Low-Tech Magazine 2007-2012

Low-Tech Magazine 2007-2012Low tech Magazine underscores the potential of past and often forgotten technologies and how they can inform sustainable energy practices. Sometimes, past technologies can be copied without any changes. More often, interesting possibilities arise when older technology is combined with new knowledge and new materials, or when past concepts and traditional knowledge are applied to modern technology. Inspiration is also to be found in the so called

Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past and often forgotten technologies and how they can inform sustainable energy practices. Sometimes, past technologies can be copied without any changes. More often, interesting possibilities arise when older technology is combined with new knowledge and new materials, or when past concepts and traditional knowledge are applied to modern technology. Inspiration is also to be found in the so-called ÒdevelopingÓ world, where resource constraints often lead to inventive, low-tech solutions. Contains 268 images in black & white.

Contents table:
How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow
Medieval smokestacks: fossil fuels in pre-industrial times
The bright future of solar powered factories
Pedal powered farms and factories: the forgotten future of the stationary bicycle
Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable
The short history of early pedal powered machines
Insulation: first the body, then the home
Aerial ropeways: automatic cargo transport for a bargain
Hand powered drilling tools and machines
Boat mills: water powered, floating factories
Recycling animal and human dung is the key to sustainable farming
The status quo of electric cars: better batteries, same range
The sky is the limit: human powered cranes and lifting devices
Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank
Gas bag vehicles
Trolley canal boats
How (not) to resolve the energy crisis
Hoffmann kilns
Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills
Water powered cable trains
Get wired (again): Trolleybuses and Trolleytrucks
Electric road trains in Germany, 1901 Ð 1950
The monster footprint of digital technology
Cargo ships, then and now
Moonlight towers: light pollution in the 1800s
Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault
A steam powered submarine: the Ict’neo
The Citroen 2CV: cleantech from the 1940s
Life without airplanes: from London to New York in 3 days and 12 hours
Satellite navigation in the 18th century
Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph