Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Examples of low-technology

Note: almost all of the entries in this section should be prefixed by the word traditional.

    * weaving produced on non-automated looms, and basketry.

    * hand wood-working, joinery, coopering, and carpentry.

    * the trade of the ship-wright.

    * the trade of the wheel-wright.

    * the trade of the wainwright: making wagons. (the Latin word for a two-wheeled wagon is carpentum, the maker of which was a carpenter.)

(Wright is the agent form of the word wrought, which itself is the original past passive participle of the word work, now superseded by the weak verb forms worker and worked respectively.)

    * blacksmithing and the various related smithing and metal-crafts.

    * folk music played on acoustic instruments.

    * organic farming and animal husbandry (ie; agriculture as practiced by all American farmers prior to World War II).

    * milling in the sense of operating hand-constructed equipment with the intent to either grind grain, or the reduction of timber to lumber as practiced in a saw-mill.

    * fulling cloth preparing.

    * the production of charcoal by the collier, for use in home heating, foundry operations, smelting, the various smithing trades, and for brushing ones teeth in Colonial America.

    * glass-blowing.

    * various subskills of food preservation:
          o smoking
          o salting
          o pickling
          o drying

Note: home canning is a counter example of a Low-technology since some of the supplies needed to pursue this skill rely on a global trade network and an existing manufacturing infrastructure.[citation needed]

    * the production of various alcoholic beverages:
          o wine: not quite so well preserved fruit juice.
          o beer: a way to preserve the calories of grain products from decay.
          o whiskey: an improved (distilled) form of beer.

    * flint-knapping

    * masonry as used in castles, cathedrals, and root cellars.

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