Narrator: What incredible power tool did the ancient
Egyptians use to create this
mysterious cylinder known as Core 7?
How that happens in granite,
it almost seems impossible.
Narrator: How were they able
to build instruments so precise
they could create the greatest
treasure of the ancient world?
The work in this is awe-inspiring.
Narrator: How were they able
to craft the world's first multi-tool?
And it's staggering to think
that it's almost 2,000 years old.
Narrator: And how did the
ancient Chinese build a mega
machine that would start the
world's first industrial revolution?
Monuments more colossal than
our own, ancient super weapons
as mighty as today's,
technology so precise it defies reinvention.
The ancient world was not primitive.
Their marvels are so advanced,
we still use them now.
Travel to a world closer than
we imagine, an ancient age
where nothing was impossible.
Behind all the incredible
ancient monuments is something
even more amazing-
the tools that built them.
Today we possess extraordinary
power tools that can slice into
the hardest rocks, grind down
the toughest metal, and carve into mountains.
But what of the ancient Egyptians?
The monuments they left behind
are awe-inspiring and have
somehow been built from
limestone, sandstone, and even granite.
Is it possible the ancients had
tools more advanced than our own?
Could the answer lie in this
ancient, mysterious Egyptian artifact?
It is known as Core 7.
Made of granite, it is beyond what we imagine.
Its very existence appears
impossible to explain.
This might not be visually as
titillating as one of the gold
death masks or something
encrusted in jewels, but from
the point of view of being able
to understand the technology of
the ancient Egyptian culture, this is pure gold.
Narrator: Core 7 now resides
2,000 Miles from Egypt, in the
petrie museum in London.
And it's one of the most
remarkable objects in their vast collection.
This reveals more about
ancient Egyptian technology than
virtually anything we've seen.
Technologically, it reveals
things that we would never have
known without a sample like this.
This shows that they possessed
the ability to do advanced
technical material cutting
really on a level that not only
matches anything that we could
do today but surpasses it and
surpasses it in ways that we still can't explain.
Narrator: Experts have subjected Core 7 to the most
detailed scientific investigation.
But all this does is raise more questions.
How could ancient Egyptians have possibly made this?
It's a fairly unprepossessing
looking object, but it's the
"how" that is so intriguing.
It's actually an incredible feat
and something that the Egyptians
only achieved using techniques
that are unknown to us.
Narrator: All we know for
sure is where this miraculous
object was discovered.
Core 7 was uncovered in 1881 by
the archeologist flinders petrie
in the khafre valley temple,
near the foot of the pyramids of Giza.
It soon became clear that this was a unique find.
But what was it?
Could the answers lie in a close
study of the temple where it was found?
Now around every archway, I
find these sort of indentations
where this is where the door
would have joined right in here.
And there's a bit of a socket
here, a round socket that could
have just been made by bashing a rock into the granite.
These are very interesting, but
on this site, there's another
hole, a place where the door
would have joined in that's even more intriguing.
Narrator: Could this mysterious hole be the place
where Core 7 came from?
You can see if you look up in there.
A tool clearly drilled out that hole.
In a lot of other door bolts,
what we see is more of a kind of
a ball joint, something that
could have been just pounded out with a rock.
But this really seems to be drilled.
It's clearly been cut in by something quite cylindrical but
how that happens in granite, I mean, is a mystery to me because
this is such a hard stone, and the Egyptians really didn't have
anything which could cut granite like that.
I mean, it almost seems impossible, how they cut this hole.
Core 7 was cut from a red
granite lintel by the ancient
Egyptians in khafre's valley
temple to make a door pivot.
This is Core 7.
For the workmen who cut it, it
was just rubbish to be thrown away.
But this rubbish is evidence of
ancient technology people still
think is impossible.
Narrator: To further
investigate the amazing mystery
that is Core 7, we have to look
at the tools we know the
Egyptians possessed.
This well-preserved wall
painting may provide a vital
clue to the tools of the Egyptians.
It depicts a man sawing with
what appears to be a metal tool.
The hardest metal they had in
any real quantity at that time was copper.
The stone used in these massive
constructions is mainly
sandstone and limestone.
