Industrial/Military Technology

Read here:    Ethnoarchaeology of Ironsmelting, a comparison of several (sub-Saharan) African ethnographical cases of ironsmelting with the 10th - 8th century BC iron smelting remains from Tell Hammeh az-Zarqa in Jordan here. The description of each case can be read in a separate screen, by clicking on the name of the 'tribe' under the "the cases" header

I have an extensive technical library, with textbooks of the period 1500 to 1980 and encyclopædias and journals of the period 1820 to 1980. Furthermore, a substantial collection of historical hand tools and machinetools of the period 1885 to 1960.

The Medieval Technology Pages are an attempt to provide accurate, referenced information on technological innovation and related subjects in western Europe during the Middle Ages. There are several ways to access this information. The most direct method is through the Subject Index which provides direct access to all the technology pages. Many of the articles are also present in a historical Timeline. And material can be found by examining the References which back-reference all articles through the sources used.

Marin Mersenne attended school at the College of Mans, then, from 1604 spent five years in the Jesuit College at La Fleche. From 1609 to 1611 he studied theology at the Sorbonne.
Mersenne joined the religious order of the Minims in 1611. The name of the order comes since the Minims regard themselves as the least (minimi) of all the religious; they devote themselves to prayer, study and scholarship. Mersenne continued his education within the order at Nigeon and then at Meaux. He returned to Paris where in 1612 he became a priest at the Place Royale.

The Era of Biological Energy Sources: 9000 BC to AD 600
Between 9000 BC and 6000: Plants and animals are domesticated.
6000 BC: Copper artifacts are common in the Middle East.
4000 BC: Light wooden plows are used in Mesopotamia.
3500 BC: Kiln-fired bricks and pots are made in Mesopotamia.
3500 BC: Irrigation is developed in Mesopotamia.

Welcome to the Telephone Tribute Website!  You'll find all sorts of telephone related web pages here on the history of the telephone, technical information, research resources, human interest stories, clubs, pictures, sound files, links, etc.  If this is your first time here, you might try starting out your navigation of my web site by first looking at my Table of Contents or using the search engine to your right.

This historical timeline, prepared in 1993, traces the nuclear age from (1895-1993) the discovery of x-rays and radioactivity to the explosion of the first atomic bomb through the cold war to its thaw to the cleanup of the nuclear weapons complex.

The inspiration for this site comes from two sources : an interview with Professor James of Reading University, and a life long interest in the space program. Whilst being interviewed by Prof James when applying for his M.A. course, we got on to the subject of Dan Dare [see my Eagle pages!], and one of the points that he made was that it was inherently improbable that the Spacefleet of the future would have been based in the U.K. - as he puts it in his book, "Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century" [Oxford], "it gave a whole generation of British boys ... a totally false impression that Britain was going to dominate the space race." Similarly, many writers who have tried to establish a Dan Dare timeline [such as Denis Steeper's "Report of the Crytos Commission"] have started a long way back. But I would submit that it was not inconceivable to Frank Hampson in 1949 to imagine that Britain, even it wouldn't "dominate the space race", would still be a considerable player.