Triggered by another thread, where I learned that apparently fax machines have existed since only 10 years after the telegraph, I wondered, are fax machines our longest-lived, still functional technology?
If not, what is? Trains? Printing press?
Is what came first in dispute at all? Are there things we don’t think of as technology that are technology? Is an abacus technology? Cuz that’s pretty old.
Just wondering.
It’s really a question of defining technology. You can argue that a hammer is technology, and that’s probably the oldest.
inclined plane
Digging sticks have been around for over 400,000 years and are still used in parts of the world today.
I would argue that fire is the longest lived technology. Even Neanderthals could purposely start a fire.
Does this mean all tools are technology?
In a word, yes. That’s why we make a pretty big deal out of any animals that use any sort of tools.
So definitely not fax machines.
How about the club?
I think the use of clubs as a weapon and hunting tool predates the use of fire.
I think trains are different than a digging stick in that people still use trains because there has been no technological advancement since their invention that affords a better way of doing the thing they are asked to do.
Trains have been used for people and cargo transport from day 1, and they’re used that way today, same idea as always, metal wheels on a metal rail with an engine pulling a long line of separate cars. The guys using trains aren’t impoverished people who can’t access modern technology, they are using the most advanced technology available for the purpose.
I think maybe I would draw the line between found tools and manufactured tools as technology. With that in mind, stone tools like flint knapped blades are probably older than firemaking. I’m not sure I would call beating or spearing an animal with a stick to be technology per se.
So assuming you mean a multipart and assembled piece of tech not made of pottery, wood, stone and string/sinew:
The Steam Engine is a candidate
Windmills are older yet.
The Loom which is probably the first tech to use “logic”.
I would include watermills and animal powered millstones in that too.
Using this definition, I was going to suggest the Antikythera mechanism, dating from the 2nd century BCE. But I think the OP is asking for the longest continuously in use tech, not simply the oldest. I believe there was a long period where the use of gears to make an analogue computing device such as this was lost for many years before it was ‘reinvented’.
Which raises the question of whether the domestication of animals counts as a technology? I’d lean towards yes.
I don’t think that counts as still functional tech and also the loom is older I think.
Yeah, I was going to say “a modified stick”. Pull the leaves and side shoots off, and you’ve got something you can jab into food. Chimps do that, so presumably our ancestors did, probably well before homo who call ourselves sapiens; and almost certainly before deliberate use of fire. And people toasting things over a fire still do it today.
Schrader valve hasn’t changed since it was first introduced.
The wheel!
This is the correct answer. Our ancestors have been using pared, sharpened sticks since before we were Homo. We could also ask what’s the oldest human technology, which is likely fire (used by the early Homo genus) or possibly shaped rocks.
We could argue that a stick is not a single technology, but a suite of technologies. Likewise for fire or rocks. What’s the oldest specific method for building and using a tool that’s still in use?