I contribute with some time and money to a local maker movement, and we guide young people to make things.
What this article does not say is that in the past manufacturing was a pain in the ass. Drills or rivets had to be done by hand only 60 years ago, with automatic machines extremely expensive and inconvenient (big, noisy and poisonous to you).
Metal workers will have health problems with the fumes, and lose one or two fingers over their life when they put their hand when they should not.
Artisans were also very secretive about their knowledge.
Now, the 507 movements book is online, and animated so it is way easier to understand, we have computers that let us simulate or do the most complex operation.
You can get any book, ever written, in the world, online!! (Impossible just 10 years ago!!)
Not only that but you can see videos showing you actually how they do what they do.
We have 3d design on computers, we have 3d printing on plastic, metal or ceramic(with EDM, FMD, STA, sintering incredible machines). We have cartesian, delta robots, we have powerful and cheap automatic tools like dremel or drills, or lathes. We have laser and plasma cutters that cut 20mm steel like butter.
We have $100 webcam microscopes and spectrometers.
We have the Internet and we could collaborate designs over the world just sending a file.
Sorry but the "any past was better" makes me sick.
> ... the downside is that it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone who is capable of doing this sort of thing without having access to these tools and machines.
The whole point of the article was nobody can feel that pain even if deliberately, not pointless nostalgia. He's not telling you to start from stone age. He's telling lack of popularity threatens the existence much of the history which was just recently available for the interested parties. Let me put is this way:
> On the other hand, some things do tend to niggle at me. One of these things is the sneaking suspicion that we are in danger of losing track of how to do things at the most fundamental levels. If you go back to 1970, for example, there were legions of programmers who could create the most wondrous software out of 8 bit assembler by hand. These days, by comparison, we have incredibly sophisticated compilers, editing environments and runtimes that can do a lot of the "thinking" and the code generation for us -- the downside is that it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone who is capable of doing this sort of thing without having access to these tools and machines.
We are poised to lose the experience, history and other trivia that makes us what we are now if not preserved and is easily accessible.
I appreciate the elegance and power of CAD and computerized design, but I also worry that we're losing that hands-on approach... or in the words of Vernor Vinge: "No user-servicable parts inside" (Rainbows End)
I sure wish I'd taken more time to learn non-computerized fabrication from my grandfather. As a "fix it yourself" farmer, that man could build / repair damn near any mechanical apparatus. There's a lot of hard-won experience in those old artisans, so we shouldn't be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The more we can learn from the past, the better. Knowledge and skills aren't mutually exclusive.
There's quite a bit of hyperbole in your comment. You certainly can't get every book ever written online. You can't see any skill you feel like on a youtube video. And watching a video doesn't teach you the handskills - it's merely the start of the process. There's no video that teaches you what it feels like to tie a ligature at just the right tension, for example.
Romanticising the past is certainly an issue, but just because we have fancy tools in the present doesn't make us masters-by-default. We can clearly do more than previously - just look at the inside of a computer. But not only is the answer to 'who are the masters?' changing, we need fewer masters overall, thanks to modern manufacturing process. Only one designer can make thousands of articles that are shipped all over the world.
As for lathes, they go back at least hundreds of years by way of English bodgers, and likely much further back than that. And the lathe made by a bodger is going to be cheaper in terms of how long you have to work to get one that a machine lathe purchased in a shop.
I agree with everything you've said but ... there are certain skills that can't be automated. And many of these skills require practice so that your hands are making precisely the right movements. You can't be good at playing the piano without practice, and there are still certain hand-crafting skills that are the same.
"Artisans were also very secretive about their knowledge." They probably still are to an extent, it gives you an advantage over others. In the past the secrets of a trade tended to have the same borders as countries.
