| UserName | Title | Description | Update |
| nraustinii | Thoughts on the Baghdad Battery. | One of the important things to remember when considering ancient civilizations is that these people were no less intelligent (or foolish, honestly) than we are. The difference between ourselves and the people who created the Baghdad Battery is instead one of intellectual inheritance. We have the benefit of additional thousands of years of historical, social and scientific knowledge at our disposal.
Albert Einstein, had he lived in ancient Egypt, would have had nothing to say about relativity, but he may well have applied his curiosity and genius to other areas of interest at the time: astronomy, architecture, mathematics. Given the right materials, a convenient observation, and time to play, someone clever enough may have discovered the electrolytic effect, and created uses for it.
In the case of the Baghdad Battery, however, it seems fairly unlikely that the effect was anything more than a curiosity. Without evidence of wires or some other way of conducting a charge, the applications of the weak effect produced by this device would have been quite limited.
It could have also been a scroll-storage device with a superficial resemblance to a modern device. The Wikipedia page is largely unsourced, but presents some interesting ideas as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery#Non-electrical |
Friday, January 15, 2010
1:09 PM
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| Rayman0723 | Baghdad Battery | I also doubt that it was a real battery. There was no other archeological evidence of electrical equipment that would have used any electricity generated by it. The sad thing is, however, that we'll probably never know! |
Friday, January 15, 2010
1:26 PM
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