How Movies Created Their Special Effects Before CGI: Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

in Film, History | December 16th, 2025

The youngest movie­go­ers today do not, of course, remem­ber a time before visu­al effects could be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly. What may give us more pause is that, at this point in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, most of their par­ents don’t remem­ber it either. Con­sid­er the fact that Steven Spiel­berg’s Juras­sic Park, with its once impos­si­bly real­is­tic (and still whol­ly pass­able) CGI dinosaurs, came out 32 years ago. That may put it, we must acknowl­edge, into the realm of the “clas­sic,” the kind of pic­ture whose enter­tain­ment val­ue holds up despite — or because of — the qual­i­ties that fix it in its time. Equal­ly spec­tac­u­lar but longer-can­on­ized clas­sics pose a greater chal­lenge to the imag­i­na­tions of young view­ers, who can hard­ly guess how they could have been made “before com­put­ers.”

After see­ing the notable exam­ples pro­vid­ed in the new Pri­mal Space video above, they’ll cer­tain­ly under­stand one thing: it was­n’t easy. Even a seem­ing­ly sim­ple effect like the pen float­ing loose through the zero-grav­i­ty cab­in in 2001: A Space Odyssey required no small degree of inge­nu­ity. We might nat­u­ral­ly assume that film­mak­ers in 1968 would have accom­plished it with a cou­ple of pieces of Scotch tape and fish­ing line, but that would have result­ed in unac­cept­able tan­gling prob­lems, to say noth­ing of the trick­i­ness of ensur­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, that the strings did­n’t show. Instead, Kubrick­’s team end­ed up attach­ing the pen to a sheet of glass — metic­u­lous­ly cleaned, no doubt, to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of streaks — large enough to occu­py the entire frame and thus go unno­ticed by the view­er. It was then slow­ly rotat­ed by a crank-turn­ing assis­tant.

A few dif­fer­ent effects from 2001 come in for expla­na­tion through­out the course of the video, includ­ing the mul­ti­ple-expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy that made pos­si­ble shots of space­craft pass­ing plan­ets as well as the psy­che­del­ic “Star Gate” sequence toward the end. Though some of the devices used in these process­es were put togeth­er just for the pro­duc­tion, the under­ly­ing tech­niques had already been evolv­ing for more than 60 years. Indeed, many were pio­neered by Georges Méliès, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for A Trip to the Moon from 1902, the very first sci­ence-fic­tion film. This video goes behind the scenes of a work from the year before: L’Homme à la tête en caoutchouc, or The Man with the Rub­ber Head, in which Méliès man­aged a shot in which his own cra­ni­um inflates to huge pro­por­tions with­out the use of so much as a zoom lens.

Oth­er exam­ples, drawn from a range of beloved films from Metrop­o­lis to Mary Pop­pins, illus­trate the inven­tive­ness born of sheer tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tion in the days when film­mak­ing was a whol­ly ana­log affair. In some cas­es, the effects these pro­duc­tions pulled off with minia­tures, prisms, and mir­rors 60, 80, 100 years ago look as good as any­thing Hol­ly­wood puts on the screen today — or rather bet­ter, since the innate phys­i­cal­i­ty behind them makes them feel more “real.” Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, this video’s arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence course spon­sor makes ref­er­ence to the end­less range of visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties avail­able to those who mas­ter that tech­nol­o­gy. And it’s not impos­si­ble that we now stand on the cusp of a rev­o­lu­tion in visu­al effects for that rea­son, with at least as much of an upside and down­side as CGI. If so, we should pre­pare our­selves to hear the ques­tion, from chil­dren born today, of how any­one ever made movies before AI.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon Became the First Sci-Fi Film & Changed Cin­e­ma For­ev­er (1902)

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

The 1927 Film Metrop­o­lis Cre­at­ed a Dystopi­an Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Sev­en-Part Video Essay

How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hard­est Film Kubrick Ever Made”

Why Movies Don’t Feel Real Any­more: A Close Look at Chang­ing Film­mak­ing Tech­niques

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Many Humans Have Ever Lived, and How Many Are Alive Right Now?