I'm one of those people that answers this question, "absolutely not!" Even though it's not in the news or on everyone's Facebook timeline, there are amazing craftsmen still roaming the earth and passing their craft down to beginners. My evidence? I run a website that's dedicated to a traditional art called Pinstriping http://www.pinheadlounge.com/ . Even though the legendary masters may not be directly connected to the site, you can clearly see their influences on the craft. I think it's careless to assume just because someone isn't tweeting their entire life or making huge waves, that they're not training the next apprentice. A lot of this work has always been a little behind the scenes, offline and a definitely has its share of trade secrets. I see many young people on this site doing killer work and this is only one, tiny sampling of the niche.
Take one of the most well regarded users on the site and an aging craftsman (almost 40 years of experience):
I've also worked with metal smiths, letterheads, prepress/letterpress/typesetting/lead pros, hot rod enthusiasts and all kinds of other "lost arts" that are readily being passed to anyone who wants to learn.
There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be digital any time soon.
> There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be digital any time soon.
I'm convinced the internet is a huge boon to traditional arts and crafts - the more "niche" a topic becomes, the bigger the risk of the communities fragmenting and dying off in isolation. The internet fixes that, because it's easier to maintain a core of enthusiasts, even if they are spread out over long distances.
It's not unlike how the internet has done amazing things for programming. Maybe you need a bit of extra help for other crafts, like adding video tutorials for the things that require a more "monkey see, monkey do" than a written approach. However, I'd say that in general it's easier than ever to keep a core community of masters of a craft alive, or revive it for that matter.
He should probably add "in the western world" to the article too. Go to any third world country, sub-Saharan African country or anywhere in South East Asia and you can see those forgotten skills at work everywhere. Labour is still very manual, everything still created mainly by hand. If something breaks it doesn't get thrown away, it gets fixed someway, even if it means some fabricated patch.
When machines are expensive, power is scarce (or unreliable) and much more difficult to transport - cheap labour will win.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post though. It may not be as common in the western countries as it used to be, but it is not lost.
Here is a practical concern: What if there was some kind of collapse of society or catastrophic scenario where it wasn't possible to run power plants, internet, and/or phone service on a large scale anymore. Choose your favorite doomsday scenario: Comet hits the earth, nuclear holocaust, or even an all-out conventional global war.
How long would it take for the world to come back from that without access to our current electronic tools and online repo of limitless knowledge? Many fundamental things would have to be re-learned.
This is the idea behind a site I've always wanted to create:
The A.R.K. Project (Apocalypse Reboot Kit)
The basic idea is to categorize different apocalyptic scenarios (zombies, ww3, comet, biohazard wipe-out, etc) and develop 'kits' to bring back civilization. Some kits could be quite small, maybe a collection of books on how to get power stations back up and running, etc (for scenarios where basically only people got wiped out)to full on room sized kits which may have to go back to the very basics, - teaching people how to read, how to extract ore from the ground and so on.
I thought it could make for an interesting forum based site, with discussions about what would go into each kit, finding old books like the one mentioned in the fine article all the way up to philosophical discussions regarding would you want to reintroduce religion to a primitive society, if not, how would you deal with man's instinct to inquire to the unknown?
I may still try to get it up and running one day...
Go find some old films and see where Japan and Germany were just 5-10 years after being all but flattened in WWII. They didn't reconstruct in isolation obviously, but it's pretty amazing what humans can do.
You're aware of Wikimedia's doomsday policy? For some reason I cant find the link, but the gist is if the world finds itself close to a calamitous scenario, operators around the world are to begin printing articles deemed important for basic survival.
There's a really interesting book series called "The Cross Time Engineer". It puts a modern day engineer back into the middle ages and follows his path to rebooting an industrial society from just the knowledge in his skull.
While it's surely not wholly accurate, everything related to the material science and technology level is at least plausible.
The world gets destroyed as we know it, how to use a lathe is the least of your problems.
Open your fridge, pick anything from it. Think of the supply chain and layers upon layers of society that was needed to get that to you.
You can now be, fearful that in an apocalypse event all that wouldn't be there and you'd be stuffed (which is perfectly correct reasoning) or you can appreciate the world as it is now and how it probably will be tomorrow.
> How long would it take for the world to come back from that without access to our current electronic tools and online repo of limitless knowledge?
