For one fascinating take on water worlds, try reading Jack Vance's Blue World. Also a rattling good story.
Hans
Retro-Tech: Uncommon solutions to problems on 11,000 worlds
- Thread starter Whipsnade
- Start date
Hans
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
ThunderChilde
SOC-13
With 'flets'? Good ideas.
What pray tell are 'flets?
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Wooden platforms in the branches of the mallorn trees in Lothlorien.
How often is the Space Amish explanation used? Someone or other said it was used a lot. I always thought it should be limited.
The explanation I often used(though sometimes I had specific explanations) was that nobody had made a great effort to up-tech the planet. I assumed that most of the natives lived a life disconnected from the intersteller world. We are after all talking of whole planets. The local Starport can simply not receive much traffic. Or so on.
But this is a fairly good addition to that idea. I always thought multi-blade knives made off world would go over well as trade goods. There would be little need to revamp their entire educational system.
The explanation I often used(though sometimes I had specific explanations) was that nobody had made a great effort to up-tech the planet. I assumed that most of the natives lived a life disconnected from the intersteller world. We are after all talking of whole planets. The local Starport can simply not receive much traffic. Or so on.
But this is a fairly good addition to that idea. I always thought multi-blade knives made off world would go over well as trade goods. There would be little need to revamp their entire educational system.
saundby
SOC-14 1K
The control system of the Titan liquid rocket engines is basically a hydraulic computer. One valve in particular integrates a number of functions into a complex control system. Its response time is good enough for rocket control, where anything other than combustion instability can be managed with a ~250mS response time. Combustion instability you manage a.)through designing to avoid it, and b.)by wrapping a "burn wire" around your thrust chamber so that you can tell if there's been burn through or worse, and close any remaining propellant valves to limit the damage.
I think the Titan engine is one of the finest examples of Victorian technology finished a few years too late for either Victoria or Edward.
Like analog computers, it'd cost a lot more to make a general purpose hydraulic computer than a bunch of specialized ones for specific tasks or with limited programmability. The program gets built in.
Emulsion photography can be implemented in really low tech, and look at all the applications that's got. Even without optics you have contact printing. Document and drawn image reproduction, light recording (e.g. record the trail of a match over the paper's surface), event timing, etc.
Add flat mirrors and a tent then you can make images with a camera obscura. Add the concepts of pressure and heat sensitive papers and the applications grow. You could even play tricks on local high tech civilizations that have gone digital. Do they still remember to check for latent images on paper? Or do they just do cryptanalysis on the visible part of the message because that's what's easy and obvious to them?
When I worked in a calibration lab, we had several hand-made wooden hygroscopes that we used as checks on our higher-tech humidity instrumentation. They allowed us to catch errors in the "modern" instrumentation several times in the year I was there. A set of old breaks in the bones of one of my hands let me catch errors in our electric barometer a couple of times, which led to getting special dispensation to allow a real mercury barometer in the lab. We needed special permission because of the "environmental hazard" of the mercury, never mind that the perfectly natural ground outside the back door was lousy with cinnabar (when approval for mercury was slow in coming, I suggested we get our own off the rocks. Our manager didn't approve of the idea...once he could stop laughing.)
When using retro-tech in games, I often like to have details about operational compromises that are made with the technology so that it doesn't just become a new name for the same thing. Displays that have to be used in dark rooms as the lighting is too dim to use in direct light, oars and/or sails for tacking with rotor ships (the real ships like the Baden Baden at the start of the thread had to turn off the rotors and use auxiliary engines to tack), etc.
I think the Titan engine is one of the finest examples of Victorian technology finished a few years too late for either Victoria or Edward.
Like analog computers, it'd cost a lot more to make a general purpose hydraulic computer than a bunch of specialized ones for specific tasks or with limited programmability. The program gets built in.
Emulsion photography can be implemented in really low tech, and look at all the applications that's got. Even without optics you have contact printing. Document and drawn image reproduction, light recording (e.g. record the trail of a match over the paper's surface), event timing, etc.
Add flat mirrors and a tent then you can make images with a camera obscura. Add the concepts of pressure and heat sensitive papers and the applications grow. You could even play tricks on local high tech civilizations that have gone digital. Do they still remember to check for latent images on paper? Or do they just do cryptanalysis on the visible part of the message because that's what's easy and obvious to them?
When I worked in a calibration lab, we had several hand-made wooden hygroscopes that we used as checks on our higher-tech humidity instrumentation. They allowed us to catch errors in the "modern" instrumentation several times in the year I was there. A set of old breaks in the bones of one of my hands let me catch errors in our electric barometer a couple of times, which led to getting special dispensation to allow a real mercury barometer in the lab. We needed special permission because of the "environmental hazard" of the mercury, never mind that the perfectly natural ground outside the back door was lousy with cinnabar (when approval for mercury was slow in coming, I suggested we get our own off the rocks. Our manager didn't approve of the idea...once he could stop laughing.)
When using retro-tech in games, I often like to have details about operational compromises that are made with the technology so that it doesn't just become a new name for the same thing. Displays that have to be used in dark rooms as the lighting is too dim to use in direct light, oars and/or sails for tacking with rotor ships (the real ships like the Baden Baden at the start of the thread had to turn off the rotors and use auxiliary engines to tack), etc.
The fax machine dates to the mid 19th C... until telegraphy was common, it wasn't much use, but the techniques are a few ears older than telegraphy.