in Biology, History | December 16th, 2025

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How many peo­ple have ever walked the earth? Good ques­tion, even if you’ve nev­er quite pon­dered it before. Accord­ing to the Pop­u­la­tion Ref­er­ence Bureau, a non-prof­it research orga­ni­za­tion, if you trav­el back to 8000 B.C.E., the world pop­u­la­tion stood at about 5 mil­lion. By 1 C.E., the num­ber climbs to 300 mil­lion, before grad­u­al­ly increas­ing to 500 mil­lion in 1650. Once we get beyond the plagues of the medieval peri­od, our pop­u­la­tion explodes, reach­ing the 1 bil­lion mark in 1800 and then 8 bil­lion in 2022. Tak­en togeth­er, an esti­mat­ed 117 bil­lion peo­ple have col­lec­tive­ly lived on our plan­et, and, of that total num­ber, 7% are alive right now. A strik­ing fig­ure. Using sim­i­lar data, video jour­nal­ist Cleo Abram visu­al­izes the his­tor­i­cal trend in a short, suc­cinct video above.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Buck­min­ster Fuller Cre­ates an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth from 1000 B.C.E. to 1965

200,000 Years of Stag­ger­ing Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth Shown in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Crowd­ed House: How the World’s Pop­u­la­tion Grew to 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

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Take a Tour of 18th-Century London, Recreated with AI

in Art, Artificial Intelligence, History | December 15th, 2025

If you want to know what it was like to live in sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, read the diary of Samuel Pepys. While doing so, take note of his fre­quent ref­er­ences to the unclean­li­ness of the city’s streets: “very dirty and trou­ble­some to walk through,” “mighty dirty after the rain,” and dur­ing the large-scale rebuild­ing in the after­math of the Great Fire of 1666, “much built, yet very dirty and encum­bered.” If you want to know what it was like to live in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don, read Charles Dick­ens. How­ev­er much-lament­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties it presents to young read­ers, the open­ing of Bleak House remains high­ly evoca­tive, set­ting the scene with “as much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but new­ly retired from the face of the earth,” “dogs, undis­tin­guish­able in mire, and “hors­es, scarce­ly bet­ter; splashed to their very blink­ers.”

This “mud,” an unspeak­ably foul admix­ture of sub­stances, only began to recede per­ma­nent­ly from Lon­don’s streets in the eigh­teen-fifties, after the instal­la­tion of sew­er sys­tems. So nor­mal for so long, its pres­ence would hard­ly have been down­played by the city’s observers back then, whether they record­ed their obser­va­tions on the page or on the can­vas.

Even the painter’s ide­al­iz­ing impulse could only do so much, as evi­denced by some of the shots includ­ed in the new video tour of eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don from Majes­tic Stu­dios above. Turn­ing con­tem­po­rary paint­ings and engrav­ings into cin­e­mat­ic ani­ma­tions with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed video, it offers the next best thing to actu­al footage of the city as it would have been seen by the likes of Jonathan Swift, Samuel John­son, Thomas Gains­bor­ough, and Mary Woll­stonecraft.

Sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don was the cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial cen­ter of Geor­gian Eng­land, but also a city well on its way to becom­ing the cen­ter of the world. Some of its famous sights seen here in their eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry urban con­text include St. Paul’s Cathe­dral by Sir Christo­pher Wren, mas­ter­mind of the city’s post-Great Fire recon­struc­tion; the old Lon­don Bridge, still lined with hous­es and shops; St. James’s Square after its trans­for­ma­tion from a state once con­sid­ered “mud­dy, neglect­ed, and frankly, embar­rass­ing for such pres­ti­gious address­es”; and the Tow­er of Lon­don on the bank of the Riv­er Thames. As for the riv­er itself, it hard­ly goes ignored by the works of art that shape this video, or indeed un-glo­ri­fied by them. But if you know any­thing about its con­di­tion before the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, you’ll be relieved that AI can’t yet restore its smell.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

The Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don: 2,000 Years of Change Ani­mat­ed in 7 Min­utes

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Sights & Sounds of 18th-Cen­tu­ry Paris Get Recre­at­ed with 3D Audio and Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Tom Jones Performs Prince’s “Purple Rain” Accompanied by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (1992)

in Music | December 15th, 2025

Over the decades, Tom Jones has per­formed with the best of them. In 1969, we can find him singing “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, and tak­ing them delight­ful­ly by sur­prise. The same goes for his duet with Janis Joplin in that same year. Now fast for­ward to the 1990s. In this decade, Jones teamed up with the Swedish rock band The Cardi­gans and per­formed a rol­lick­ing ver­sion of the Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House.” And, rather unex­pect­ed­ly, he would get paired with Pink Floy­d’s David Gilmour and croon Prince’s “Pur­ple Rain.”

