The New Psychonautical Voyages of Ellis Dee

Hey guys, today we are going to look at a strange artifact called the Baghdad battery. The Baghdad battery is a 2000 year old battery which is capable of producing electricity. We all know that the batteries were invented just 200 years ago in 1800 by Alessandro Volta. But history books are wrong and they hide facts about ancient technology.

We are going to recreate this 2000 year old Baghdad battery and see if it is capable of producing enough power to light up light bulbs or to power motors, or if we can do anything useful with it. So let’s go back about 80 years ago and see how the Baghdad battery was found. In 1938, a German archeologist called Wilhelm König found a dozen jars outside the city of Baghdad which is now the capital of Iraq. Now, these jars were about 5 inches tall and they had a very unique setup. The jars contained a copper cylinder, actually a copper foil rolled up to form a cylinder and the center of the copper cylinder, there was an iron rod put inside. They had used a bitumen to make a stopper to make sure that the iron did not touch the copper. This is a very unique set up and the entire metal arrangement was put inside the jar, like this. And here is the most interesting thing, these jars had traces of grape juice or wine inside them, and these metals showed serious signs of corrosion, because of the wine or grape juice. This recreation is going to be very similar to the original one. This is a clay pot just like the Baghdad battery jars and here is a copper cylinder and I am putting in an iron rod. Now, the only difference is that between the copper cylinder and the iron rod, I am putting in a cork stopper. Now, the ancient Baghdad battery had bitumen. I couldn’t find bitumen, but the only reason why this stopper exists is to separate the copper and the iron to make sure that these metals do not touch each other. So, the choice of the material does not really matter. But this is the only difference between the ancient Baghdad battery and what I am doing now. So, you can see the set up, and I am going to use this as another stopper so it doesn’t fall inside.

The next step is to pour grape juice. So here, I have made some grape juice and I am gonna pour this inside. And then, we are going to put the whole thing back into the jar. Now, the copper will act as a positive terminal and the iron will act as a negative terminal and the grape juice will be the electrolyte. Believe it or not, once you add the grape juice, you can actually hear the chemical reaction. But we are not here to just hear the chemical reaction, we wanna see how much power is produced from this battery. So, let us hook this up to a volt meter and see how much electricity is produced. Remember, I have already shown you an ancient Indian battery, this was about 5000 years old. This was invented by Sage Agastya. That battery is capable of producing 1 volt, let us see what this battery does. The beauty of the Baghdad battery is that everything is available naturally, clay was available and copper and iron are naturally available and anybody could make grape juice. This is what we need to make the Baghdad battery. So, if we hook up the volt meter to the Baghdad battery, I can see that it is producing more than 0.5 volts. It produces half a volt and it is a battery beyond any doubt which is capable of producing electricity. Now, one thing about the Baghdad battery is that mainstream archeologists and historians actually accept that it is in fact a battery. Only a very few skeptics exist in mainstream archeology and history, and they come up with outlandish claims that this is somehow not a workable battery. But most of the mainstream experts have accepted that this is in fact a battery.

Now, we have only seen one battery but I wanna put in like a dozen batteries to see what the dozen batteries can do - if they can power up some devices. Okay, so you can see that I have put a dozen Baghdad batteries together. what I am gonna do is, I am gonna pour grape juice in all of them. And I am gonna hook them all together. And once I put the grape juice in all these jars, then i am going to connect all these jars together using these wires, so we will have a dozen jars which are capable of producing about 6 volts. Now, this is my idea, let’s see if this works.

When I connect them I can clearly see a voltage, I can clearly see that it exceeds beyond 6 volts. Now, what I wanna do is that.. I wanna see if I can light up this light bulb. So, if I hook up this light bulb, you can see that this light bulb is actually glowing. Now, let’s turn off the lights and see if it’s any good. So, here you can see how the bulb is capable of producing enough light. And here is a buzzer, and let’s see if this buzzer will work, with these batteries. As you can see the buzzer also works when I connect it to the Baghdad Battery. So we can see that it is capable of creating light, it is capable of creating sound. We can also make it run motors, we can even make it run machines. so, we know as a matter of fact, now, the Baghdad Battery, which is a 2000 year old battery, actually works and is capable of making enough power to do useful things.

Now, mainstream experts and archeologists accept that this is in fact a battery and it could have been put to useful purposes. But they try hard to convince us when it comes to talking about ancient technology. Because we all have this question in the back of our minds: Is this conclusive proof of ancient technology? And what do mainstream experts say? They argue that even though it is a battery, such low voltage is not capable of doing anything useful. And this might seem like a good argument, but really it is a stupid argument, because a few decades ago, the bulbs we were using were taking up a 100 watts. Now, this bulb I am showing you right now, is only using 0.15 watts. Now, what does it mean? we are using 1/1000th of the power, we used 25 years ago. So, we know as a matter of fact, a 100 years from now, our future generation will look at us and they would think “oh my god, you know, why did they waste so much power? ” And why do we use so much power? ? Because all these big power companies,  all these companies which produce electricity, want us to spend more energy, so they can make a lot of money. In fact, we only need a fraction of electricity, of what we use today to use all the complex machines.

So, Wilhelm König, the archeologist who discovered this, and who actually, came up with the idea, that these were actually batteries, he was 100% correct. now, why did ancient people need batteries? What were they doing? Now, there could be 2 important uses, and one of them was electroplating. We could easily create gold plating or electroplating using these batteries. It is not only doable, it is been proven, it has been demonstrated that this is quite possible.

But there could be another important use of the Baghdad battery. Apart from electroplating, the Baghdad Battery could be used for something very different. We have enough documentation, to know that early Romans and Greeks were using electric eels as pain killers. No, they were not eating the eels, what they would do is, they would literally go and stand on top of an electric eel and get electrocuted so they can feel numb. Is this how they used the Baghdad Battery as well? And you may think this is a weird practice in the distant past, but no! This practice is still used today in hospitals. This is called electrotherapy. It is used to relieve pain, it is used to relieve joint issues, blood flow issues, and many other types of illnesses. we know that this entire set up is creating more than 6 volts.

International Archives day.

Requested by my friend Domi Nique some vintage pics of Culloden.

Pine in the snow, 1890, Ivan Shishkin

French Art Nouveau Photograph Frame - Gilt Bronze & Enamel.

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…