Kevin Kelly, an editor for Wired, recently made a bold claim on NPR: “I say there is no species of technology that have ever gone globally extinct on this planet. . . I can’t find any [invention, tool, technology] that has disappeared completely from Earth.”
Nothing? I asked. Brass helmets? Detachable shirt collars? Chariot wheels?
Nothing, he said.
Can’t be, I told him. Tools do hang around, but some must go extinct.
If only because of the hubris — the absolute nature of the claim — I told him it would take me a half hour to find a tool, an invention that is no longer being made anywhere by anybody.
Go ahead, he said. Try.
If you listen to our Morning Edition debate, I tried carbon paper (still being made), steam powered car engine parts (still being made), Paleolithic hammers (still being made), 6 pages of agricultural tools from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue (every one of them still being made), and to my utter astonishment, I couldn’t find a provable example of an technology that has disappeared completely.
Robert Krulwich, the NPR correspondent who interviewed Kelly, asked readers for suggestions on dead technologies and included a few in a follow-up article. No one seems to have found an example yet. Can you think of one?
(Via: Neatorama)
February 3rd, 2011 | 10:20 am
Wooden false teeth. (Yeah, Washington didn’t really have them, but they did exist.)
Lead paint (for structural, not artistic, use.) Not sure, maybe it’s still manufactured overseas somewhere, but I rather doubt it.
February 3rd, 2011 | 10:26 am
I think the disqualification of Greek Fire is wrong. It was a technology that of enormous strategic importance when it appeared in the 7th century, used for centuries, and then disappeared.
February 3rd, 2011 | 10:42 am
This thing:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/ancient-device-was-used-to-predict-solar-eclipses-and-olympic-dates-15014147.html
February 3rd, 2011 | 10:47 am
I own a 19th century page cutter (mine is ivory), which might be called a variation on a letter opener, but differs in having a guide alongside the blade, parallel to it and separated by just a couple millimeters. They were used in the days when you bought books but the pages of the sewn “signatures,” where sheets were folded after printing, had not been cut. Who would make such a tool today?
February 3rd, 2011 | 10:58 am
pentamom Wooden false teeth. . . Lead paint
We still have those technologies (false teeth and paint), we just use different materials.
I think the disqualification of Greek Fire is wrong.
It hasn’t completely disappeared. Here is one made out of Legos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk
Matt I own a 19th century page cutter (mine is ivory), which might be called a variation on a letter opener, but differs in having a guide alongside the blade, parallel to it and separated by just a couple millimeters.
That sounds similar to this product.
February 3rd, 2011 | 11:09 am
About those page cutters: in the late 1970s I was at the University of Virginia, and was often assigned books with uncut pages. These were books printed in France. I assumed that somewhere, someone was still making page cutters (I could’ve used one, although my manicure scissors gave a pretty scalloped edge!). For all I know, some books are still being printed in this way.
February 3rd, 2011 | 11:09 am
Joe,
No, I have one of those too, and what I’m talking about is quite differently designed. Still, in conception and function it may be similar enough . . .
February 3rd, 2011 | 11:42 am
Part of the difficulty in answering the question is due to the fact that technology doesn’t have well-defined species, so “species of technology” always allows too much wiggle-room.
For instance, Liam is quite right: Greek Fire did go extinct. We can, based on what evidence we have, reconstitute some reasonable approximation if we want, but we have no idea what the actual Byzantine formula was; nor is there any close cousin in regular use (as opposed to, say, possible demonstrations by historians) for anything like the function Greek Fire was used for. One could expand the “species of technology” so that it’s so broad lots of things not very like Greek Fire count (various incendiary mixes and so forth), but that just shows how much wiggle-room is being left open by saying that “species of technology” don’t go extinct.
Another example: the technology for going to the Moon is currently extinct; the technology we originally used couldn’t be pressed into service now without massive reworking, crucial records and designs have vanished, and the people who have the sort of expertise to start over from scratch are not all in one place to do it. But, of course, should it ever become a major priority, there’s nothing to prevent it from being revived in new form, and one can use the vagueness of “species of technology” to say that going to the Moon is just a form of going into space, and we can still do that.
February 3rd, 2011 | 11:44 am
Kodachrome?
February 3rd, 2011 | 12:13 pm
The cement used by the ancient Romans was far superior to portland cement, and the technology was lost. No one knows how it was made.
You might say that we still use cement, but it’s a different, inferior, technology used today.
February 3rd, 2011 | 12:39 pm
Jack Perry No one knows how it was made.
Here is an article from 1993 that claims that scientists know how Romans created that type of cement.
February 3rd, 2011 | 12:41 pm
Yes, it’s hard to draw the line between what is “the same technology in a different form” and “what is different technology.”
Is an iPod the same technology as a gramophone? Both are “devices for playing recorded music.” The difference between wooden false teeth held in by thread and a modern permanent bridge, or modern removable dentures, isn’t quite as great as that, but it’s pretty a pretty significant difference in construction as well as function. You actually had to take the old kind of false teeth OUT to eat, rather than vice versa with modern dentures.