Could copper tools have cut
through these rocks to create
the ancient monuments of Egypt?
In a stone quarry in Somerset,
England, we are going to put
this to the test.
But how strong is copper in cutting stone?
There's a scale of hardness
going from 1 down to 10 which is
Mohs hardness scale.
1 is talc, and 10 is diamonds.
Now, limestones and chalks and
marbles are typically around
about 3, 4, but copper is also about 3.
Narrator: Could a copper saw
be just hard enough to cut through limestone?
We are actually cutting a
groove but at considerable loss of the copper.
So it's possible, just possible
to use copper tools, chisels to cut limestone.
Narrator: But Core 7 is made
of granite, one of the hardest
rocks in the world.
Granite is made of quartz and
feldspar, and both of those are
very hard materials, and they're
down at 7 on the Mohs scale, so
it's impossible to take copper
and cut quartz with it.
It's impossible, scientifically impossible.
Narrator: But the evidence of
the tools of the ancients is in front of our eyes.
Core 7 was not the only granite object in Egypt.
The burial chambers and
sarcophagi of the pyramids at
Giza and even statues were made of granite.
The ancients had the power to
carve granite structures.
But this doesn't explain how
something as intricate as Core 7 was created.
One of the most obvious things
about Core 7 is its spiral grooves.
We're incredibly fortunate
that this was found by someone
like petrie, someone who was
curious, someone who's a
scientist, someone for whom no
detail was too trivial.
And for him, the grooves that
were cut in here, the evidence
of the type of technology that
was possessed by this society.
Narrator: The mysterious cut
marks scored onto its surface
are evidence that a circular tool was used.
And a clue to what that tool
might be comes from a
wall painting from the tomb of Rekhmire.
It shows two men with what
appears to be a copper-tipped bow drill.
But still, can such a tool
really cut into granite?
In a granite-cutting factory in
England, we have given workmen a
precise copy of the bow drill
from the wall painting to see if
they can cut a granite core of their own.
To help the soft copper drill
bit cut into the granite, they
have added grit to the base of
the drill, and water as a lubricant.
Copper's a very soft metal.
It's the abrasive grit that
we're gonna use to turn round
and score the granite.
That's what will cut the granite.
We don't seem to be actually
getting very far with it.
We maybe scored it, but I don't
think we've gone very deep at all.
Ok, shall we stop?
Let me have a look, pull it out.
Narrator: Eventually the bow
drill did begin to make an
impression on a block of
granite.
But looking more closely at the
original Core 7 shows that using
a bow drill to cut a core is
leading the investigation down a dead end.
So what's so impossible about Core 7?
Look at these grooves.
They spiral around Core 7.
This is what you get from a
modern drill, not a bow drill
that goes back and forth.
This is the pattern you'd get
from a continuous drill.
Whereas this saw-tooth pattern
is what you would get from a
back-and-forth drill.
Narrator: A drill that would
replicate the continuous spiral
cut marks of Core 7 is a drill like this.
This is a 50-millimeter core
drill bit, diamond ring
impregnated into a steel.
We use this for drilling holes
in a variety of materials, but
predominately this type is used for granite.
Narrator: A modern tool like
this powered by electricity
turns at 1,600 revolutions and
cuts four inches of granite per minute.
Here's the granite core that
the core drill has just drilled.
We can create this in four or five minutes.
Over 4,500 years ago the technology and the materials
they would have had looks quite impossible to turn round and
create the same sort of thing.
Narrator: The very existence of Core 7 suggests that somehow
the Egyptians must have had a tool that at the very least
matched this 21st-century power drill.
Narrator: Our world is filled
with amazing power tools and machines.
Yet what incredible tools were
the ancient Egyptians using more
than 4,000 years ago?
They were able to sculpt
limestone, sandstone, and even
granite into some of the most
astonishing monuments on the planet.
What were the incredible tools
that achieved these remarkable feats?
We are on a journey to find out, and our search has led us to
England and the mysterious artifact called Core 7.
This small granite cylinder is a mystery.
But how was it made?
It seems to show that the
ancient Egyptians had tools that
were simply impossible.
