Negative Space: Medieval Life
- Currency and economic policy in the middle ages
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Prices, credit, and currencies. If you know the system, you could make a mint!
- The domestication of frozen water
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Even the poorest people have ice today. Ice is given away free to dilute already-cheap sugary drinks. You can buy it in huge bags outside at gas stations and convenience stores, and when it melts you can get some more. In medieval times, you had no such luxury. Ice came in the winter and left in the summer. Storing it was time-consuming, expensive, and even dangerous.
- A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke
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Review of A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke, with a recipe for Prymerose.
- How to build a fire
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The best way to make a fire is to start with a fire.
- The well of life: the revolution of reliable water
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Water is practically a modern invention: we use it far more today than we did a hundred years ago and we trust it more than we did a hundred years ago. Today reliable water is ubiquitous, and we complain if a building doesn’t have running water.
More Information
- On Burning Oil, Part 2
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“Consider the following as representative of a torch applied to a pool of oil on a dungeon floor. Is it possible to get that pool ignited by applying a flame? No way! I emptied a whole book of matches on multiple attempts…”
Some great photos.
