Technologies that shaped the world
hello everybody in our last episode we talked about those lies that shaped the world yes sometimes the lie can change the course of history but it is something else performs as the driven power of the developing of our world that something is technology in today's episode we're going to talk about those technologies that shaped our world talking about technologies we first think about things like smartphones robots and spaceships stuff like that yes modern technology are developing so fast and change our life so dramatically however in some sense those older technologies even ancient technologies that we take for granted shaped our world even more before we get into all that let's ask ourselves a question what is the driven power of technologies is it because we as humans are so hard working is that why we invented all those awesome things actually no bees are more hard working than us yet they haven't developed any technology we developed more and more technologies and invented more and more things not because we're hard working but exactly the opposite it's because we're lazy we're too lazy to do things by ourselves we invent something to do them for us well at least to make it easier for us to get things done that's the driven power of innovation the laziness of mankind oh yes oh yeah that's the stuff do we dare we dare this first technology we're going to talk about is something so simple wheels what wheels did wheels change our world that much yes they did even without modern application of wheels like automobiles wheels were still the technology that made civilization possible and we have video footage to prove that let's do a little bit math with the help of one horse what's the difference of productivity with and without wheels with a wheeled carriage a horse on average can pull about 1.5 tons and travel about 4 miles per hour so to move 1.5 tons of cargo to a destination 30 miles from you you will need about 8 hours there and 8 hours back so 16 hours to complete the mission one day's work now let's see how long it will take you to achieve the same thing without wheels without wheels means you will have to load your cargo directly on the horse how much weight can a horse carry and walk 4 miles per hour it's about one eighth of a ton so in one day you can move one eighth of a ton about 250 pounds and work the horse 16 hours 8 hours there and 8 hours back then rest the horse for 8 hours you will have to work like this for 12 days to move all 1.5 tons of cargo to a destination 30 miles away so in a simple transportation task without the help of any modern technology but only one horse wheels improves your productivity by 12 times not mentioning without wheels there won't be cars trains or airplanes yes even airplanes don't need wheels to fly they need wheels to take off and land so it is safe to say without this technology that we see every day and take it for granted civilization won't be possible at least it won't be in a large scale because to build a city needs thousands and thousands tons of materials transported wheel is such a great technology however it is unclear who invented it because the oldest wheels we found were used over 6000 years ago and the history of using wheels can be much longer than that it is very possible that different civilizations developed their wheels independently so with wheels we could travel wherever we want not really thousands of years passed after wheels were invented before we can actually travel long distance without getting lost especially on open sea no one said anything about cold i'm sure there must be a good reason for us suffering until another technology came to human history compass yes without compass we did travel there are other ways to tell direction like using the position of the sun and the stars however it is not a precise navigation when you are in the middle of open sea the farthest you can see is about 12 miles due to the curvature of the earth let's see without compass you navigate with sun first you need to know where exactly you're at because at different coordinates you actually observe the sun at a different angle this is easy to understand just imagine the sun is a light hanging from the ceiling depends on your location in that room the light might be on your left or on your right but as long as you know precisely where you're at you still can get the right direction also you need to know the exact time of the day because sun is at different direction throughout the day now if you sail into the open sea and every day your navigation is just 0.01 degree off the true
direction the next day your reading will be based on a location you are not actually at the error accumulates every time you use this method to navigate and you might end up missing your target by one degree which doesn't sound much it's just one degree let's see if you travel a thousand miles what would one degree error cause you to miss the destination based on the law of cosines you will miss your target by 17.45 miles since the farthest you can see is 12 miles when you're on the open water you just missed your island totally what about cloudy days and nights you cannot effectively navigate when your ship is still traveling and drifting that made long distance travel on open sea impossible compass was actually invented between second century bc and the 1st century a.d long before we had the technology to build ships big enough to travel across the ocean so when our ocean ships were built and ready to sail that was around 15th century which is known as the age of discovery we were already masters of compass using a tool that can continually tell us the true north without compass continents would be isolated by oceans and the world we know today might have remained a mystery to this day next piece of technology we're going to talk about made spreading knowledge and education in a large scale possible it is the invention of paper paper was invented around 100 bc but was not industrialized by tyron until 200 years later around 105 a.d in china before paper was invented books were expensive and heavy we wrote on wood clay bamboo parchment which is prepared animal skin fabrics which made a book weights a hundred pounds and worth a fortune of course there were not so many books existed anyway those materials were mainly used to document major events and because of that education was very much limited to a very small scale majority of the human population was illiterate how about we take a vote who thinks the kid should start studying who doesn't well you just lost two to one no it's a tie that guy doesn't count he can't even read back then if you can read and write you must