Reverse-Engineering

[Aranfan]

Going back to the nuclear submarine example, don't they carry manuals and procedure-booklets for everything done onboard the ship?

If the scientists started their interior investigation with those, they would probably do better than pushing random buttons. And if you were in their position, wouldn't you start reading all the documentation before you touched many other things?

Any books they do find are not going to be "The Dummies guide to Nuclear Submarines" they are going to be very specific very technical manuals written in such a style that an 18th or 19th century reader may think they are in a foreign language. These are going to be books written by experts for experts.

Those books are still going to give more readily understandable information than just looking at the sub itself.

[Stuart]

Going back to the nuclear submarine example, don't they carry manuals and procedure-booklets for everything done onboard the ship?

If the scientists started their interior investigation with those, they would probably do better than pushing random buttons. And if you were in their position, wouldn't you start reading all the documentation before you touched many other things?

Any books they do find are not going to be "The Dummies guide to Nuclear Submarines" they are going to be very specific very technical manuals written in such a style that an 18th or 19th century reader may think they are in a foreign language. These are going to be books written by experts for experts.

Those books are still going to give more readily understandable information than just looking at the sub itself.

I'm afraid not. They're written in modern English (or Russian or whatever) and use all the jargon we take for granted. Think of all the words that we use related to modern equipment and delete them from said manuals and see what we are left with. Our worthy investigators will doubtless pick up the documentation but they might was well be written in Sanskrit. In fact, they'd be better off if they were written in Sanskrit, the vocabulary would have more in common with theirs than ours would.

[Sky Captain]

At least if they read the warnings stamped on machinery and whatever technical manuals they can find first before touching anything they should understand that various equipment in the sub can be very dangerous if tampered with and it`s better not to try to crack open a torpedo or missile with a crowbar and sledgehammer or disassemble the thing called reactor.

[Stuart]

At least if they read the warnings stamped on machinery and whatever technical manuals they can find first before touching anything they should understand that various equipment in the sub can be very dangerous if tampered with and it`s better not to try to crack open a torpedo or missile with a crowbar and sledgehammer or disassemble the thing called reactor.

What's a torpedo? Or a missile? What is a reactor? What does this funny sign mean?

I dug this at random out of a Link-11 manual (opened it at random and selected a paragraph by closing my eyes and sticking my finger at the page).

Let us examine the RQ matrix in greater detail. Pu-06 is receiving PU-13 with an RQ of 2. In fact all units are receiving PU-13 poorly but PU-13 is receiving all units well. This may indicate that PU-13 has a problem with the RF medium. Any equipment along the transmission data path is suspect. This may include the antenna, antenna coupler, radio or DTS. On the other hand PU-13s low RQ may indicate that the NCS is not receiving him and is polling on top of his responses, clobbering his data for all units. Shifting the NCS to a geographically more central unit may be a solution. This indicator does not, however, provide any information about data flows between the DTS and NTDS computer nor does it provide any information about signal flow between the DTS and radio.

The Link-11 manual in question is basic-level. Yes, there will be manuals on the ships but, as already well-stated, they are written by experts for experts. If you find the correct Mark 48 torpedo manual, you will find in in detailed instructions on how to dismantle various sub-systems on the torpedo but nowhere will you find the comment "If you do not understand this, do not dismantle this weapon."

[Zixinus]

At least if they read the warnings stamped on machinery and whatever technical manuals they can find first before touching anything they should understand that various equipment in the sub can be very dangerous if tampered with and it`s better not to try to crack open a torpedo or missile with a crowbar and sledgehammer or disassemble the thing called reactor.

If they are attempting to use crowbars or sledgehammers to disassemble technologies they don't understand, they are unlikely to make any use of any technical documentation, even if its in English they understand.

That's because it is genuinely unwise idea fuck around with complex technology you don't understand and this should be obvious even in the Victorian era, especially if we are talking about engineers and scientists. Even a Victorian scientist must think "what if there is high-pressure steam in this tube/pipe?" or "what if this road is vital for circulating the air?" or "what if there is deadly amount of electricity in this wire or device?".