A definition of “technology” seems essential to this pursuit.
February 3rd, 2011 | 12:46 pm
Hey, cool. I didn’t know they’d done that. Makes me feel a little better about the dam at least.
On the other hand, it doesn’t negate the fact that the cement used by ancient Romans went out of production for 2000 years.
February 3rd, 2011 | 1:02 pm
Brandon the technology for going to the Moon is currently extinct
Hmm. . . that may be true, but I’m not quite sure. The trip to the moon was reached by combining various technologies for a single purpose. Most of these technologies probably still exist in some form, though there may be some that don’t.
Anon Kodachrome?
Technically, Kodachrome is just a brand name for a particular color reversal process. Here is what Wikipedia says about the current state of the technology:
Pentamom Is an iPod the same technology as a gramophone? Both are “devices for playing recorded music.”
The NPR story doesn’t explain Kelly’s definition of technology, but from the examples I think we can make a few distinctions:
1. Difference in materials is not a significant difference in technology. (Dentures and concrete may use different materials now, but they are basically the same technology.)
2. Differences in components is a significant difference in technology. (Thus, an iPhone and gramaphone are two distinct technologies even though they share a related purpose.)
Jack Perry Hey, cool. I didn’t know they’d done that.
You get credit for at least thinking of something obscure. My best guess was 8-track tapes. ; )
February 3rd, 2011 | 1:47 pm
How about vacuum tube computers? This is an example of an older technology that is not only less efficient, but also more complicated and expensive than the modern version.
February 3rd, 2011 | 3:52 pm
NASA uses vacuum tubes to this day for robustness.
February 3rd, 2011 | 5:15 pm
Kodak disc film. Everyone remembers Kodachrome, few remember it. 110 film was also extinct but for one german manufacturer who rereleased in in 2010.
February 3rd, 2011 | 6:42 pm
Please say we’re not still using chastity belts.
February 3rd, 2011 | 8:52 pm
I note that many of the examples provided consisted of people making deliberately anachronistic objects for the enjoyment of their anachronism. One might consider those who hand-manufacture and wear authentic Roman legionary equipment for re-enactment purposes. Certainly this type of activity does not constitute “survival” of the specific technology in any meaningful sense. If one argues that it does, then my response is that this form of the claim “no technology has ever died” is so devoid of interest as to be trivial. I would also point out, as Jack Perry does above, that many Roman technologies did die out for hundreds or thousands of years. We should not be so sure that our technologies, with their far more complex, geographically dispersed, and interdependent manufacturing processes, will not eventually suffer this fate for an indefinite period.
February 3rd, 2011 | 10:19 pm
I doubt anyone is making Revigators anymore.
February 3rd, 2011 | 11:32 pm
Isn’t it likely that there is a technology that has fully passed out of human memory, but we can’t think of it because… you know, it has passed out of human memory?
Every example suggested so far are things we’re somewhat familiar with. Right off the bat, that’s not likely to meet the question’s criteria.
Seems like a rigged question to me. Clever, but rigged.
February 3rd, 2011 | 11:49 pm
How about a strigil. Romans used them to scrape olive oil, dirt and sweat from their bodies – they did not use soap. I bet they’re not made or used. I did see one used in an episode of Rome, but I don’t think historical reproductions count.
February 4th, 2011 | 12:08 am
Stradivari violins?
February 4th, 2011 | 9:32 am
A standard problem for those of us who work in archives is the need to “migrate” information from one storage medium to another, as various media become extinct. Floppy discs? Wire recorders and their spools? Beta VHS machines? Cuneiform tablets?
February 4th, 2011 | 3:50 pm
This has degenerated into a question of semantics. If extinct means there are no longer any new examples of the technology, then non-substantive color reversal film (i. e. Kodachrome) is extinct. If extinct means there are no longer any new examples of the technology, AND the information necessary to recreate the item is gone, then Greek fire and Stradivarius violins are two of the few extinct technologies.
February 4th, 2011 | 7:43 pm
As Ron Andrew said, what do you mean by “extinct?”
Is it merely a technology that has become 100% obsolete, or one that we literally no longer know how to make?
The astrolabe, for instance, is a device that we understand quite well and can even be made from paper, but the technology (in both method and material) has been entirely superseded by new technologies.
But if that’s not acceptable than it would have to be a technology that we know enough to know it existed but not how it was made or functioned.
That there is a separate category which consists of technology which we no longer make and we don’t even know about should be regarded as a very safe assumption.
Take the Antikythera Mechanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Until its functions were explored in the 1950′s it was a properly extinct technology.
Likewise we can even assume that there are objects we know about, that may or may not have a function, which could very well constitute an extinct technology.
Stonehenge would be a good example of such a thing.
——
Really what is being suggested then is not that “there is no such thing as an extinct technology” but rather that we have not yet encountered a technology who’s purpose and function are not revealed to us by scientific inquiry (which again, with things like Stonehenge, is dubious).
But that’s obviously a much less extreme claim.
February 5th, 2011 | 10:26 pm
Ditto machines and mimeograph machines, maybe.
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