This 2,200-year-old Roman wreck hid a repair story that rewrites how ancient ships survived long voyages

Amazing stuff! The abstract of this new research paper is disappointing! It is not even an abstract, but more of a teaser.

This paper even uses what appears to be computer vision to generate images presented in this paper! See below.

"Ever since humans have embarked on sea voyages, they needed to ensure vessels were waterproof, resistant to salty seawater, and could withstand microorganisms or sea-dwellers like worms. Until the mid-20th century, however, the study of non-wood materials used to build ships was overlooked. Even today, little work has been done on materials used for waterproofing.

Now, in a new ... study, researchers ... have examined the protective coating of the Roman Republic shipwreck Ilovik–Paržine that sank around 2,200 years ago off the coast of what is now Croatia. ...

"Studying the coatings, we found two different kinds on this vessel: one made of pine tar, also called pitch, and the other of a mixture of pine tar and beeswax. Analysis of pollen in the coating made it possible to identify the plant taxa present in the immediate environment during the construction or repairs of the ship." ...

The wreck was discovered in 2016 and since then the ship itself and its cargo has been examined multiple times. The current study, however, is the first to combine pollen and molecular analyses to characterize the ship's coating and vegetation present during its production and application on the hull. ..."

From the abstract:

"Introduction: The construction of a vessel (from a boat to a large ship) and its maintenance requires waterproofing of its hull and protection against water corrosion and the aggression of microorganisms, worms and other pests. What could be more logical than using an easily accessible and applicable hydrophobic adhesive material?

Many substances have been used over time such as resins, bitumen, plant tars, pure or mixed with beeswax, fats, inorganic elements. Pliny the Elder already mentions zopissa, a mixture of pitch and beeswax (Natural History XVI, 23).

The strong expansion of shipbuilding between the 13th and 19th centuries generated a veritable industry of plant tars.

Methods: In this research work, a new interdisciplinary approach involving the combined use of molecular, palynological and statistical indicators has been implemented to characterize ancient waterproofing materials. This analytical strategy opens new fields of investigation in naval archaeology.

Results and discussion: Beyond the characterization of materials (nature, manufacturing processes, naval techniques, degree of alteration), it especially reveals information about the surrounding vegetation during the production or the application of the waterproofing material. This approach has been applied to the study of the protective coating of the Roman Republican wreck Ilovik–Paržine 1 (around the middle of the second c. BC) found in Paržine Bay (Ilovik Island, Croatia)."

This 2,200-year-old Roman wreck hid a repair story that rewrites how ancient ships survived long voyages

Adhesive coatings in naval archaeology: molecular and palynological investigations on materials from the Roman Republican wreck Ilovik–Paržine 1 (Croatia) (open access)

Fig. 1 View of the excavation of the bow area of the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck. In the foreground, the cargo of logs and amphoras can be seen. Archaeologists are working near the structure of the bow complex 

Weltrekord in Bahia: Nexat erntet 637 t Soja in 8 Stunden

Sehr beachtlich!

"Ganz genau 637,76 t Sojabohnen in acht Stunden auf 158,16 ha: Mit diesem Rekordlauf in Bahia hat Nexat eine neue Bestmarke in der Erntetechnik gesetzt. Technisch spannend ist der Fall aber nicht nur wegen der Menge. Der Lauf zeigt, woran Hochleistungsmaschinen heute tatsächlich gemessen werden. Nicht entscheidend ist allein, wie viel Erntegut vorne ins System gelangt. Entscheidend ist, ob die Maschine diese Mengen im Inneren ohne Engpässe weiterverarbeiten kann.

Der zentrale Unterschied des NEXCO-Moduls zu klassischen Mähdreschern liegt im Aufbau des Dresch- und Abscheidesystems. Während konventionelle Maschinen das Erntegut meist längs durch die Maschine führen, arbeitet Nexat mit einer quer zur Fahrtrichtung angeordneten Rotoreinheit. ..."

Weltrekord in Bahia: Nexat erntet 637 t Soja in 8 Stunden "Nexat stellt in Bahia einen Weltrekord bei der Sojaernte auf – rund ein Drittel mehr als der bisherige Bestwert. Wie hat der Hersteller das geschafft?"

Source

Prof. Holger Hanselka, Präsident der Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft: Die Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft stärkt Deutschlands Technologiehoheit. Wirklich!

Was für ein deutscher Mist!

Was für eine Hoheit? "Technologiehoheit"

Und immer noch wird das deutsche Unwort/Phrase "Zukunftsfähigkeit" benutzt? Seit wievielen Jahrzehnten?

Fraunhofer stärkt Deutschlands Technologiehoheit "Ein klares Signal für die Bedeutung von Forschung und Wissenschaft für die Zukunftsfähigkeit Deutschlands: Das heute veröffentlichte EPO Technology Dashboard 2025 weist die Fraunhofer‑Gesellschaft als führende europäische Forschungseinrichtung bei Patentanmeldungen aus."