In the initial post-collapse scenario there'd be a massive die-off. Cities would be impossible to live in, only those with access to water supplies and crop packages would get to live. Those in the third world would, ironically, be much better placed than those in developed countries from the perspective of not noticing things going sideways.
The common theme, regression to more local form of government, i.e. feudalism, would probably play out.
To build back up from there would take hundreds of years. You'd have to be in a position to re-establish supply chains. Which would require both the ability to organise on a significant level and the ability to have a crop surplus to support non farming specialists.
The saving grace would be the existence of certain select bits of knowledge; the idea of levers, basic mathematics entrenched in a very efficient number system, simple bits of tech like heliographs and one time pads, the printing press. Stuff that, if you're aware it's possible, you can make with relatively little effort. And social themes, like the idea of loans and relatively free trade that allow innovation to happen, the scientific methods - stuff like that.
I don't think that having books about how to make a machine shop would honestly make that much difference. We could work that stuff out for ourselves by the time we were in a position to operationalise it.
Hundreds of years, most of which would be things like getting agriculture in place, waiting for the population to grow to a decent size - things like that - rather than reinventing stuff.
Agreed. If there were something catastrophic that were to happen, there would be a whole lot of levels between the skills needed to camp out and the skills needed to stand up a large server farm or wafer fab that would be challenging to traverse. Some of the intermediate levels are still in living memory or are well-documented, but some of them would need to be reverse engineered through trial and error and may not even be apparent at this point.
The 507 mechanical movements book he references is fairly well known and has been discussed in various places before. There is a website dedicated to each movement from the book, with animations for many of the motions.
This is only tangentially related to the article, but 507 Mechanical Movements is available as a website: http://507movements.com/ Some of the movements have been animated as well.
How is this at all annoyance with a younger generation? There's a lot of knowledge, such as of music, that's only passed on through oral or hands-on teaching. This knowledge lives on by mere virtue of the continued survival of the people who know it.
If enough of these kinds of "masters" die, some if not most of that knowledge will be lost forever.
And replacing it with new skills and new craftsmanship. Let's see one of those fancypants metalworkers even concieve of (let alone build) even the most simple user authentication system!
I thought this was interesting, but I disagree with the premise. In the software world, the equivalent of building a machine shop from scratch is called bootstrapping. The first programs are written in an assembly language which is difficult for humans to read or write. These first programs generally facilitate a higher level of abstraction; a compiler or interpreter for a more human readable programming language.
This second generation of tools allows for quicker development cycles, leading to even better tools. For instance, the C language led to Unix[1] which led to the Internet which led to a combinatorial explosion of software. It works the same way in physical reality - with each generation of development, the act of creation inches closer to pure thought. It's called progress. If you can't keep up, I don't care.
A similar phenomenon happens to human beings. Societal developments insulate us from the hardship of actually being self-sufficient. It's easier to be prosperous now than ever before in history, and it's made us all incredibly soft. Grab a kitchen knife and try to kill a squirrel before you start planning your post-apocalyptic charcoal forge.
1. I realize that Unix sort of begat C, but that doesn't really change anything.
Much like the (re)discovery of Absinthe production, I believe a lot of these crafts will be rediscovered and preserved. The difference these days, rather than centuries past, is the exceptional amount of documentation and preservation of technique in text (and recently video).
There are innumerable resources available today that just wasn't back then so this information will be preserved by and large. We just need to ensure it's carefully curated for young minds to absorb well into the future.
Every time I go to a swap meet or a tag sale, the first thing I look for are books. Even old magazines, trade publications and catalogs can reveal a great deal of ingenuity and fascinating technical knowhow. I don't have the time to scan and digitize these (besides, I don't know what the copyright implications would be), but I try to see what learn from these as much as possible. Many of these were limited print to begin with and were summarily discarded once the next seasons' gadgets/appliances came about so they need preservation.
I can see prime real-estate for a startup doing something similar. It's a massive job to rebuild a library, but I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to get access to all these treasures.
Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright, at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for archiving.
But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to read today because the hardware is so rare.
The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels.
We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically meaningless "metadata."
