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We Rarely Lose Technology (2023)

There are few forgotten inventions, and none that we might truly care about 🍈

And also non-obvious reasons: at some point the Byzantines started writing that Greek Fire had been “shown and revealed by an angel to the great and holy first Christian emperor Constantine” and that an official who had been bribed into giving some to the enemy was struck down by a flame from heaven as he entered a church. I think this qualifies as lost technology, or at least it did for a time: quite a lot of effort went into reverse-engineering the famous steel, and today we are perfectly capable of crafting metal objects with the carbon nanotubes that are necessary for the cool wavy pattern and sharpness. The part where the British Raj possibly suppressed the wootz steel industry brings to mind muslin, a light cotton fabric that made the wealth of Bengal, in the Indian subcontinent, until the East India Company took over.

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