Prof. Holger Hanselka

40 Years of Wireless Evolution Leads to a Smart, Sensing Network

Recommendable! One of the authors is Vint Cerf (co-inventor of the Internet)!

"... The story of wireless connectivity is often told in speeds and standards—megabits per second, latency, and spectrum bands. But these generational shifts in device specs obscure a deeper pattern. Each generation, from 1G to 5G, rewrote the relationships between three elements: the Devices we carry, the Networks that connect them, and the Applications that run on them. We call this connectivity’s DNA. With 6G, that DNA of interconnection is about to change fundamentally. ..."

Telecom History: From 1G Voices to 6G AI Agents - IEEE Spectrum "The path from 1G to 6G traces from dumb pipes to a nervous system"

Wie Carl von Linde mit seiner Kältemaschine den Bierkonsum ankurbelte

Empfehlenswert! Prost! Bier macht es möglich! 😊

"... 1864 fand sein Studium ein jähes Ende, als er wegen seiner Teilnahme an einer Studentendemonstration exmatrikuliert wurde. Seine Professoren Clausius und Zeuner ließen sich jedoch nicht davon abhalten, ihm zu einer Anstellung zu verhelfen. Außerdem erhielt er (er war im letzten Semester) dennoch die Abschlusszeugnisse und das Diplom. Nach ersten Anstellungen in einer Baumwollfabrik und als Ingenieur bei Borsig in Berlin fand Linde schließlich seinen Platz an der Polytechnischen Schule in München. Dort wurde er 1868 mit nur 26 Jahren Professor für Mechanik und richtete das erste Maschinenlaboratorium Deutschlands ein. ..."

Wie Carl von Linde mit seiner Kältemaschine den Bierkonsum ankurbelte - ingenieur.de

Stuart Parkin Revolutionized Disk Drive Storage at IBM

Recommendable! A retrospective! Some biography! Big Blue!

How did he end up as a German professor? He met a German chemist and materials engineer in California and got married. A match made in heaven! 😊

Stuart Parkin Revolutionized Disk Drive Storage - IEEE Spectrum The director of the Max Planck Institute developed spintronic technologies

Renowned Firearms Innovator Gaston Glock Dies at 94

Recommendable! R.I.P.

Two few countries have a Second Amendment right!

"... The Austrian Ministry of Defense’s specifications were exacting. The pistol was required to be self-loading, to fire the NATO 9x19mm cartridge, be ambidextrous, have a capacity of at least eight rounds, and be made of 58-or-fewer interchangeable parts that could be replaced without special tools.

Unlike the SIG Sauer, Beretta and Steyr, whose pistol designs might have been hindered by, as historian Stuart Brown put it, “preconception or existing tooling,” Glock built his design from scratch. The resulting pistol was christened the Glock 17 [invented in 1982], as his 17th invention. As Brown noted, “That the magazine capacity was 17 rounds was serendipity.”

Glock’s pistol stole the show, easily outclassing SIG Sauer’s, Beretta’s and Heckler & Koch’s submissions. He was awarded the contract for 25,000 pistols and the Glock name was launched into both fame and infamy. ..."

Renowned Firearms Innovator Gaston Glock Dies at 94

Did just a new Walmart Store open in Solothurn, Switzerland?

No, it is the newly opened museum of the history of technological advances!

Credits: Schätze aus 200 Jahren Technikgeschichte: Ein Museum in Solothurn zeigt die skurrilsten Erfindungen

Archaeologists stunned by 2,900-year-old steel tools in Portugal

Amazing stuff! However, we learn little on how they produced this steel 

"... The study shows that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2,900 years ago, during the Final Bronze Age. ...
The researchers conducted geochemical analyses on ancient Iberian stelaes -- upright monuments typically inscribed with information in the form of text, images, or a combination of the two -- and found these were made of silicated quartz sandstone.

“Just like quartzite, this is an extremely hard rock that cannot be worked with bronze or stone tools, but only with tempered steel,” ...
To confirm their hunch that these monuments were etched with steel tools, the researchers analyzed an iron chisel found in Rocha do Vigio, Portugal, which also dates back to the Final Bronze Age. They discovered that the chisel was made of heterogeneous yet astonishingly carbon-rich steel ...
The earliest known production of steel is seen in pieces of ironware excavated from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehöyük), which are nearly 4,000 years old, dating from 1800 BC. However, iron and steel didn't become abundant materials until around 500 BC when most Bronze Age civilizations collapsed, paving the way for the huge empires of Rome and Han China."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• Protohistoric south-western Iberian stelae were often made from extremely hard rocks.

• The silicate quartz-sandstone stelae from Capilla could only be carved with hardened steel.

• Analyses of a Final Bronze Age iron chisel from Portugal revealed surprisingly high quality steel.

• The introduction of iron metallurgy represents a terminus post quem for stelae with this lithology.

