Technologies that we’ve lost – and the quest to find them again

By Alasdair Wilkins
Feb 1, 2012

Greek fire. Damascus steel. These are two technological innovations whose secrets are said to be lost to time. Even the original schematics for the Apollo missions have disappeared into the mists of history, forever hidden inside hopelessly obsolete computers. How do we lose technologies that were once so important? Some say that they aren't really lost, and are working on rediscovering them.

Certainly, the specific techniques and materials required to construct some of the famed inventions of the ancient world (and the late 1960s) can be lost. And it's definitely true that people can forget how some ancient invention works for hundreds, even thousand of years. But the history of technology is very much the history of ideas, and as you'll see, ideas are pretty much indestructible - even in the face of truly terrible record keeping.

The Fiery Savior of the Byzantines

It's useful to think of the famous examples of lost technology in terms of a few distinct categories. First, let's consider the most famous lost technology of them all, the ancient Byzantine incendiary weapon Greek fire, a unique chemical formula that produced inexhaustible flames. This terrible weapon was a closely guarded military secret of the Eastern Roman Empire, and its fearsome effectiveness in battle arguably extended the life of the empire by over 500 years. the rest image