The printing press simply wasn't done by lack of idea; the "modern" automatic presses are essentially replicatable at any tech level that can make metal clockworks. Moveable type was done by TL3 in China. Etched plate image copying was in use by 1810 (and is part of the reason for the poor quality of the US Constitution), as black ink on a copper plate in certain solutions etches the copper without actually destroying the carbon based inks.
The printing press simply wasn't done by lack of idea; the "modern" automatic presses are essentially replicatable at any tech level that can make metal clockworks. Moveable type was done by TL3 in China. Etched plate image copying was in use by 1810 (and is part of the reason for the poor quality of the US Constitution), as black ink on a copper plate in certain solutions etches the copper without actually destroying the carbon based inks.
Yep, law enforcement used it to rapidly disseminate pictures of wanted men to far flung agencies early in the 20th century.
fredofmars
SOC-12
All automotive automatic transmissions before the advent of electronics (and to a lesser extent still now) are hydraulic computers, though not general purpose ones. They're really quite ingenious in the way they use the various channels and control elements to decide which gear to put the transmission into.
Not if you can't sharpen it once it dulls!
Isn't the idea to sell axes that never dull?
No such thing... there are ones that last longer than others, tho'... but those also are the hardest to sharpen, too...
So you pay the people of the trading post to sharpen it for you. If they didn't include that in the original offer.
Hans
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
I see tech level as an average of a planet's technology, not the highest or lowest... it can vary up or down several levels just as it does here on Earth today.
One fairly low tech device not mentioned that would work good on any planet but best on those with thin atmospheres is the heliograph. These were used in the 19th century here by militaries around the world. A heliograph is capable of transmitting a signal over as much as 100+ miles. In a thin atmosphere the only limit would be the line of sight between sender and receiver. It would be almost like a laser telepgraph system.
A series of heliograph stations on a thin atmosphere planet could literally send a message around the planet in a matter of minutes! One station recieves the last one's message while transmitting it to the next on second unit. Of course, the rate and amount of data sent is fairly low being a morse code-like device but, for the technology it is very impressive.
http://www.discoverseaz.com/History/Miles_Helio.html
The map is very interesting as it shows stations 50 to 100 miles apart.
http://myweb.cableone.net/kd7aoi/news.htm
They are easy to build as shown
One fairly low tech device not mentioned that would work good on any planet but best on those with thin atmospheres is the heliograph. These were used in the 19th century here by militaries around the world. A heliograph is capable of transmitting a signal over as much as 100+ miles. In a thin atmosphere the only limit would be the line of sight between sender and receiver. It would be almost like a laser telepgraph system.
A series of heliograph stations on a thin atmosphere planet could literally send a message around the planet in a matter of minutes! One station recieves the last one's message while transmitting it to the next on second unit. Of course, the rate and amount of data sent is fairly low being a morse code-like device but, for the technology it is very impressive.
http://www.discoverseaz.com/History/Miles_Helio.html
The map is very interesting as it shows stations 50 to 100 miles apart.
http://myweb.cableone.net/kd7aoi/news.htm
They are easy to build as shown
Acually, you may use planetary model of local discrepancy for interplanetary situation.
IMTU I find practical to consider the planetary TL as the TL at which things that are available for travellers could be built, and that not all things of that TL are build.
People that build straw hut at tl 2 and that are supplied AK 47 (tl 6) to fight are on a TL 2 'world". Pagaton/268 90% water TL 4 is J2 from Fiorine/268 an industrial world TL A with trace athmosphere and billions strong population. Seafood is obviously exported to Fiorine that can afford to pay in TL A industrial goods. The locally built sampans and lobster boats may be built of local wood and work with sails, but they may use alloy plates and engine built on Fiorine. Basically any things available on Fiorine is available on Pagaton for the relevant price in the right catalogue. You simply have to understand that they do not make the TV they look at, the same way as many countries today do not build much of what they use, but rather specialise themselves and export cocoa to import pickup truck.
Furthermore, remember that "things" discovered at higher TL can be "made" at lower level, and that knowledge acquired at high TL can be used at low TL. The reverse is also true. The practical TL of a world is something that cannot be limited to the UPP. That is why I work my TU that way.
Selandia
IMTU I find practical to consider the planetary TL as the TL at which things that are available for travellers could be built, and that not all things of that TL are build.
People that build straw hut at tl 2 and that are supplied AK 47 (tl 6) to fight are on a TL 2 'world". Pagaton/268 90% water TL 4 is J2 from Fiorine/268 an industrial world TL A with trace athmosphere and billions strong population. Seafood is obviously exported to Fiorine that can afford to pay in TL A industrial goods. The locally built sampans and lobster boats may be built of local wood and work with sails, but they may use alloy plates and engine built on Fiorine. Basically any things available on Fiorine is available on Pagaton for the relevant price in the right catalogue. You simply have to understand that they do not make the TV they look at, the same way as many countries today do not build much of what they use, but rather specialise themselves and export cocoa to import pickup truck.
Furthermore, remember that "things" discovered at higher TL can be "made" at lower level, and that knowledge acquired at high TL can be used at low TL. The reverse is also true. The practical TL of a world is something that cannot be limited to the UPP. That is why I work my TU that way.
Selandia
The Romans sent message from Carthage all the way around the Med to Rome using a primitive analogous system.
fredofmars
SOC-12
I'd be interested in your reference for this.
Leonard A. Curchin wrote of it in Spain. References are too numerous to easily list. Google.