In Hereford, England, we're
going to try to get close to
such a tool for the first time-
a human-powered drill that can
reproduce these remarkable cut marks.
So what I've done is to build
a version of the hand-turned
tube drill, but I've put it
within a frame so that we can
actually achieve a lot more
pressure than would be available
if just people were just simply leaning on it.
Narrator: The only way to make the copper drill bit cut
into granite is to add grit.
Richard is adding emery, harder
than the grit the Egyptians were thought to have used.
So really in a sense, this is
one step on from the bow saw.
It's the same principle.
Narrator: The emery powder embeds itself into the copper
metal, making it into a far more powerful cutting tool.
So with this windlass system it can either be rotated
continuously in one direction,
which of course would be necessary to produce a spiral.
Narrator: Despite this
remarkable recreation, working
vigorously for half an hour
produces barely a mark.
To cut a hole into granite
producing a cylinder like Core 7
now seems even more impossible.
Core 7 still remains an enigma.
We still haven't really fathomed
the helical marks on the side of this core.
Narrator: And there is a further revelation.
An analysis of the distance
between the grooves shows
something truly astonishing.
One of the key diagnostics on
analyzing a cut like this is to
look at the rate of the cut as
it advances through, how many
threads per inch essentially
have been created on here by the cutting tool.
And one of the easiest ways to
count that is by simply taking a
piece of cotton thread and
wrapping it around inside the grooves.
And this is absolutely amazing because if we were to cut
something like this with a modern tool, we would expect
that it would take hundreds and hundreds of rotations of the
drill to penetrate this amount.
Narrator: The space between the grooves shows us that the
drill must have been pushed into the granite with even more force
than today's most powerful tools are capable of.
The depth that the grooves are
cut into the granite can tell us even more.
To be this deep suggests they
used something like a diamond in
a clockwise rotating drill.
There's no evidence, except this core, to suggest the ancient
Egyptians had this technology.
Perhaps this plug of granite shouldn't exist, but however
impossible it is, the ancient Egyptians made it.
To think that this was created perhaps 4,500 years ago
using ancient Egyptian
technology is incredible to us.
In fact, this is almost an impossible ancient object.
Narrator: It is so advanced that it raises the remarkable
thought that maybe it has come from a place that defies
understanding, beyond the abilities of humans.
Over the years there have
been many wild speculations that
aliens, for example, were
responsible for making objects like this.
We don't need those extreme theories.
Narrator: Despite multiple tests, Core 7 refuses to give up
any clues as to the design of the power tool that created it.
The experts believe the rational
explanation behind it must
simply be lost to history.
The ancient Egyptians were
perfectly capable of skillfully
producing stone work such as this.
And just 'cause we don't
understand how it was made
doesn't mean that we need to
resort to wild speculation.
Narrator: Although we have no
evidence of how Core 7 was
drilled from granite, could the
elusive and incredible tool that
created it have been fitted with
a bit embedded with diamond, the
hardest material on earth?
The Roman writer pliny the elder
mentions a mysterious material
called "Adamas," when describing
tools for cutting the hardest
rocks and stones.
Could Adamas really have been diamond?
Perhaps it was.
But still, that was 2,500
thousand years after the
Egyptians sculpted Core 7 from granite.
People have been looking at
this for decades and still,
there's no definitive answer.
Perhaps we'll never know.
Narrator: With so little
solid evidence, it seems the
ancient tool that produced this
remarkable artifact must remain
beyond our understanding.
Core 7 remains one of the most
impossible mysteries of the ancient world.
Narrator: With huge power
tools that match the strength of
our own, the ancients were able
to construct buildings that are
memorials to their genius.
But how exactly did they do it?
Their records, from temple
paintings to the objects
themselves continue to raise questions.
What tools did they possess?
How were they able to use them
to create objects of astonishing
scale and beauty?
At Cairo museum are housed some
of the greatest treasures of the
ancient world, amongst them the
remarkable death mask of king Tutankhamen.
It was in 1922 that
archaeologist Howard Carter
discovered the tomb of the
pharaoh Tutankhamen.
Sliding off the cover of this
ancient sarcophagus, Carter laid
eyes on an extraordinary object
that had been hidden for over 3,000 years.