be from noble family but actually rate of illiteracy didn't really drop that much even after paper was available for another 14 centuries even papers were available books were still very rare humans were waiting for another technology press printing which was developed around 1440 in maints germany gutenberg's machine improved on already existing presses this assembly line method of copying books enabled a single printing press to create as many as 3600 pages per day by the year of 1500 over a thousand gutenburg presses were operating in europe and by 1600 they had created over 200 million new books before industrialized press printing books were mainly copied by hand no wonder so many people lived their whole life without seeing one single book with abundant paper and press printing machines another thing naturally appeared paper currency which actually was used in china since the 9th century but didn't appear in europe until late 1600s before paper currency mainly precious metals were used as currency well if you don't count shells and other types of currency in even older times metal coins actually has the real value even today medals are still used like gold bars gold coins or something more common quarters in theory a quarter contains the amount of metal that is worth a quarter today's quarter is made of 91.67 of copper and 8.33 of nickel before 1965
the quarter was made out of silver because a quarter was worth a lot more back then the reason i say this is only in theory is because the value of currency fluctuates but we can't really adjust the metal composition of a quarter every day let's go back to paper currency it appeared in europe due to shortage of metal coins so banks started to issue out paper notes which was like an official iou which promised the equal amount of precious metal in the future when it came available so the bank doesn't have the coins now because of the shortage but they gave you a piece of paper saying you can come here later and get the coins they owe you so you go to the farmer to buy a cow paying the farmer with that piece of banknote instead of real coins because of the bank's credibility the farmer doesn't have no problem accepting it because he knows the piece of paper is just as good as real coins that was the birth of paper currency later on people would rather carry around some paper money instead of 20 pounds of coins paper currency changed the face of global economy it was the first vital step to today's credit card electronic banking and electronic currency without paper currency today's global economic system wouldn't be possible there are a lot more old time technologies that changed our world because the limit of our video let's push the time forward a little which means we're going to pass technologies like steam engine which freed human from doing a lot of labor work as well as making modern industrialization possible also like technology to harness electricity and invention of light bulb which made social and productive activities possible after sundown or more modern technologies like internet and social media came with it made communication worldwide became much more convenient but this one technology i want to talk about before i end this discussion is nuclear submarine what that's random and how can nuclear submarine be a greater technology than computer or cars or rockets well yes all these technologies you mentioned are great and all but those technology didn't save the world all the technologies we talked about today are great without them our world would be totally different but without nuclear submarine our world wouldn't exist anymore after world war ii two super powers united states and soviet russia two nations with more and more nuclear bombs went into cold war both nations had their crosshairs locked on each other's land based and ship-based nuclear bomb launching sites it came to a point that whoever attacked first would be the winner let's simplify it so we can see the picture better in a football field there are two groups of people and each group has 10 men holding a gun aiming at the gun men of the other group but all the gunman's location is fixed and exposed they cannot dodge the coming bullets those gun men are the land-based launching sites also each side has several gunmen moving freely but with their location still exposed so at any given time they are targeted too those freely moving gunman are those ship based launching sites so even they can move freely their situation is not much better here comes the problem even each side doesn't really want to kill the other side but the existence of the other group puts them in great danger even both sides have good hearts and they know to themselves that they don't want to attack but how do they know the other side won't attack first even we know the other side won't attack how do we know the other side know we won't attack them and how do we know they know we know they won't attack first i know you're already confused and have your finger on the trigger because in a situation like this the only answer is to shoot first because if our enemy attacks first all our gunmen will be gone and we will be defenseless just the fear itself will eventually result in one side to pull the triggers no matter they want to or not at that time our world was in a situation like that what they didn't know was that such large scale of nuclear explosions would cause a decades-long nuclear winter which would eventually kill everybody yes they waved around their new weapons without fully understanding the consequences maybe they knew at the point but just didn't have no other choice until nuclear submarine came to the picture nuclear submarines are not just submarines capable of launching nuclear bomb also they are powered by nuclear engines which allows them to stay underwater for as long as four months so with multiple nuclear submarines operating whoever is attacked first will be capable to shoot back and destroy their enemy united states has 71 nuclear submarines operating somewhere in the ocean right now in our football field scenario this means each side has another 10 gunman moving around underground who would not be detected at least not at the same time this changed the game because each side can only eliminate exposed targets attacking first will not make them the winner but committing suicide so the invention of nuclear submarine created the new balance of threat pulled both sides back from a verge of nuclear warfare and saved mankind from extinction i know there are so many more great technologies out there and it's not fair to not even mentioning them i just picked a few that people don't normally think too much
2021-01-11 14:43