The record­ing above comes from Jones’ show The Right Time, a six-episode tele­vi­sion series that aired in 1992. Trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of pop music, the show fea­tured appear­ances by Bob Geld­of, Cyn­di Lau­per, The Chief­tains and Ste­vie Won­der. When it comes to his ver­sion of “Pur­ple Rain,” don’t miss the Gilmour solo mid­way through. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Tom Jones Cov­ers Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House”–and Burns Down the House (1999)

Prince Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”

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Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Story of Civilization

in Archaeology, History | December 12th, 2025

We did­n’t have civ­i­liza­tion until we had cities, and we did­n’t have cities until we had agri­cul­ture. So, at least, goes a wide­ly accept­ed nar­ra­tive in “big his­to­ry” — a nar­ra­tive some­what trou­bled by the dis­cov­ery of ruins on Göbek­li Tepe, or “Pot­bel­ly Hill,” in south­east­ern Turkey. Appar­ent­ly inhab­it­ed from around 9500 to 8000 BC, the ancient set­tle­ment pre­dates the Pyra­mids of Giza by near­ly 8,000 years, and Stone­henge by about 6,000 years. Though it was once believed to be a site used for rit­u­al pur­pos­es only, lat­er research unearthed evi­dence that sug­gests it was host to a vari­ety of activ­i­ties we asso­ciate with urban civ­i­liza­tion, rather than what we usu­al­ly think of hunter-gath­er­er sites. Does it amount to rea­son enough to revise our very under­stand­ing of the his­to­ry of human­i­ty?

“Like Stone­henge, Göbek­li Tepe’s struc­ture includes cir­cles of T‑shaped lime­stone pil­lars, many of them fea­tur­ing etch­ings of ani­mals,” says YouTu­ber Joe Scott in the video above. These pil­lars are arranged into enclo­sures, which togeth­er con­sti­tute a site that “fea­tures archae­o­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty that prob­a­bly would have been too advanced for hunter-gath­er­ers.”

Klaus Schmidt, the archae­ol­o­gist who led the exca­va­tions at Göbek­li Tepe between 1996 and 2014, believed that it was “a sanc­tu­ary and maybe a region­al pil­grim­age cen­ter where peo­ple gath­ered to per­form reli­gious rites.” But since his death, evi­dence of hous­es, a cis­tern, and grain-pro­cess­ing tools has turned up, indi­cat­ing “a ful­ly fledged set­tle­ment with per­ma­nent occu­pa­tion” well before the advent of farm­ing. This find­ing indi­cates that social and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions asso­ci­at­ed with ‘civ­i­liza­tion’ may have emerged long before the advent of agri­cul­ture, cities, or domes­ti­cat­ed ani­mals — under con­di­tions very dif­fer­ent from what his­to­ri­ans had pre­vi­ous­ly assumed. But as to the rea­son it was all built in the first place, this new infor­ma­tion has led to more ques­tions than answers.

One less than gen­er­al­ly accept­ed the­o­ry holds that Göbek­li Tepe was an astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­to­ry, and per­haps also a memo­r­i­al to a dev­as­tat­ing comet strike that occurred 13,000 years ago. Maybe it was “a last-ditch effort by a hunter-gath­er­er soci­ety to hang on to their van­ish­ing lifestyle as the world was tran­si­tion­ing to farm­ing.” That could have been the first large-scale tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion in human his­to­ry, but it cer­tain­ly would­n’t be the last, and as we here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry con­sid­er the ruins of Göbek­li Tepe — most of which still have yet to be exca­vat­ed — we nat­u­ral­ly find our­selves think­ing about the long-term sur­vival prospects of our own civ­i­liza­tion. But the more recent dis­cov­ery else­where in Turkey of oth­er, even old­er ruins with a dis­tinct­ly urban struc­ture may also make us feel that our way of life isn’t quite as mod­ern as we’d imag­ined.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore the Ruins of Tim­gad, the “African Pom­peii” Exca­vat­ed from the Sands of Alge­ria

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & More

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

How Civ­i­liza­tions Built on Top of Each Oth­er: Dis­cov­er What Lies Beneath Rome, Troy & Oth­er Cities

A Cul­tur­al Tour of Istan­bul, Where the Art and His­to­ry of Three Great Empires Come Togeth­er