From the wikipedia page: "Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by the means of the preservation of the book The Way Things Work, which had been wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank prior to Hammerfall and later retrieved by a resourceful character who realized its potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world."
I found myself inspired by this book — now I often think about what I could build all by myself in a post-apocalyptic world.
I think one area where we may be losing the secrets is with vacuum tube amplifier behaviour and design. Electrical Engineering students no longer study it (for obvious reasons... its all been replaced with solid state) but it is still important in audio recording. Companies still make tube gear (like for example Universal Audio in California) but I have heard that it is becoming basically impossible to hire an electrical engineer with tube circuit design skills.
Tubes aren't all that terribly different from transistors; the characteristic curves are slightly different but the circuit topologies are basically the same as those of transistor circuits.
This makes me more relieved that Jeri Ellsworth managed to make transistors (in a kiln starting with a plain silicon wafer) after interviewing retired Fairchild engineers about some details. At least we probably won't lose that, assuming someone survives who watched her videos.
Vacuum tube audio is the very picture of a solved problem. You can look it up in a textbook or copy the schematic of old equipment.
Vacuum device engineering is alive and well. It's just that a top radio power designer or particle accelerator designer won't throw away his career to become a handbook engineer designing antique reproductions at a what amounts to a toy company.
[+] [-] forgottenpaswrd|12 years ago|reply
I contribute with some time and money to a local maker movement, and we guide young people to make things.
What this article does not say is that in the past manufacturing was a pain in the ass. Drills or rivets had to be done by hand only 60 years ago, with automatic machines extremely expensive and inconvenient (big, noisy and poisonous to you).
Metal workers will have health problems with the fumes, and lose one or two fingers over their life when they put their hand when they should not.
Artisans were also very secretive about their knowledge.
Now, the 507 movements book is online, and animated so it is way easier to understand, we have computers that let us simulate or do the most complex operation.
You can get any book, ever written, in the world, online!! (Impossible just 10 years ago!!)
Not only that but you can see videos showing you actually how they do what they do.
We have 3d design on computers, we have 3d printing on plastic, metal or ceramic(with EDM, FMD, STA, sintering incredible machines). We have cartesian, delta robots, we have powerful and cheap automatic tools like dremel or drills, or lathes. We have laser and plasma cutters that cut 20mm steel like butter.
We have $100 webcam microscopes and spectrometers.
We have the Internet and we could collaborate designs over the world just sending a file.
Sorry but the "any past was better" makes me sick.
[+] [-] artificialidiot|12 years ago|reply
The whole point of the article was nobody can feel that pain even if deliberately, not pointless nostalgia. He's not telling you to start from stone age. He's telling lack of popularity threatens the existence much of the history which was just recently available for the interested parties. Let me put is this way:
> On the other hand, some things do tend to niggle at me. One of these things is the sneaking suspicion that we are in danger of losing track of how to do things at the most fundamental levels. If you go back to 1970, for example, there were legions of programmers who could create the most wondrous software out of 8 bit assembler by hand. These days, by comparison, we have incredibly sophisticated compilers, editing environments and runtimes that can do a lot of the "thinking" and the code generation for us -- the downside is that it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone who is capable of doing this sort of thing without having access to these tools and machines.
We are poised to lose the experience, history and other trivia that makes us what we are now if not preserved and is easily accessible.
[+] [-] beambot|12 years ago|reply
I sure wish I'd taken more time to learn non-computerized fabrication from my grandfather. As a "fix it yourself" farmer, that man could build / repair damn near any mechanical apparatus. There's a lot of hard-won experience in those old artisans, so we shouldn't be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The more we can learn from the past, the better. Knowledge and skills aren't mutually exclusive.
[+] [-] vacri|12 years ago|reply
Romanticising the past is certainly an issue, but just because we have fancy tools in the present doesn't make us masters-by-default. We can clearly do more than previously - just look at the inside of a computer. But not only is the answer to 'who are the masters?' changing, we need fewer masters overall, thanks to modern manufacturing process. Only one designer can make thousands of articles that are shipped all over the world.
