Hardly retarded if they are talking about mechanical water wheels to run something like a mill. That stuff is WAY older than the middle ages, and water wheels go back all the way to the 1st bronze age.
Now hydroelectric damns, yah I wouldn't quite believe it. But even far back as the bronze age, its known people in the Mediterranean would make simple acid batteries to eletro-plate goods often with salts of gold, sliver, or bronze. In fact its the origin of the idea of biting coins, since even as far back as the medival era people were well aware of counterfeit gold goods and coins made from plating lesser metals with a thin layer of gold.
And to say nothing of the fact the romans and greeks used clock-work computers. Many ages alter Americans would use similar devices in the Iowa Class battleships to calculate firing solutions for their guns.
The past is considerably more advanced than most people realize. They were not stupid, they just didn't have the pieces together yet to make advanced materials like steel in sufficient quantity to implement tech like steam engines. Like ancient egypt knew about steam engines, but rejected them because trying to hand-cast bronze was terribly expensive, and they has so many manual laborers, it was FAR cheaper to hire 10,000 men then try and build a very expensive machine that did the work of 100 men. Its the same reason modern India doesn't use caterpillars despite being well able to afford them.
If you refer to the Antykthera as a "clockwork computer", some people will think you are saying the ancient Greeks (not Romans btw) had something like what we think of as a computer. But in this case it was a mechanical device that tracked the movement of the stars. It was an achievement (in the fields of precision manufacturing and astronomical observation) but not as remarkable as people make it out to be. They had data on historical positions of the planets, used that to estimate circular orbits for various bodies, and used gears to make everything move together with as much accuracy as their incomplete knowledge of planetary motion allowed. Or at least that's my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong. If someone wants to make it sound even more impressive than it was, like so many Youtube videos, they call it a computer. By similar logic a calendar is also a computer. If you start with a known date and X out a day for every single day that passes, the calendar will always tell you what day it is.
Electroplating was invented in 1805. Not saying that there may not have been a very small group of elites with that technology in the ancient past, just that we don't have any actual evidence of it (that I am aware; again please feel free to supply any evidence to the contrary).
The Antykthera device didn't do any math. You turn a crank and it makes the planets rotate together. You could "observe" the rough positions of the planets, but the device did not actually perform any logic.
Hardly retarded if they are talking about mechanical water wheels to run something like a mill. That stuff is WAY older than the middle ages, and water wheels go back all the way to the 1st bronze age.
Now hydroelectric damns, yah I wouldn't quite believe it. But even far back as the bronze age, its known people in the Mediterranean would make simple acid batteries to eletro-plate goods often with salts of gold, sliver, or bronze. In fact its the origin of the idea of biting coins, since even as far back as the medival era people were well aware of counterfeit gold goods and coins made from plating lesser metals with a thin layer of gold.
And to say nothing of the fact the romans and greeks used clock-work computers. Many ages alter Americans would use similar devices in the Iowa Class battleships to calculate firing solutions for their guns.
The past is considerably more advanced than most people realize. They were not stupid, they just didn't have the pieces together yet to make advanced materials like steel in sufficient quantity to implement tech like steam engines. Like ancient egypt knew about steam engines, but rejected them because trying to hand-cast bronze was terribly expensive, and they has so many manual laborers, it was FAR cheaper to hire 10,000 men then try and build a very expensive machine that did the work of 100 men. Its the same reason modern India doesn't use caterpillars despite being well able to afford them.
They weren't talking about a mill.
If you refer to the Antykthera as a "clockwork computer", some people will think you are saying the ancient Greeks (not Romans btw) had something like what we think of as a computer. But in this case it was a mechanical device that tracked the movement of the stars. It was an achievement (in the fields of precision manufacturing and astronomical observation) but not as remarkable as people make it out to be. They had data on historical positions of the planets, used that to estimate circular orbits for various bodies, and used gears to make everything move together with as much accuracy as their incomplete knowledge of planetary motion allowed. Or at least that's my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong. If someone wants to make it sound even more impressive than it was, like so many Youtube videos, they call it a computer. By similar logic a calendar is also a computer. If you start with a known date and X out a day for every single day that passes, the calendar will always tell you what day it is.
Electroplating was invented in 1805. Not saying that there may not have been a very small group of elites with that technology in the ancient past, just that we don't have any actual evidence of it (that I am aware; again please feel free to supply any evidence to the contrary).
That literally what I mean about the clock work computers, using gears to do math, which is what the Antykthera Mechanism does.
The Antykthera device didn't do any math. You turn a crank and it makes the planets rotate together. You could "observe" the rough positions of the planets, but the device did not actually perform any logic.