It is easy to be awestruck by
the skill needed to manipulate
solid gold into this extraordinary mask.
But skill is nothing without the tools to go with it.
To try to get close to seeing
what tools were used, a unique
experiment is undertaken.
In this sculptor's workshop in
Wales in the UK, a remarkable
recreation of the making of the
famous death mask is underway.
The tools they used to
produce this aren't that
dissimilar to the kind of tools
we use nowadays to work with metal.
They would have worked with
bronze tools, but fundamentally,
they were working with hammers
and chisels and that's it, and
just to a very, very fine degree.
Narrator: There is no written
record of how the mask was made.
But it appears the craftsman
would have to start by making an
alabaster sculpture of
Tutankhamen's face to work from.
It seems a sheet of metal would
then be molded to the sculpture
by gently tapping it.
So this process of molding
the metal over the shape of the
head can take a long time.
This is it after many hours'
work, and you see we are
beginning to see a much greater degree of definition.
Narrator: Pieces like this
then need to be soldered together.
How would the Egyptians have managed this?
It's a mystery.
So what we want to get is to this stage.
There's still roughness on it.
You can still see the joins.
The next stage now, we're then
going to have to go over these with a hot iron.
Narrator: With heated tools,
you can smooth the surface.
It's a hugely delicate process
with no room for error.
But researchers wonder if the
Egyptians used this hot-tool technique?
The fact is we simply don't know.
The next process then is
polishing it's essentially
sandpaper and files and rasps to
get the absolutely perfect
mirrored finish that the
Egyptians achieved.
Narrator: The craftsmen of
the time didn't have metal files
as we know them today.
They did have a kind of
sandpaper made from sycamore bark.
To achieve this finish with the
tools they had is astonishing.
You are humbled by this piece
of artwork.
The work in this is literally awe-inspiring.
Narrator: The Egyptians
clearly knew how to manipulate
small tools to create objects of
astonishing beauty.
Not only were tools used for
great art, but the ancients were
also able to create tools to use
on themselves.
The sparse records left behind
continually give us new clues.
This is an astonishing wall painting.
It seems to show ancient
Egyptian eye surgery in action.
Incredibly, the ancients did
have tools capable of surgical precision.
And this recent discovery is one
of those tools.
From the Roman era, it is so
similar to tools used today it
seems almost impossible.
Incredibly, its job is to remove
the cataract in the eye.
Cataracts are caused when you
get a buildup of protein behind
the lens in the human eye.
So you can imagine this is the
lens of an eye, the cataracts
build up behind this lens and
stop the light from getting
through clearly onto the retina.
So the result is that the
individual would experience a
kind of cloudiness impairing their vision.
Narrator: Throughout the
ancient world, physicians used
needles for intricate eye surgery.
In recent years, archaeologists
have uncovered a range of Roman
tools designed for this
incredibly delicate operation.
So this is a Roman cataract needle.
It's an extraordinary precision
instrument, beautifully made,
effective and simple.
It is an absolutely fantastic instrument.
It is a treasure in its own
right because of the information it brings us.
It's simple, but it's effective,
and it's been in people's eyes.
Narrator: To cure a cataract,
the ancients developed a
technique known as couching.
Surgeons would expertly insert
the needle into the back of the
eye to cut away the cataract.
One slip could have caused
permanent blindness.
Light floods back into the eyeball.
He's lost the focusing
mechanism, not that he knew he
had it, but it's a successful operation.
He can see much better than he saw before.
And let's not forget this is
in the days before penicillin,
before anesthetic, and yet they
had the wherewithal to try and
attempt to solve this problem.
Narrator: But the innovation
didn't stop there.
On the bed of a river in Montbellet, France,
archaeologists came upon an
incredible find- a cache of
needles that only began to
reveal their secrets when x-rayed.
They were the next generation of
medical implements whose design
was 2,000 years ahead of their time.
Incredibly, they're remarkably
similar to the tools used by eye
surgeons today.
And the clue here is in the
built-in suction tube.
So this modern-day cataract
needle has been developed over
many, many years.
During my surgery, this fine
ultrasonic needle is taken and
placed through the incision into
the eye, and then the ultrasonic
power is used to break up the
cataract, and then it's also
sucked up through the same
needle and taken away.