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er a 2,400-Year-Old Skele­ton Mosa­ic That Urges Peo­ple to “Be Cheer­ful and Live Your Life”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Download 1300 Still Images from the Animated Films of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli

in Animation, Art, Film | December 11th, 2025

You may have seen every sin­gle one of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s ani­mat­ed films, going well beyond the Hayao Miyaza­ki-direct­ed My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away, and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice to the less wide­ly known but also charm­ing­ly craft­ed likes of Ocean Waves, My Neigh­bors the Yamadas, and The Cat Returns. Even so, the ques­tion remains: have you real­ly seen them all? Expe­ri­enc­ing them in the the­ater or on home video is only the first stage of the process. Ide­al­ly, each ele­ment of a Ghi­b­li movie should sub­se­quent­ly be appre­ci­at­ed in iso­la­tion and at length: by lis­ten­ing to the music, for exam­ple, hun­dreds of hours of which, avail­able to stream, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Still, no mat­ter how cap­ti­vat­ing Joe Hisaishi’s scores may sound on their own, Ghi­b­li’s work is ulti­mate­ly made to be seen. Giv­en that 24 frames of their movies go by each sec­ond, it can be dif­fi­cult to pick up all the details their ani­ma­tors include in each and every one of them.

Hence the val­ue of the free archive of stills that the stu­dio first made avail­able online a few years ago, and that has steadi­ly expand­ed ever since. Though only avail­able in Japan­ese, it does­n’t present a great chal­lenge even to fans with no knowl­edge of the lan­guage to click on the poster of their Ghi­b­li film of choice, then to browse the vari­ety of down­load­able images asso­ci­at­ed with it.

Many of these stills are drawn from high­ly mem­o­rable moments across the Ghi­b­li fil­mog­ra­phy: the chil­dren’s par­ty on the hero of Por­co Rosso’s beloved air­plane; the emer­gence of the kodama in Princess Mononoke; the defeat of the colos­sal Giant War­rior in Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind (which pre­dates the stu­dio’s foun­da­tion, but in any case now seems to count hon­orar­i­ly among its pro­duc­tions); the sen­tient flame cook­ing a skil­let of bacon and eggs in Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle. Some of them have even been turned into wall­pa­per for video calls, down­load­able from a page of their own. There we have anoth­er way to add a touch of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s dis­tinc­tive vision to our every­day lives — and anoth­er source of inspi­ra­tion to watch through the movies them­selves one more time.

Enter the archive of still images here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

A Tour of Stu­dio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Cre­ates the Worlds of Spir­it­ed Away, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Oth­er Clas­sics

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Stream Hun­dreds of Hours of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Earliest Known Customer Complaint Was Made 3,800 Years Ago: Read the Rant on an Ancient Babylonian Tablet

in Archaeology, History, Life | December 11th, 2025

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The site Fast Com­pa­ny pub­lished an arti­cle that describes the “Com­plaint Restraint project,” an ini­tia­tive that aims to cre­ate a “pos­i­tive life by elim­i­nat­ing neg­a­tive state­ments.” It’s an admirable goal. Though most of us have a per­verse love of wal­low­ing in our misery—a human trait ampli­fied a thou­sand­fold by the internet—complaining rarely makes things any bet­ter. As in the Buddha’s para­ble of the “sec­ond arrow,” our grip­ing can make our suf­fer­ings dou­bly painful; as in the para­ble of the “poi­soned arrow,” it can post­pone or sub­sti­tute for the con­struc­tive actions we need to take in order to heal or improve our con­di­tion.

But it would be a mis­take to think that com­plain­ing is some­how a recent phe­nom­e­non, though we may hear more of it every day, all the time, from every quar­ter of the globe. The Bud­dhist arrow sto­ries are, after all, at least a cou­ple thou­sand years old; lamen­ta­tion more or less con­sti­tutes its own genre in Bib­li­cal lit­er­a­ture.

Even old­er still than these reli­gious sources is the first doc­u­ment­ed cus­tomer ser­vice com­plaint, a spe­cif­ic vari­ety of com­plain­ing that we might be for­giv­en for asso­ci­at­ing main­ly with a mod­ern, con­sumerist age—and one of the few kinds of com­plaints that can gen­er­ate pos­i­tive results.

Absent a Yelp app, the ancient Baby­lon­ian con­sumer in this case inscribed his com­plaint on a clay tablet—which now resides at the British Muse­um—some­time around 1750 B.C. The irate pur­chas­er here, Nan­ni, writ­ing to some­one named Ea-nasir, received a ship­ment of cop­per ore of an infe­ri­or grade, after some annoy­ing delay and in a dam­aged con­di­tion. In the trans­la­tion below from Assyri­ol­o­gist A. Leo Oppen­heim, Nan­ni vents his spleen.

