the re-education camps.

October 31, 2019

A mathematical revolution in late medieval English ship design and construction

Filed under: Britain, History, Technology, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest installment of Anton Howes’ newsletter on the Age of Invention, he discusses how geometry and mathematics helped transform late Medieval English shipbuilding:

An English ship of a slightly later period: this is a replica of the Susan Constant at the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia. The original ship was built sometime before 1607 and rented by the Virginia Company of London to transport the original settlers to Jamestown.
Photo by Nicholas Russon, March 2004.

Since about 1500, an Italian and Portuguese method of making ships had come into ever wider use in northern Europe. This was to construct the ship’s skeleton first, and then lay the planking around it. This contrasted with the older “clinker” method, by which the planks were laid from the keel upwards, with each plank slightly overlapping the one below – the rest of the skeleton was filled in later to strengthen it. The new “carvel” method, instead of having overlapping planks, allowed for a smooth hull. But it also required more planning.

The master shipwright had to first design full-sized templates, or frames, which were placed along the keel to determine the width and height of the hull, like cross-sections up and down the length of the ship. To the edges of these frames were then fixed ribbands — long, pliable boards running down the ship’s length. Altogether, the frames and ribbands formed a temporary, basket-like structure, to guide the moulding of the ship’s permanent hull around it.

But calculating the size of the frames at each point was tricky. After the placement of the first few, which might be pre-specified in size, the next ones along were typically determined according to the curve of the ribbands. Calculation was certainly involved, but it took place in the form or marking and adjusting the wood itself. Design and construction both took place in the shipyard, and through the medium of wood.

What Matthew Baker did in the 1570s was to take the design process out of the shipyard, and onto paper. He drew his ships, to scale. And by using pen and paper, with geometry to make such drawings possible, he opened up grand new possibilities for design. His process allowed him to jot down the latest innovations from the Mediterranean, to speculate about the designs of Noah’s ark and the ships of the ancient world, and to cheaply conduct his own experiments. He drew out new designs for frames, using geometry to work out how any variation would affect the overall shape of the hull, as well as its weight and carrying capacity – all at the cost of only time, ink, and paper, and avoiding the huge potential waste of conducting experiments at full scale in wood. His process allowed him to innovate more easily, and even to design new measuring instruments.

October 13, 2019

Tank Chats #52 Sherman Crab Flail | The Funnies | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published on 15 Jun 2018

Tank Chats playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Another episode in the Tank Chats Funnies Specials, looking at the weird and wonderful vehicles of 79th Armoured Division led by Major General Percy Hobart.

The Flail tank was designed to clear mines and flails were operated in the 79th Armoured Division after D-Day.

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October 12, 2019

⚜ | Survivor Bias in World War 2

Filed under: History, Military, Technology, USA, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Military Aviation History
Published on 31 Aug 2017

Survivor Bias was a thing in World War 2. Let’s learn what happened.

– You can support my Channel with Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Bismarck

⚜ Support My Work ⚜
– You can support my Channel with a donation [Paypal]: https://www.paypal.me/BismarckYT

⚜ Find Me On Social Media ⚜
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⚜ Sources ⚜
M. Mangel, F. J. Samaniego, Abraham Wald’s Work on Aircraft Survivability

Abraham Wald, A Reprint of “A Method of Estimating Plane Vulnerability Based on Damage of Survivors”

From the comments:

Military Aviation History
2 years ago (edited)
Hey all, I hope that you like this video. Small correction from my side at 05:00 – It was reprinted in 1980 not 1918. I misspoke. Obviously.

This video was actually planned for the end of September but since I had the script already, I decided to publish it now. As mentioned to my Patreons some days ago, I have a few unexpected home visists to make. The first set was last week and after returning two days ago, I flew off to yesterday for another week abroad. As such it made sense to get such a familiar topic out now since otherwise, there would be nothing.

It should be mentioned that I did not find the “original” study Wald responded to. Either it got lost, or it was never published. Perhaps Wald saw them work on it, saw the errors and published his paper leading the other group to abandon their project. However, there is also a slight chance that over the years parts of the story were exaggerated. Wald certainly published his papers (you’ll easily find it on the internet) and was given the credit for helping US designers — but what of that inital research group? What were their conclusions, their recommendations beyond what is usually linked to Wald? Without their study, no one seems to know.