Narrator: Incredibly, the
Romans performed eye operations
in just the same way, the
needle being part of a hollow
tube and the cataract being
literally sucked up through this
tube by the mouth of the doctor.
But then this technology was forgotten.
For nearly 2,000 years it seems
we ignored the genius of the
ancients and lost our way.
As we move through into the
medieval ages, we then see
surgeons using a very sharp knife.
A big cut was made right across
the eye and then the lens was
essentially squeezed out of the eye.
And since then, we've gone back
to smaller and smaller and
smaller incisions into the eye
down to almost the same size as
this needle would create into the eye.
To think that 2,000 years ago
the Romans were using an
instrument like this to remove
cataracts is absolutely amazing.
Narrator: It's an
astonishingly delicate
construction, a needle within a
tube, constructed with
microscopic accuracy.
It seems impossible, but how
might a tube so thin have been made?
Something as important and
delicate and precise as this
would probably be the peak of
their sort of level of construction.
The ancient engineers knew that
heating and then cooling a metal
changed its molecular structure
to make it softer and easier to work.
It was incredibly sophisticated.
This level of precision
probably wouldn't be seen again
in Europe until much, much
later, another thousand years
until the early clock and
instrument makers of the
14th and 15th century.
Narrator: It was a tool that
was both beautiful and one that
had to be made with astonishing precision.
It would be really important
that this thing worked properly.
You're sticking this in
somebody's eye, effectively.
It's got to be accurate.
It's got to work.
Narrator: The Romans created
the perfect tool to save a
person's sight, and yet we can
never know why this technology
was lost for nearly a thousand years.
But imagine what our world would
have been like if it were not.
Narrator: The ancients didn't
just produce power tools capable
of tackling the construction of
giant monuments.
They were ingenious enough to
make tools that were capable of
even the most delicate surgical operations.
And their superb craftsmanship,
tools and technology even extend
to something that we take for
granted today, the pocket multi-tool.
At the Fitzwilliam museum, in
Cambridge, England,
archaeologist Mary-Ann Ochota is
here to examine the only
surviving example of its type,
unearthed from a site in the
Roman mediterranean.
This is an absolutely
ingenious tool, and it's
staggering to think that it's 1,800 years old.
This would have been cutting-
edge, modern technology for a
wealthy traveler to carry.
Narrator: The reason this
tool exists today is because it
was built to impress from a
metal that could survive being
buried for almost 2,000 years.
It's in fantastic condition
because it's made of silver.
You might not be able to check
in to the best hotel or find the
best place to eat.
You need all the gadgets that
you require with you.
This gives you a spoon, it gives
you a fork, it gives you a
knife, gives you a spike, a tiny spatula.
It means that you've got all
those really useful functional
items tucked away in your pocket
but when you pull it out, it's made of silver.
This is no average utility knife.
Narrator: Almost 1,800 years
before its reinvention in the
west, the Roman multi-tool was a
stunning example of the same
craftsmanship that went into
creating Roman surgical tools.
This solid silver reproduction
shows the level of skill they possessed.
It did everything a modern
multi-tool would do, but some
would say better and more
elegantly.
These tools, these multi-tools that were
mass-produced became popular in
the 1880s with soldiers as a
really functional tool they
could keep in their pocket that
would enable them to prepare
food in the field and also
maintain their weapon.
The big difference is its Roman
predecessor isn't just about function.
It's incredibly well-tooled.
It's incredibly beautifully
engineered.
This is also about prestige,
it's about eating well when
you're on the road.
It's about being able to look
after yourself, and it's also a
little bit about showing off.
It just goes to show how ahead
of their time the ancient Romans really were.
Narrator: Once again, the
ancients created an impossibly modern tool.
Many believe no-one could
possess tools as powerful as ours today.
But the first century a.D. Was
the height of the Roman empire.
Could they have had tools just
as advanced as our own?
Their empire was littered with
buildings built from marble.
But how did they do this?
Maybe a clue can be found in
Ephesus, on the coast of what is now Turkey.
This raw material was the making
of Ephesus, which was second
only to Rome in size.