As for lathes, they go back at least hundreds of years by way of English bodgers, and likely much further back than that. And the lathe made by a bodger is going to be cheaper in terms of how long you have to work to get one that a machine lathe purchased in a shop.
[+] [-] smoyer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NAFV_P|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazyant|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaffneue|12 years ago|reply
Take one of the most well regarded users on the site and an aging craftsman (almost 40 years of experience):
http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/0/644/12032/lg_DSC02868....
And compare it with a upcoming novice, who's just doing killer work (and is a woman, I might add):
http://www.pinheadlounge.com/photos/2000/2793/170630/lg_1233...
I've also worked with metal smiths, letterheads, prepress/letterpress/typesetting/lead pros, hot rod enthusiasts and all kinds of other "lost arts" that are readily being passed to anyone who wants to learn.
There's still demand and still a market for this stuff even among younger people (I'm fascinated by it and I'm in my 30s) and it's not going to be digital any time soon.
[+] [-] vanderZwan|12 years ago|reply
I'm convinced the internet is a huge boon to traditional arts and crafts - the more "niche" a topic becomes, the bigger the risk of the communities fragmenting and dying off in isolation. The internet fixes that, because it's easier to maintain a core of enthusiasts, even if they are spread out over long distances.
It's not unlike how the internet has done amazing things for programming. Maybe you need a bit of extra help for other crafts, like adding video tutorials for the things that require a more "monkey see, monkey do" than a written approach. However, I'd say that in general it's easier than ever to keep a core community of masters of a craft alive, or revive it for that matter.
[+] [-] kamjam|12 years ago|reply
When machines are expensive, power is scarce (or unreliable) and much more difficult to transport - cheap labour will win.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post though. It may not be as common in the western countries as it used to be, but it is not lost.
[+] [-] damian2000|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanackley|12 years ago|reply
How long would it take for the world to come back from that without access to our current electronic tools and online repo of limitless knowledge? Many fundamental things would have to be re-learned.
[+] [-] nekopa|12 years ago|reply
The A.R.K. Project (Apocalypse Reboot Kit)
The basic idea is to categorize different apocalyptic scenarios (zombies, ww3, comet, biohazard wipe-out, etc) and develop 'kits' to bring back civilization. Some kits could be quite small, maybe a collection of books on how to get power stations back up and running, etc (for scenarios where basically only people got wiped out)to full on room sized kits which may have to go back to the very basics, - teaching people how to read, how to extract ore from the ground and so on.
I thought it could make for an interesting forum based site, with discussions about what would go into each kit, finding old books like the one mentioned in the fine article all the way up to philosophical discussions regarding would you want to reintroduce religion to a primitive society, if not, how would you deal with man's instinct to inquire to the unknown?
I may still try to get it up and running one day...
[+] [-] marshray|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexDanger|12 years ago|reply
Anyone got a link?
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|12 years ago|reply
While it's surely not wholly accurate, everything related to the material science and technology level is at least plausible.
http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-...
[+] [-] aunty_helen|12 years ago|reply
The world gets destroyed as we know it, how to use a lathe is the least of your problems.
Open your fridge, pick anything from it. Think of the supply chain and layers upon layers of society that was needed to get that to you. You can now be, fearful that in an apocalypse event all that wouldn't be there and you'd be stuffed (which is perfectly correct reasoning) or you can appreciate the world as it is now and how it probably will be tomorrow.
[+] [-] 6d0debc071|12 years ago|reply
In the initial post-collapse scenario there'd be a massive die-off. Cities would be impossible to live in, only those with access to water supplies and crop packages would get to live. Those in the third world would, ironically, be much better placed than those in developed countries from the perspective of not noticing things going sideways.
The common theme, regression to more local form of government, i.e. feudalism, would probably play out.
To build back up from there would take hundreds of years. You'd have to be in a position to re-establish supply chains. Which would require both the ability to organise on a significant level and the ability to have a crop surplus to support non farming specialists.
