The history of the Middle Ages is just over 1000 years old - from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. before the beginning of the XVI century - the period of the Reformation. The Dark Ages, as it is not quite right to call this period, turned out to be very fruitful and brought the world many necessary and useful discoveries.
Hourglass - XI century
The hourglass was supposedly invented by sailors in the 11th century. this device was used until the XIV century only on ships for time recording. The watch supplemented the magnetic compass and helped navigate the vessel. But the only sources that say this are the ship's logs. It was only in 1328 that the hourglass materialized on the canvases of Ambrosio Lorenzetti. Since the 15th century, this device has gained great popularity and began to be used on land literally everywhere. It was the first accurate time measurer. Even special people appeared on the ships, responsible for the timely turning of the clock.
Blast furnace - XII century
The Middle Ages are the real age of iron. Knightly armor, weapons, household tools - many things began to be made of metal. Low-melting ores have ceased to meet the requirements of medieval civilization. They were replaced by refractory metals. And they needed completely different ovens. Demand creates supply. And so the plasterboard was invented - the prototype of the blast furnace. The first were built in Stria and the Czech Republic. The temperature in them was higher, the melting proceeded more slowly and evenly. At the exit, three types of metal were obtained - cast iron, steel, malleable iron. The next step was blauofen - a blowing furnace, which was later upgraded to a blast furnace.
Glasses - XIII century
Glasses for sight, without which it is impossible to imagine modern civilization, were invented in the middle of the century. The earliest documented mention of them dates back to 1268 and belongs to Roger Bacon. The first portrait in which a man with glasses appears is the work of the Italian monk Tommaso da Modena in 1352, depicting Hugh Provence rewriting manuscripts. The man is wearing round glasses.
Mechanical watch (XIII century)
Presumably, a mechanical clock was invented at the monastery to accurately determine the time of the service for which all the monks were called by the monastery bell. The first mechanical clocks were huge and housed in a tower. They only had an hour hand. The oldest surviving ones are in Salisbury Cathedral (Great Britain). They were created in 1386. The Rouen clock in 1389 still has a well-oiled mechanism and works.
Quarantine - XIV century
In the 14th century, with the growth of maritime trade, plague epidemics also increased. The realization that this terrible disease was brought in by ships from the Levant led to the introduction of precautionary measures in Venice, which were called quarantine from the Italian word "quaranta" - forty. The arriving ships were isolated for a period of 40 days, during which it was possible to find out whether the ship was sick or not. The choice of a segment of exactly 40 days was due to the choice of the gospel parable about the forty-day solitude of Christ in the wilderness.
In 1423, the first quarantine station was opened - lazaretto, on an island near Venice. This excluded the transfer of the disease and its spread in the city. The quarantine system was adopted by other European countries as well.
Gutenberg's printing press - 15th century
Paper and typography are an invention of China. But Europeans in the 15th century figured out how to create books quickly by inventing mechanical printing. The first mention of such a mechanism refers to the trial in Strasbourg, held in 1439. The invention of the printing press is attributed, according to some sources, to Johannes Gutenberg, according to others, more meager, to Lawrence Janson Coster. The printing press was designed on the basis of a paper press. This mechanism could print up to 250 pages per hour.