A huge trading centre, its own
buildings were sliced from the
precious stone, marble, on a colossal scale.
This fabled city has been
closely studied by archaeologist
Darius Arya.
This is a place that was in
close proximity to grand
quarries of marble.
And this place had an appetite for marble.
For centuries and centuries all
the way into the 6th and 7th centuries a.D.
Narrator: The quarries of
Ephesus produced enough marble
to build the temple of Artemis,
since lost to history and one of
the seven wonders of the ancient world.
They even built a road of solid
marble 2,500 feet long.
The temple was on this amazing
road, as was a great theater
which could hold 25,000 spectators.
But with simple tools like saws,
it was a huge challenge to
produce marble on such an
industrial scale.
Well, it's a very laborious,
tedious process because you've
got two guys that are cutting blocks of stone.
Very long process, very labor- intensive.
Narrator: How could mere hand
tools produce enough marble to
build an empire?
Here in Turkey is an intriguing clue.
Could this image, on a
sarcophagus lid from the 3rd
century a.D., be a marble- cutting machine?
Is it evidence of a water-
powered tool that would be the
driving force of industry for
the next 2,000 years?
Narrator: Steel and skyscrapers are how we build today.
But marble was the material of
choice in the ancient world.
But the demand for marble to
build the monuments was so
great, how could workers with
mere hand saws respond?
The lid of a sarcophagus from
the 3rd century a.D. Might show
us the answer, the first
evidence of a giant industrial saw.
This power tool is driven by
something that looks like a
modern water wheel.
If true, then remarkably, it's
evidence of one of the first
engines, something that has
powered tools up to the
beginning of the 20th century.
Engineer dick strawbridge has
come to compare the ancient
technology with this watermill
in Hereford, England.
There's been a water wheel
here for over 800 years.
It's a great way of capturing
the energy for the water.
Further upstream, the water's at
a high level, and then we've got
a low level here.
As the water drops, it turns
this huge, big wheel.
There's about a ton of water at 8 feet.
That's a massive amount of
turning that it does.
Go back to Ephesus, and we're
talking 1,500 years ago, and
somebody said, "I've got a water wheel.
You know, I've got a problem.
I want to saw marble."
Great thing about it- you get
rid of all that back-breaking work.
You can actually cut marble on
an industrial scale.
That would have given them such
an advantage when it came to
building, and building with
marble is so beautiful.
The whole industry powered by
water- what a great idea.
Narrator: Incredibly, they
had the technology to do this in
Ephesus 1,500 years ago with
water wheels powering
marble-cutting machines churning
out marble from quarries across the city.
The wooden water wheels of
Ephesus have since turned to
dust, but there is evidence of
them, if you know where to look.
Here we are at the beginning
of the process.
What we have here is the part
of the system where the water
flows down and hits a water wheel.
And this is about 13 feet up.
And the water would come
cascading down, hitting a water
wheel in wood.
We don't have the water wheel,
but we do have the slot in which
it was placed.
Narrator: These water-powered
marble-cutters built an empire.
But they had to evolve.
Ancient builders needed to adapt
the tools to create the look of
solid marble, but without the cost.
They can't just always have
solid columns and solid big
blocks of marble.
They need another solution.
Well, as early as the 4th
century b.C. We're told that we
have the invention of marble
veneer- cutting big blocks of
stone into thin marble slabs.
Here is an example of just how
thin those panels are.
Just a few mere millimeters.
In this case here what you see
is they've taken a block of
stone, and they've cut it open
and then they've mirrored it so
you've got the same pattern
appearing on both sides.
Narrator: The genius of the
ancient engineers was to adapt
their water-driven tools into
power saws precise enough to cut
solid marble into veneers less
than half an inch thick.
What is the saw in this case?
Sometimes we have reference to
them being made out of metal.
In this case here the
archaeologists say they were
made of wood.
But ultimately, it's the
relentless efficiency of the
back and forth motion, and
ultimately the estimates are
that it was 12 times as
efficient as two guys cutting
the same block.
Narrator: Based on the
evidence from Ephesus, we have
built a reconstruction of this
game-changing saw.
Steve wolf has come to see it in action.
