I very nearly broke one of my unwritten rules about this site, but I overcame my temptation. All content you see here has never been edited after publication: the date you see up there is the last time this article was edited. Now, I may make formatting modifications (and I have done so—#20 originally used JavaScript (ugh!) to render the math), but the content is append-only.

One of my “rich and retired” dreams is to start a YouTube channel that covers technology from hand tools to the light bulb. I assume I start with pre-industrial metal tools, and explore the technology I need to develop in order to get to useful electricity.

This would not be an easy feat. Let’s think backwards just a bit—A lightbulb needs glass, an inert gas filling, and a tungsten filament:

• Glass it pretty simple—the Romans made glass cups. We’ll need some skill to get it strong enough to hold a vacuum though.
• Back-filling the bulb with an inert gas like nitrogen requires knowing how to isolate nitrogen, which I can either do with fractional distillation of air (requiring cryogenic freezing ability), or with a reaction of ammonium chloride and sodium nitrite (requiring a way to make those compounds).
• Working with tungsten is not very easy. Per this article (and also the patent: US 1230869), Tungsten powder can be dissolved in cadmium amalgam (mercury solution) and can then be extruded as wire and heated to melt off the amalgam. That means we need (1) access to tungsten, cadmium, and mercury; (2) a diamond die; (3) a hydraulic press; and (4) a current source to burn off the other metals. Already, that’s a lot of work!

All 3 of these have dangling ends that I would need to fill. For instance, they’ll all need some form of furnace in their process. Thus I have to make one or more furnaces, using hand tools. Those furnaces may have prerequisites as well… And that’s not to mention that to power a light bulb, I need wire and a generator!

All told, this is an ambitious project. Wait—let me do that again.

This is an ambitious project!

But I feel that it would be super cool to do. It would be incredible to show people just how intertwined our technology is—how much work came before us that we get to take for granted. And—assuming it’s feasible—I bet people would watch it.