Abstract

The south-western Iberian stelae from the Final Bronze Age (FBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) have long been the centre of archaeological interest. These monuments show representations of human and animal figures, objects such as weapons, ornaments and chariots. Moreover, they provide insights into prehistoric stone working and sculpting techniques. On the downside, petrological studies of the rocks and consequent reflections on suitable tools are still the exception. Due to the lack of analysis and technological studies, this research will put emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach involving petrographic and metallurgic analyses, complemented by experimental archaeology.

Firstly, an accurate lithological determination of stelae from Capilla (Spain) has been established with petrographic methods. According to the results, two slabs for replications of stelae were obtained from the identified mono-mineral quartz-sandstone (“quartzite”) outcrop. The experiment involved the trial of chisels made from all expedient materials that were available in the FBA-EIA by a professional stonemason. Considering that such extremely hard rocks require robust tools for carving, a long ignored iron chisel from the FBA site of Rocha do Vigio (Portugal) was studied with metallography and exposed heterogeneous, however surprisingly high-carbon steel. The analysed rocks are amongst the hardest that can be used for sculpting, and in the course of the experiment, bronze and lithic tools could be discarded. The only tool that showed an effect was the replication of the steel chisel from Rocha do Vigio with a hardened edge. The distinct work traces were compared to the original monuments. We hypothesize that the production of carbon steel as well as its hardening were possibly already known at the FBA-EIA transition in Iberia. Hence, only the access to iron technology allowed for the making of stelae from the lithotypes that were frequently used in the Zújar basin around the municipality of Capilla."

"... The chisel is astoundingly well preserved and the corrosion layer is mainly superficial (Fig. 9, Fig. 11), with very little inter-granular corrosion into the sample ..."

Archaeologists stunned by 2,900-year-old steel tools in Portugal Steel tools were employed in Europe centuries before they became widespread during the Roman Republic era.

Stone-working and the earliest steel in Iberia: Scientific analyses and experimental replications of final bronze age stelae and tools

Fig. 9. The chisel from Rocha do Vigio, length ca. 18 cm 

Untold History of computing: Invisible Women Programmed America's First Electronic Computer

Untold??? I believe this story has been told several times before! When programming was still manual labor! 😊

Untold History of AI: Invisible Women Programmed America's First Electronic Computer - IEEE Spectrum The “human computers” who operated ENIAC have received little credit

The humble beginnings of computing! Marlyn Wescoff [left] and Ruth Lichterman were two of the female programmers of ENIAC.

Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable? By hot mixing at high temperatures and several self healing features

Update of 1/10/2023: Here is an MIT article covering this subject.

Amazing stuff! When in Rome do as the Romans do! 😊

"The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia.
Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome's famed Pantheon, which has the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. ...
Now, a team of investigators ... has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. ...

Studying samples of this ancient concrete, he and his team determined that the white inclusions were, indeed, made out of various forms of calcium carbonate. And spectroscopic examination provided clues that these had been formed at extreme temperatures, as would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture. Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature. ...

During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread. Previous support for this hypothesis was found through the examination of other Roman concrete samples that exhibited calcite-filled cracks.

To prove that this was indeed the mechanism responsible for the durability of the Roman concrete, the team produced samples of hot-mixed concrete that incorporated both ancient and modern formulations, deliberately cracked them, and then ran water through the cracks. Sure enough: Within two weeks the cracks had completely healed and the water could no longer flow. An identical chunk of concrete made without quicklime never healed, and the water just kept flowing through the sample. ..."

From the abstract:

"Ancient Roman concretes have survived millennia, but mechanistic insights into their durability remain an enigma. Here, we use a multiscale correlative elemental and chemical mapping approach to investigating relict lime clasts, a ubiquitous and conspicuous mineral component associated with ancient Roman mortars. Together, these analyses provide new insights into mortar preparation methodologies and provide evidence that the Romans employed hot mixing, using quicklime in conjunction with, or instead of, slaked lime, to create an environment where high surface area aggregate-scale lime clasts are retained within the mortar matrix. Inspired by these findings, we propose that these macroscopic inclusions might serve as critical sources of reactive calcium for long-term pore and crack-filling or post-pozzolanic reactivity within the cementitious constructs. The subsequent development and testing of modern lime clast–containing cementitious mixtures demonstrate their self-healing potential, thus paving the way for the development of more durable, resilient, and sustainable concrete formulations."

Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?

Hot mixing: Mechanistic insights into the durability of ancient Roman concrete (open access)

Fig. 1. Collection location and distinctive features of the ancient Roman concrete samples used in this study.

The world's first long-distance car journey by Bertha Benz in 1888

Very recommendable! Great story telling!
Another famous couple working together!

Apparently, Bertha was also busy in the workshop helping her husband with his invention. She also sacrificed her dowry to finance her inventor husband.

The first gas station were pharmacies on the famous 100 kilometer long trip. After she returned from this trip she reminded her husband that the car needed another gear so the car could go uphill.