Tell Ea-nasir: Nan­ni sends the fol­low­ing mes­sage:

When you came, you said to me as fol­lows : “I will give Gim­il-Sin (when he comes) fine qual­i­ty cop­per ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my mes­sen­ger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”

What do you take me for, that you treat some­body like me with such con­tempt? I have sent as mes­sen­gers gen­tle­men like our­selves to col­lect the bag with my mon­ey (deposit­ed with you) but you have treat­ed me with con­tempt by send­ing them back to me emp­ty-hand­ed sev­er­al times, and that through ene­my ter­ri­to­ry. Is there any­one among the mer­chants who trade with Tel­mun who has treat­ed me in this way? You alone treat my mes­sen­ger with con­tempt! On account of that one (tri­fling) mina of sil­ver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have giv­en to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of cop­per, and umi-abum has like­wise giv­en 1,080 pounds of cop­per, apart from what we both have had writ­ten on a sealed tablet to be kept in the tem­ple of Samas.

How have you treat­ed me for that cop­per? You have with­held my mon­ey bag from me in ene­my ter­ri­to­ry; it is now up to you to restore (my mon­ey) to me in full.

Take cog­nizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any cop­per from you that is not of fine qual­i­ty. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots indi­vid­u­al­ly in my own yard, and I shall exer­cise against you my right of rejec­tion because you have treat­ed me with con­tempt.

It does seem that Nan­ni maybe took this poor ser­vice a lit­tle too per­son­al­ly. In any case, let’s hope he received some sat­is­fac­tion for the trou­ble it must have tak­en to inscribe this angry mes­sage.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Drafts the Ulti­mate Let­ter of Com­plaint (1905)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

Behold the Old­est Writ­ten Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Cir­ca 3500 BC

Hear the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Hear the Ear­li­est Record­ed Cus­tomer Com­plaint Let­ter: From Ancient Sume­ria 1750 BC

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Was the Baghdad Battery Actually a Battery?: An Archaeologist Demystifies the 2,000-Year-Old Artifact

in Archaeology, History | December 10th, 2025

Image by Ironie, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The aver­age Open Cul­ture read­er may well be aware that there is such a thing as Archae­ol­o­gy YouTube. What could come as more of a sur­prise is how much back-and-forth there is with­in that world. Below, we have a video from the chan­nel Arti­fac­tu­al­ly Speak­ing in which Brad Haf­ford, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia archae­ol­o­gist, gives his take on the so-called Bagh­dad Bat­tery, an ancient arti­fact dis­cov­ered in mod­ern-day Iraq. He does so in the form of a response to an ear­li­er video on the Bagh­dad Bat­tery from anoth­er chan­nel host­ed by a young archae­ol­o­gy edu­ca­tor called Milo Rossi. At some points Haf­ford agrees, and at oth­ers he has cor­rec­tions to make, but sure­ly both YouTu­bers can agree on the fas­ci­na­tion of the object in ques­tion. After all: an ancient bat­tery?

Even those of us with­out any par­tic­u­lar invest­ment in archae­ol­o­gy may find our curios­i­ty piqued by the notion that some long-van­ished civ­i­liza­tion had man­aged to har­ness elec­tric­i­ty. The name Bagh­dad Bat­tery was grant­ed in the first place by Wil­helm König, who was the direc­tor of the lab­o­ra­to­ry of the Nation­al Muse­um of Iraq in the nine­teen-thir­ties, when the object was orig­i­nal­ly dis­cov­ered.

Giv­en that it con­sist­ed of not just a ceram­ic pot but also a cop­per tube and an iron rod, all attached to one anoth­er with bitu­men (a sub­stance present in crude oil used today in asphalt), the idea of its being used for pow­er stor­age was log­i­cal, in its way, if also fan­tas­ti­cal­ly anachro­nis­tic. Not that König sug­gest­ed the Bagh­dad Bat­tery was used to pow­er, say, a grid of street­lights; rather, he sup­posed that it could have been involved in some kind of elec­tro­plat­ing sys­tem.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for König’s hypoth­e­sis, none of the oth­er gild­ed arti­facts recov­ered from ancient Iraq, no mat­ter how fine their craft, were actu­al­ly elec­tro­plat­ed. More prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, the Bagh­dad Bat­tery has no means of con­nec­tion to a cir­cuit, a neces­si­ty to charge it up in the first place. As of now, the pro­fes­sion­al con­sen­sus holds that it must have been cer­e­mo­ni­al: a default, as Rossi frames it, when­ev­er archae­ol­o­gists throw up their hands at a lack of dis­pos­i­tive evi­dence about an arti­fac­t’s orig­i­nal pur­pose. Though Haf­ford acknowl­edges that ten­den­cy, he also lays out the rea­sons he believes the mys­ter­ies don’t go quite as deep as pop­u­lar­iz­ers tend to assume. Like any good YouTu­ber, archae­o­log­i­cal or oth­er­wise, Rossi respond­ed with anoth­er video of his own, in which he address­es Haf­ford’s crit­i­cisms, and also keeps the Bagh­dad Bat­tery — as well as its new­ly cre­at­ed name­sake cock­tail — fir­ing up our imag­i­na­tions a lit­tle longer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Old­est Writ­ten Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Cir­ca 3500 BC