This is exciting.
I've traveled a long way to see this.
It's 1/3 scale.
The original would have been
nine feet tall, a colossal piece
of equipment, very powerful for
cutting stone.
Narrator: For possibly the
first time in history, this tool
uses two pairs of parallel metal
saws to cut marble veneers from a solid block.
That means that we would have
had four saw blades, each of
them nine feet long, all of them
simultaneously cutting away on
here generating valuable marble
to sell and saving a tremendous
amount of labor in the process.
Narrator: Marble production
had moved from sweat and muscle
power using manual saws into a
process using massive industrial power tools.
These were the power tools
needed to keep up with a period
of building that was exploding
throughout the ancient world.
But an astonishing find in
jerash in present-day Jordan
shows how the innovation in
power tools never slowed even as
the Roman empire began to shrink.
In the temple of Artemis are two
limestone drums, each with four
identical parallel cuts.
What tool could have done this?
This is what we believe it could
have looked like...
A multi-bladed powerhouse to
mass-produce veneers.
The power from the water wheel
cranked a pair of giant saws,
each connected to two sets of
four blades that sliced their
way through marble.
The water-driven marble saw is
one of the most important power
tools ever created, a tool that
helped build and then survived
beyond the mighty Roman empire.
Narrator: Modern foundries
run power tools 24 hours a day,
hammering out products for our
modern industrial world.
But a thousand years ago in the
east, China was also proving
there was nothing that was
beyond them.
In the 11th century, huge cities
had begun to develop as centers
for trade, industry and commerce.
A human swinging a hammer was
never going to be enough.
The answer was to adopt a power
tool that was so far ahead of
its time, it is still used in
the aerospace industry today.
In southeastern China,
archaeologists have discovered a
working example of this
extraordinary 2,000-year-old tool.
The hydraulic trip hammer.
It used a water wheel and
gravity to transform ancient agriculture.
Richard windley has built a
model of this revolutionary power tool.
Now, in the shaft there are a
number of pegs.
Each time one of these pegs hits
one of these pivoted levers...
It trips.
Hence the name "trip hammer."
The hammer drops under the
weight of the hammer head, and
that force is imported onto the
grain which are in these cups.
The fact that this is going
continuously, they could have
even run 24 hours a day.
It's very, very effective.
Narrator: Each hammer could
generate 100 pounds of force.
It meant that all eight hammers
would operate with 800 pounds of
force in a single rotation.
Suddenly one machine replaced
ten workmen, working 24 hours a day.
The genius was in using a simple
water wheel to turn a shaft to
repeatedly drive the hammers.
It's a device which is
actually turning rotary motion,
and we're actually getting an up
and down motion.
So we're transferring rotary
into a sort of linear action.
So it was not until about the
14th and 15th century did drop
hammers and trip hammers first appear.
The Chinese were way, way ahead
in terms of their technology.
Narrator: At first, it was
used to hammer wheat into flour.
But soon, it moved beyond
agriculture and was the power
tool that ignited the Chinese
industrial revolution.
The ancient texts tell us that
the mega tool was soon adapted
from crushing grain to pounding
metal in industrialized metal workshops.
Could that ancient Chinese tool
have done the impossible and
predated the power tools of the
modern foundry by 2,000 years?
Wolverhampton, England.
In this foundry, these tools are
evidence that very little has changed.
The only real difference is
that you have an electric motor
on the top of this machine
rather than a water wheel.
The falling weight is 2,000 lbs
and we can drop it from 10 feet.
So that's 20,000 foot pounds in each blow.
If a normal person were to use a
sledgehammer, this would produce
at least 2,000 times what a
sledgehammer would.
Without this piece of kit, there
would be no airplanes flying.
There would be no cars or
lorries on the road.
So it is absolutely fundamental
to transport.
Narrator: 2,000 years ago,
the Chinese power tool got there first.
And the genius of its design
means that its modern
counterpart is still punching
out vital components that keep
our world running today.
Tools we think of as modern
invented thousands of years in
the past, ancient tools to cut
into the human eye, a tool from
ancient Egypt so advanced, we
are still unable to understand its genius.
Nothing was impossible for the ancient world.