October 7, 2019

The History of The London Underground

Filed under: Britain, History, Railways, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Engineering
Published on 29 Dec 2017

Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=282505…

October 5, 2019

Dreyse Model 1835 Needlefire Breechloading Pistol

Filed under: Germany, History, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 19 Aug 2019

RIA on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RockIsla…
RIA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockislanda…

Johann Nicolaus Dreyse, later promoted to the aristocracy as Nicolaus von Dreyse, designed the first mainstream military breechloading rifle. His rifle was adopted by Prussia and changed military history, but this was not his only work. Dreyse also endeavored to sell guns commercially, both rifles and handguns. This is an example of one of his first, the Model 1835. It is a single shot breechloader, with the chamber consisting of a rotating tumbler. The firing mechanism is identical in concept to that of his Model 1841 rifle, just scaled down for the smaller pistol. The piece uses a power charge of just 6 grains, but its breechloading action was quite advanced for the 1830s!

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Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

October 2, 2019

Marston 3-Barrel Selectable Pocket Derringer

Filed under: History, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 18 Aug 2019

RIA on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RockIsla…
RIA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockislanda…

William Marston was born in the UK in 1822 and emigrated to the US in the 1830s with his father, who was a gunsmith. William became a naturalized citizen in 1843, and in 1844 went to work for his father in the family business. He would later open his own shop, and became successful making a wide variety of firearms — mostly concealable pocket pistols — until his death in 1872.

This is one of his 3-barrel derringers, with a pretty neat auto-indexing system. This one is in .32 rimfire with 3″ barrels, although 4″ barrels and .22 rimfire versions were also made. Production began in 1858, but really picked up with the addition of an extractor in 1864. That improved model would see some 3300 examples made.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

September 21, 2019

QotD: Smartphones

Filed under: Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

My smartphone, an out-of-date and memory-challenged iPhone, is so far and away the most incredible thing I’ve ever owned that I wouldn’t know how to pick a runner-up. I might never own a better camera, except in a replacement. It tunes my guitar vastly better than my guitar tuner. It monitors me from space and guides me to my destination, adjusting the route for traffic congestion. I speak English into it and it translates back in any language I want. It streams more entertainment than I could ever consume. If 21-year-old me could see 41-year-old me today, he would wonder (a) how I could possibly afford the thing, and (b) how I ever found time to stop gawking at it and go to work.

Chris Selley, “Silly to blame the smartphone for everything we’ve done wrong with it”, National Post, 2017-08-08.

September 19, 2019

Ancient technology: Saxon glass-working experiment

Filed under: Britain, History, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published on 9 Aug 2019

Many thanks to Victoria Lucas for inviting me along to see her experiments in medieval glass-working. Fire! Craft! Mud!
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige

Picture credits:

Natron deposit image
By Stefan Thüngen – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…

Glass slab of BETH SHE’ARIM
Hanay [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)]

Palm cup
Reptonix free Creative Commons licensed photos [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)]

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

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September 18, 2019

The invention of Writing, Paper and Print! l HISTORY OF CHINA

Filed under: Books, China, History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

IT’S HISTORY
Published on 22 Jul 2015

The invention of script, paper and printing can be credited to the Chinese. It was in China that Cai Lun, in his emperor’s service, made the production of paper suitable for the masses. Originally planned as a means to wrap things in, it soon became obvious that paper was more suitable for writing than the common bamboo stick. Guy explains how the Chinese printed written pages long before Gutenberg was born, how Chinese writing actually works and how emperor Qin tried to establish the standardized Chinese Han Characters, or Hanzi, attempting to unify the writing symbols for his country.

» SOURCES
Videos: British Pathé (https://www.youtube.com/user/britishp…)
Pictures: mainly Picture Alliance
Content:
Faulmann, Carl (1995): Schriftzeichen und Alphabete aller Zeiten und Völker. Augsburg. Reprint der Originalausabe von 1880 Wien.
Pan, Jixing (1998): “On the origin of movable metal-types”. In: Chinese Science Bulletin 43 (20).
Wai Wong (2005): “Typesetting Chinese. A personal perspective”. In: TUGboat 26 (2) 111-114.
https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb26-2/wo…
Yan, Yangtse (2006): “New Evidence suggests longer paper making history in China”. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/200…

» ABOUT US
IT’S HISTORY is a ride through history – Join us discovering the world’s most important eras in IN TIME, BIOGRAPHIES of the GREATEST MINDS and the most important INVENTIONS.

» HOW CAN I SUPPORT YOUR CHANNEL?
You can support us by sharing our videos with your friends and spreading the word about our work.

» CAN I EMBED YOUR VIDEOS ON MY WEBSITE?
Of course, you can embed our videos on your website. We are happy if you show our channel to your friends, fellow students, classmates, professors, teachers or neighbors. Or just share our videos on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. Subscribe to our channel and like our videos with a thumbs up.