20 New Lines from The Epic of Gil­gamesh Dis­cov­ered in Iraq, Adding New Details to the Sto­ry

How the Ancient Greeks Invent­ed the First Com­put­er: An Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (Cir­ca 87 BC)

The Advanced Tech­nol­o­gy of Ancient Rome: Auto­mat­ic Doors, Water Clocks, Vend­ing Machines & More

A Visu­al­iza­tion of the His­to­ry of Tech­nol­o­gy: 1,889 Inno­va­tions Across Three Mil­lion Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future on The David Letterman Show (1980)

in Sci Fi, Television | December 10th, 2025

In 1980, Newsweek pub­lished a can­tan­ker­ous and sad­ly on-the-nose diag­no­sis of the Unit­ed States’ “cult of igno­rance” — writ­ten by one Isaac Asi­mov, “pro­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine” and “author of 212 books, most of them on var­i­ous sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects for the gen­er­al pub­lic.” Giv­en this intim­i­dat­ing biog­ra­phy, and the fact that Asi­mov believed that “hard­ly any­one can read” in the U.S., we might expect the sci­ence fic­tion leg­end want­ed noth­ing to do with tele­vi­sion. We would be wrong.

Asi­mov seemed to love TV. In 1987, for exam­ple, the four-time Hugo win­ner wrote a humor­ous­ly crit­i­cal take­down of ALF for TV Guide. And he was a con­sum­mate TV enter­tain­er, mak­ing his first major TV appear­ance on John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1968, appear­ing four times on The Mike Dou­glas Show in the next few years, and giv­ing his final tele­vi­sion inter­views to Dick Cavett in a two-part series in 1989. The same year he wrote about America’s cult of igno­rance, he appeared on The David Let­ter­man show to crack wise with the biggest wiseass on TV. Asi­mov held his own and then some.

“Asi­mov, six­ty in this video, proves him­self a nat­ur­al come­di­an,” writes the Melville House blog; “Let­ter­man, thir­ty-three, can bare­ly keep up.” Sure­ly Asimov’s ban­ter had noth­ing to do with The David Let­ter­man Show’s can­cel­la­tion three days lat­er. (Let­ter­man was back on the air for eleven sea­sons two years lat­er.) Their inter­view ranges wide­ly from pop cul­ture (Asi­mov con­fess­es his appre­ci­a­tion for both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back) to “the future of med­i­cine, space explo­ration, hope for mankind, and much more,” Vic Sage writes at Pop Cul­ture Retro­ra­ma.

Asimov’s dry deliv­ery — honed dur­ing his Eng­lish-and-Yid­dish-speak­ing Brook­lyn child­hood — is delight­ful. But the writer, teacher, and sci­en­tist hasn’t only come on TV to crack jokes, pro­mote a book, and flaunt his mut­ton­chops. He wants to edu­cate his fel­low Amer­i­cans about the state of the future. (His Newsweek bio was out­dat­ed. As Let­ter­man says, his appear­ance marked the pub­li­ca­tion of his 221st book.) Like Hari Sel­don, the hero of his 1951 nov­el Foun­da­tion, Asi­mov felt con­fi­dent in his abil­i­ty to pre­dict the course of human progress (or regress, as the case may be).

He also felt con­fi­dent answer­ing ques­tions about what to do with out­er space, and where to “put more men,” as Let­ter­man says. His rec­om­men­da­tion to build “fac­to­ries” may strike us as a banal fore­run­ner of Jeff Bezos’ even more banal plans for office parks in space. Asi­mov boasts of the vision he had of “pock­et com­put­ers” in 1950 — hard­ly a real­i­ty in 1980. Dave com­plains about how com­pli­cat­ed com­put­ers are, and Asi­mov accu­rate­ly pre­dicts that as tech­nol­o­gy catch­es up, they will get sim­pler to use. “But these are lit­tle things,” he says. “I nev­er tried to pre­dict. I just tried to write sto­ries to pay my way through col­lege.” He must have paid it sev­er­al times over, and he seemed to get more right than he got wrong. See more of Asi­mov’s pre­dic­tions in the links below.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future of Civilization–and Rec­om­mends Ways to Ensure That It Sur­vives (1978)

