Low-tech Magazine

When rich women built houses

How did ladies spend their time when married to extremely rich men in an era before television, speed-dating and summer festivals? You build a dolls' house (a "dollhouse" if you are American). These incredibly detailed miniature houses and interiors were constructed between the 17th and the early 20th century, mostly by wealthy ladies who often paid artists and craftsmen to make all kinds of objects and parts for them.

Viva Las Vegas: LEDs and the energy efficiency paradox

The incandescent light bulb is abused by environmentalists – but the alternative will only raise energy consumption. More and more, compact fluorescent lamps are considered to be an interim technology, awaiting the arrival of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs).

At the moment, LED technology is no competition for the incandescent light bulb. However, it can be considered a worthy improvement of another technology: neon lights. Whether or not white LEDs will finally arrive, the success of coloured LEDs is a fact. Though some of them are definitely useful, they all introduce lighting in places and situations where there was no lighting before.

The age of speed: how to reduce global fuel consumption by 75 percent

If we cut the average speed of all vehicles by half, fuel consumption would decrease by a whopping 75 percent.

Breaking speed records was an almost daily occurence throughout the 20th century. Cars, ships, planes and trains became faster and faster, year after year. Because the power needed to push an object through air increases with the cube of velocity, this race to ever higher speeds raises energy consumption exponentially.

Engineers treat velocity as a non-variable, while in fact it is the most powerful factor to save a really huge amount of energy - with just one stroke, at minimal cost, and without the need for new technology. Lower speeds combined with more energy efficient engines, better aerodynamics and lighter materials could make fuel savings even larger.                                                                     Picture : Mando Maniac

Urban windmills harm the environment

A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as was needed to produce them. Sad, but true.

A steam powered submarine: the Ictíneo

Few Victorian inventions have the grace and charm of the Ictíneo, the series of two wooden submarines built by Narcís Monturiol i Estarrol in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Unlike some of the better known early submarines from his contemporaries in Germany, France and the United States, the Catalan inventor managed to build submarines that operated flawlessly.

The Ictíneo II was the first combustion engine driven submarine ever, pioneering concepts that were only rivalled in the 1940s. Sadly, both submarines were eventually scrapped and Monturiol died penniless and forgotten.

Carbon sequestration: bury the idea, not the CO2

Why introduce yet another expensive, energy-intensive and risky technology if there are so many other and better ways of fighting global warming? 

Capturing CO2 from the smokestacks of power stations with the intention of storing it in underground reservoirs, oceans, rocks, consumer products, chemicals or fuels has gained a lot of credibility recently. Many experts believe that we will burn the world's remaining fossil fuels anyway, and we should therefore try to lower the impact if we are to prevent a catastrophic climate change. Yet capturing, transporting and storing carbon dioxide raises energy consumption considerably and brings with it serious health and environmental problems. The benefits, on the other hand, are shadowed in doubt.

The Citroen 2CV: cleantech from the 1940s

If you sometimes wonder why more energy efficient technology does not bring about more energy efficient cars, you should take a look at this collection of Citroën brochures (most of them in foreign languages) from the fifties, the sixties, the seventies and the eighties (more here, here, here and  here).

These are all original, scanned leaflets of the legendary French hippie car "2CV" or "Deux Chevaux" (known as the "duck" or the "goat" in several European countries). In spite of all the high-tech that has been squeezed into cars since then, the 2CV from 1949 is still more energy efficient than the smallest model of the French car designer today. Why?

Life without airplanes: from London to New York in 3 days and 12 hours

Flying has become cheaper than taking a train or driving a car. Yet, environmental concerns, dwindling fuel reserves and fast rising kerosene prices are threatening to turn airline travel into a privilege for the rich again. This should not mean the end of mass travel or tourism, however.

Before mass air travel took off in the 1960s, people crossed the globe in majestic passenger ships. Reintroducing ocean liners would be more than a nostalgic move: it could be a much more energy efficient (yet slower) way to travel.

Is ecotech the new asbestos?

What will remain of greentech, cleantech and ecotech if nanotechnology turns out to be harmful for humans and the environment?

It’s hard to keep track of the soon-to-be-implemented technological solutions that will solve our energy and environmental woes by means of nanotechnology – the science of manipulating individual atoms. Solar panels and batteries might be far from optimal solutions now, but nanomaterials will boost their efficiency and dramatically lower their costs. Transporting electricity from solar plants in deserts may not be possible yet, but nanotechnology will bring us cheap superconducting cables and efficient hydrogen storage. Unfortunately, more and more research indicates that nanomaterials might become a severe health problem and an environmental nightmare.

Mechanical calculators: computing without electricity

Fast and complicated calculations are a product of fossil fuels.

Multiplying and dividing numbers was not always that easy. Before the arrival of cheap electronic pocket calculators and computers in the 1970s, people relied on an array of low-tech means and machines to calculate taxes, profits or the properties of engineering parts.

Being an obsolete technology now, some of these 19th and 20th century calculators are surprisingly sophisticated and fashionable. Moreover, most are powered by a crank, which makes these gadgets "green". Today's pocket calculators are no power hogs, either. The thing is that computers took over most calculating jobs from calculators, and a large supercomputer consumes as much energy as a convoy of trucks.

What do we do with all that calculation power? We build fast cars, giant jumbo jets and worldwide information highways, all of which, in their turn, raise energy consumption. We also construct opaque financial products, rickety electronic voting systems and contradictory global warming scenarios. Mechanical calculators may be an inferior technology, but they had the benefit of keeping things on this planet relatively simple. A brief overview of the most remarkable models.