» CAN I SHOW YOUR VIDEOS IN CLASS?
Of course! Tell your teachers or professors about our channel and our videos. We’re happy if we can contribute with our videos.

» CREDITS
Presented by: Guy Kiddey
Script by: Martin Haldenmair
Translated by: Guy Kiddey
Directed by: Daniel Czepelczauer
Director of Photography: Markus Kretzschmar
Music: Markus Kretzschmar
Sound Design: Bojan Novic
Editing: Markus Kretzschmar

A Mediakraft Networks original channel
Based on a concept by Florian Wittig and Daniel Czepelczauer
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard-Olsson, Spartacus Olsson
Head of Production: Michael Wendt
Producer: Daniel Czepelczauer
Social Media Manager: Laura Pagan and Florian Wittig

Contains material licensed from British Pathé
All rights reserved – © Mediakraft Networks GmbH, 2015

September 17, 2019

“Clean” alternative energy sources are not free … in fact, they’re quite expensive

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Earlier this month in Foreign Policy, Jason Hickel wrote about the requirements for expanding current renewable energy generation (wind and solar):

The phrase “clean energy” normally conjures up happy, innocent images of warm sunshine and fresh wind. But while sunshine and wind is obviously clean, the infrastructure we need to capture it is not. Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth minerals, with real ecological and social costs.

We need a rapid transition to renewables, yes — but scientists warn that we can’t keep growing energy use at existing rates. No energy is innocent. The only truly clean energy is less energy.

In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions — and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium — an essential element in wind turbines — extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.

The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.

And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium — an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.

That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines. But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double, and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four — all for the entire period from now to 2050.

Wind turbines require a lot of concrete to stabilize them on site (hundreds of tons of it), and that concrete is very carbon-intensive to create in the first place (nearly 930 Kg of CO2 per 1,000 Kg of cement), but even those huge turbine blades have a limited working lifespan and can’t be easily recycled into anything economically, so they generally end up in landfills.

September 14, 2019

How Does It Work: Lever Delayed Blowback

Filed under: Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 11 Jul 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

Lever-delayed blowback is a relatively uncommon action system, although it is applicable to a wide variety of firearms and has been successfully used in submachine guns, rifles, and light machine guns. It uses a principle of mechanical disadvantage on a fulcrum lever to force a mass to accelerate rearward while the bolt remains closed. This allows the effective weight of the moving parts to be amplified, resulting in a lighter firearm.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

September 13, 2019

Why You Wouldn’t Want to Fly The First Jet Airliner: De Havilland Comet Story

Filed under: Britain, History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Mustard
Published on 1 Dec 2017

Air travel before the Jet Age wasn’t always glamorous. The relentless noise and vibration from a piston powered propeller aircraft often made long flights even more exhausting. Most aircraft also couldn’t fly high enough to avoid bad weather, so air sickness was more common.

After World War Two, as part of an effort to develop its civil aviation industry, Britain stunned the world by unveiling the world’s first jet airliner. The de Havilland Comet was sleek, quiet, and flew higher and faster than any airliner of the day. As piston propeller technology was reaching its limits, the conventional thinking was that jet engines were too unreliable and produced too little power relative to their fuel consumption. But the de Havilland Comet proved that jet travel was the future. When the Comet entered service in 1952, it immediately began breaking travel time records and became a point of national pride for Britain.

The de Havilland Comet was perhaps little too ahead of its time. With such a clean sheet design, there were still lessons to learn. When early Comets suffered from catastrophic depressurization incidents, the entire fleet was grounded and their Certificate of Airworthiness was revoked. Flaws in the design of the aircraft’s fuselage were resolved in later Comet versions. However, the rest of the world was now catching up, and manufacturers including Boeing and Douglas began to offer their own jet airliners. While later version Comets served airlines reliably, they were outsold by competing aircraft. There’s no question However, that the comet paved the way. The British had taken a massive risk and brought the world into the jet age. #DeHavilland #CometAirliner #Airplane

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September 10, 2019

Shooting the Milkor M32 40mm Grenade Launcher

Filed under: Africa, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 6 Jul 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

Thanks to Milkor USA, I have a chance today to do some shooting with both the M32 and M32A1 rotary grenade launchers they make for the US military. I’m using 40mm chalk training ammunition, with some steel targets at about 75-85 meters. In live fire, it’s quite clear how much of an improvement the M32A1 trigger is over its predecessor!

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

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