In 1964, Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Dri­ving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1983 What the World Will Look Like in 2019: Com­put­er­i­za­tion, Glob­al Co-oper­a­tion, Leisure Time & Moon Min­ing

Isaac Asi­mov Laments the “Cult of Igno­rance” in the Unit­ed States (1980)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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See What the Original Mona Lisa Likely Looked Like

in Art, History | December 9th, 2025

If you want to see the Mona Lisa in real life, your first thought may not be to head to the Pra­do. But accord­ing to a school of thought that has emerged in recent years, the Mona Lisa in Madrid has a greater claim to artis­tic faith­ful­ness than the one in Paris. That’s because researchers have dis­cov­ered com­pelling evi­dence sug­gest­ing that what was long con­sid­ered just anoth­er copy of the most famous paint­ing in the world was­n’t made after Leonar­do had com­plet­ed the orig­i­nal, but con­cur­rent­ly with the orig­i­nal, prob­a­bly by one of his stu­dents. Over half a mil­len­ni­um, in this view, the Prado’s Mona Lisa has retained the col­ors and details the Lou­vre’s has lost, result­ing in its preser­va­tion of Leonar­do’s inten­tions today.

Infrared pho­tog­ra­phy has even revealed, says the nar­ra­tor of the new Inspi­rag­gio video above, that both paint­ings “share the same changes in the orig­i­nal sketch. For years, it has been known that Leonar­do made small cor­rec­tions to the shape of the Mona Lisa’s hands, adjust­ments to the line of the eyes, and sub­tle mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the curve of the face,” the very same cor­rec­tions that were found in the new­ly exam­ined copy.

Unlike oth­er copies, the Prado’s ver­sion uses “incred­i­bly expen­sive pig­ments” such as lapis lazuli—imported from Afghanistan—for the sky. This only became evi­dent dur­ing the 2012 restora­tion, when the back­ground, long hid­den under a thick lay­er of black, was final­ly uncov­ered.

There­after, the Pra­do Mona Lisa was exhib­it­ed along­side the Mona Lisa at the Lou­vre in a tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion. This gave the pub­lic the chance to see both how sim­i­lar they look, and how dif­fer­ent. Though unde­ni­ably La Gio­con­da, the copy does­n’t seem quite “right,” in large part because it has­n’t dete­ri­o­rat­ed in the man­ner or to the degree of the orig­i­nal. Leonar­do paint­ed it on a poplar wood pan­el that has giv­en way to count­less small cracks, and the lay­ers of yel­low var­nish added over the cen­turies have dark­ened to give the whole image a sepia tone. The result, of course, is the tex­ture and col­or­ing we’ve come to asso­ciate with the Mona Lisa by cease­less expo­sure to her in pop­u­lar cul­ture, even if we’ve nev­er seen any ver­sion hang­ing in any muse­um. If the Prado’s copy real­ly does reflect Leonar­do’s orig­i­nal artis­tic choic­es, we can put at least one hot­ly debat­ed mat­ter to rest: the lady real­ly did have eye­brows.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before the Mona Lisa?

How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing?: It’s Not What You Think

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

An Immac­u­late Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Sup­per Dig­i­tized by Google: View It in High Res­o­lu­tion Online

A Chi­nese Painter Spe­cial­iz­ing in Copy­ing Van Gogh Paint­ings Trav­els to Ams­ter­dam & Sees Van Gogh’s Mas­ter­pieces for the First Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Read the Uplifting Letter That Albert Einstein Sent to Marie Curie During a Time of Personal Crisis (1911)

in Chemistry, Letters, Physics | December 9th, 2025

Marie Curie’s 1911 Nobel Prize win, her sec­ond, for the dis­cov­ery of radi­um and polo­ni­um, would have been cause for pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion in her adopt­ed France, but for the near­ly simul­ta­ne­ous rev­e­la­tion of her affair with fel­low physi­cist Paul Langevin, the fel­low stand­ing to the right of a 32-year-old Albert Ein­stein in the above group pho­to from the 1911 Solvay Con­fer­ence in Physics.

Both sto­ries broke while Curie—unsurprisingly, the sole woman in the photo—was attend­ing the con­fer­ence in Brus­sels.

Equal­ly unsur­pris­ing­ly, the press pre­ferred le scan­dale to la réal­i­sa­tion sci­en­tifique. Sex sells, then and now.

