There is a useful principle in materials: if a substance behaves oddly in several unrelated ways, there is usually one structural feature responsible for all of them.
Wool behaves oddly…
Almost everything about how a book feels - whether it stays open, how it turns, how heavy it is for its size - was decided during manufacture rather than design.…
There is a small category of technologies where the modern industrial version does exactly what the original did, only faster, and paper is the clearest example.
Most processes have been…
Source: Wikipedia
Technologies are usually lost for identifiable reasons. A market disappears, a cheaper substitute arrives, a war interrupts a supply chain, or the last people who knew a process die…
The whole subject rests on one transformation: heat driving water out of the clay structure in a way that cannot be undone. Here are sixteen consequences.
1. Clay Works Because…
Weaving was invented independently in every inhabited part of the world, which is a strong indication that the problem has a limited number of solutions. Here are eleven of the…