The saving grace would be the existence of certain select bits of knowledge; the idea of levers, basic mathematics entrenched in a very efficient number system, simple bits of tech like heliographs and one time pads, the printing press. Stuff that, if you're aware it's possible, you can make with relatively little effort. And social themes, like the idea of loans and relatively free trade that allow innovation to happen, the scientific methods - stuff like that.
I don't think that having books about how to make a machine shop would honestly make that much difference. We could work that stuff out for ourselves by the time we were in a position to operationalise it.
Hundreds of years, most of which would be things like getting agriculture in place, waiting for the population to grow to a decent size - things like that - rather than reinventing stuff.
[+] [-] allochthon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auggierose|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droithomme|12 years ago|reply
http://507movements.com/
[+] [-] timmaxw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marshray|12 years ago|reply
But still, I can't shake the feeling like this is one of those "kids these days...get off my lawn" moments.
[+] [-] aimhb|12 years ago|reply
If enough of these kinds of "masters" die, some if not most of that knowledge will be lost forever.
[+] [-] tomphoolery|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npx|12 years ago|reply
This second generation of tools allows for quicker development cycles, leading to even better tools. For instance, the C language led to Unix[1] which led to the Internet which led to a combinatorial explosion of software. It works the same way in physical reality - with each generation of development, the act of creation inches closer to pure thought. It's called progress. If you can't keep up, I don't care.
A similar phenomenon happens to human beings. Societal developments insulate us from the hardship of actually being self-sufficient. It's easier to be prosperous now than ever before in history, and it's made us all incredibly soft. Grab a kitchen knife and try to kill a squirrel before you start planning your post-apocalyptic charcoal forge.
1. I realize that Unix sort of begat C, but that doesn't really change anything.
[+] [-] eksith|12 years ago|reply
There are innumerable resources available today that just wasn't back then so this information will be preserved by and large. We just need to ensure it's carefully curated for young minds to absorb well into the future.
Every time I go to a swap meet or a tag sale, the first thing I look for are books. Even old magazines, trade publications and catalogs can reveal a great deal of ingenuity and fascinating technical knowhow. I don't have the time to scan and digitize these (besides, I don't know what the copyright implications would be), but I try to see what learn from these as much as possible. Many of these were limited print to begin with and were summarily discarded once the next seasons' gadgets/appliances came about so they need preservation.
I can see prime real-estate for a startup doing something similar. It's a massive job to rebuild a library, but I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to get access to all these treasures.
[+] [-] Amadou|12 years ago|reply
Building it is only a fraction of the effort. Maintaining it is where it gets exceptionally hard. Until very recently we had a system in the US - most worthwhile ideas made it into print and as part of registering for copyright, at least one copy of the book was sent to the Library of Congress for archiving.
But the internet has made knowledge ephemeral and there isn't any formal system for preserving knowledge anymore. We've got places like the wayback machine, which is great, but isn't anywhere near the kind of capacity we need AND it is fragile too. Unlike books, the media we use rapidly becomes obsolete. Most storage formats from 30 years ago are extremely difficult to read today because the hardware is so rare.
The guys at the wayback machine, project gutenberg and others are working on the problem but the scope is just so absolutely enormous that its basically impossible. It is a certainty that this start of "internet age" is going to be a black hole in history a couple of centuries down the line. Nearly everything we do and say online is going to be forgotten at unprecedented levels.
We need an NSA - National Storage Agency - dedicated to archiving the knowledge and culture expressed on the internet instead of practically meaningless "metadata."
[+] [-] jwr|12 years ago|reply
From the wikipedia page: "Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by the means of the preservation of the book The Way Things Work, which had been wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank prior to Hammerfall and later retrieved by a resourceful character who realized its potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world."
I found myself inspired by this book — now I often think about what I could build all by myself in a post-apocalyptic world.
[+] [-] retrogradeorbit|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mng2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daniel_Newby|12 years ago|reply
Vacuum device engineering is alive and well. It's just that a top radio power designer or particle accelerator designer won't throw away his career to become a handbook engineer designing antique reproductions at a what amounts to a toy company.