The fires of radi­um which beam so mysteriously…have just lit a fire in the heart of one of the sci­en­tists who stud­ies their action so devot­ed­ly; and the wife and the chil­dren of this sci­en­tist are in tears.…

—Le Jour­nal, Novem­ber 4, 1911

There’s no deny­ing that the affair was painful for Langevin’s fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly his wife, Jeanne, who sup­plied the media with incrim­i­nat­ing let­ters from Curie to her hus­band. She must have been aware that Curie would be the one to bear the brunt of the public’s dis­ap­proval. Dou­ble stan­dards with regard to gen­der are noth­ing new.

A furi­ous throng gath­ered out­side of Curie’s house and anti-Semit­ic papers, dis­sat­is­fied with label­ing the pio­neer­ing sci­en­tist a mere home wreck­er, declared—erroneously—that she was Jew­ish. The time­line was tweaked to sug­gest that Curie had tak­en up with Langevin pri­or to her husband’s death. Fel­low radio­chemist Bertram Bolt­wood seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to declare that “she is exact­ly what I always thought she was, a detestable idiot.”

In the midst of this, Ein­stein, who had made Curie’s acquain­tance at the con­fer­ence, proved him­self a true friend with a “don’t let the bas­tards get you down” let­ter, writ­ten on Novem­ber 23. Oth­er than a del­i­cate allu­sion to Langevin as a per­son with whom he felt priv­i­leged to be in con­tact, he refrained from men­tion­ing the cause of her mis­for­tune.

A friend­ly word can go a long way in times of dis­grace, and Ein­stein sup­plied his new friend with some stout­ly unequiv­o­cal ones, denounc­ing the scan­dal­mon­gers as “rep­tiles” feast­ing on sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic “hog­wash”:

High­ly esteemed Mrs. Curie,

Do not laugh at me for writ­ing you with­out hav­ing any­thing sen­si­ble to say. But I am so enraged by the base man­ner in which the pub­lic is present­ly dar­ing to con­cern itself with you that I absolute­ly must give vent to this feel­ing. How­ev­er, I am con­vinced that you con­sis­tent­ly despise this rab­ble, whether it obse­quious­ly lav­ish­es respect on you or whether it attempts to sati­ate its lust for sen­sa­tion­al­ism! I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intel­lect, your dri­ve, and your hon­esty, and that I con­sid­er myself lucky to have made your per­son­al acquain­tance in Brus­sels. Any­one who does not num­ber among these rep­tiles is cer­tain­ly hap­py, now as before, that we have such per­son­ages among us as you, and Langevin too, real peo­ple with whom one feels priv­i­leged to be in con­tact. If the rab­ble con­tin­ues to occu­py itself with you, then sim­ply don’t read that hog­wash, but rather leave it to the rep­tile for whom it has been fab­ri­cat­ed.

With most ami­ca­ble regards to you, Langevin, and Per­rin, yours very tru­ly,

A. Ein­stein

PS I have deter­mined the sta­tis­ti­cal law of motion of the diatom­ic mol­e­cule in Planck’s radi­a­tion field by means of a com­i­cal wit­ti­cism, nat­u­ral­ly under the con­straint that the structure’s motion fol­lows the laws of stan­dard mechan­ics. My hope that this law is valid in real­i­ty is very small, though.

That delib­er­ate­ly geeky post­script amounts to anoth­er sweet show of sup­port. Per­haps it for­ti­fied Curie when a week lat­er, she received a let­ter from Nobel Com­mit­tee mem­ber Svante Arrhe­nius, urg­ing her to skip the Prize cer­e­mo­ny in Stock­holm. Curie reject­ed Arrhe­nius’ sug­ges­tion thus­ly:

The prize has been award­ed for the dis­cov­ery of radi­um and polo­ni­um. I believe that there is no con­nec­tion between my sci­en­tif­ic work and the facts of pri­vate life. I can­not accept … that the appre­ci­a­tion of the val­ue of sci­en­tif­ic work should be influ­enced by libel and slan­der con­cern­ing pri­vate life.

For a more in-depth look at Marie Curie’s night­mar­ish Novem­ber, refer to “Hon­or and Dis­hon­or” the six­teenth chap­ter in Bar­bara Goldsmith’s Obses­sive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Marie Curie Attend­ed a Secret, Under­ground “Fly­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” When Women Were Banned from Pol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties

Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioac­tive a Cen­tu­ry Lat­er

Marie Curie Invent­ed Mobile X‑Ray Units to Help Save Wound­ed Sol­diers in World War I

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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