[Stuart]

Even a Victorian scientist must think "what if there is high-pressure steam in this tube/pipe?" or "what if this road is vital for circulating the air?" or "what if there is deadly amount of electricity in this wire or device?".

Think about this one stage back. Why should he think any of those things?

Our Victorian scientist is looking at a pressurized water reactor. It's got piping everywhere and there are digital pressure gauges etc. The whole plant is computer-controlled so he hasn't really got a clue what is going on. He translates it into the technology he is familiar with. That "thing" is a boiler (which it is. Sort of). It heats water which goes through that circuit. That water heats water in this circuit. What a strange way to do things. Now, the boiler is turned off , it must be, nothing is burning. So he looks at the circuit that actually drives the turbines. Fine, no problem there. Only that's the secondary cooling circuit. He then examines the inner loop and sees it runs through the boiler so he opens it. Only that was the primary cooling circuit and he's just flooded the submarine with highly radioactive water vapor. How does he know the deadly difference between the water in the two loops?

The point is that he has no way of knowing what is going on because the technologies involved are completely outside his terms of reference and by interpreting what he is seeing within his terms of reference, he's going to cause a disaster. The only safe thing he can do is actually to get the navy to tow the submarine out into deep water and scuttle her before somebody gets hurt. Only, because its so far outside his terms of reference, he won't recognize the danger.

Take a very simple example of a very simple piece of equipment that pretty much everybody here takes for granted. A DVD player, a very simple one. Take it and the manual back to January 1809 and who is going to understand what it is for? Let alone how to make it work. The manual is just gibberish.

This is where all these timetravel things fold up. The significance of an invention can only be realized in the context of its time and place. To be realized it needs everything else around it that makes up that environment. What use is a DVD player without a television set?

[Darth Wong]

Part of the problem here is that people are accustomed to the convenience of typical consumer technologies, which are designed to be idiot-proof. Walk into any factory (not even a particularly high-tech one; just a regular factory) and you will quickly be able to count up dozens of ways to horribly maim or kill yourself if you're not careful, and not all of them will have nice printed warnings to keep you safe. After all, you just went through the "Employees Only" door and you're supposed to know what you're doing now.

[Sky Captain]

Even a Victorian scientist must think "what if there is high-pressure steam in this tube/pipe?" or "what if this road is vital for circulating the air?" or "what if there is deadly amount of electricity in this wire or device?".

Think about this one stage back. Why should he think any of those things?

Our Victorian scientist is looking at a pressurized water reactor. It's got piping everywhere and there are digital pressure gauges etc. The whole plant is computer-controlled so he hasn't really got a clue what is going on. He translates it into the technology he is familiar with. That "thing" is a boiler (which it is. Sort of). It heats water which goes through that circuit. That water heats water in this circuit. What a strange way to do things. Now, the boiler is turned off , it must be, nothing is burning. So he looks at the circuit that actually drives the turbines. Fine, no problem there. Only that's the secondary cooling circuit. He then examines the inner loop and sees it runs through the boiler so he opens it. Only that was the primary cooling circuit and he's just flooded the submarine with highly radioactive water vapor. How does he know the deadly difference between the water in the two loops?

Well, if he carefully visually examines the reactor he should gain vague understanding that it indeed is very very strange boiler. It`s hermetically sealed, there is no way where coal could be shoveled in, no smokestack, no way to provide air to sustain combustion, when searching the sub top to bottom he won`t find any stores of coal. After all that scientists and engineers examining the sub should come to conclusion that boiler is heated by some unknown highly energetic process, perhaps some sort of exotic chemical reactions. Next step before opening anything going trough that boiler should be asking what if these chemical reactants are highly poisonous/explosive when contacted with air/under very high pressure, what if water piped trough boiler is contaminated by those hypothetical reactants, after all there must be a good reason why everything is so carefully sealed.

[Sarevok]

^^ There are so many "ifs" there I don't think anyone other than Sherlock Holmes in a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story would take such an approach.

[Starglider]

^^ There are so many "ifs" there I don't think anyone other than Sherlock Holmes in a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story would take such an approach.

I do wonder if the discovery of nuclear energy is itself a watershed in the approach we'd take to reverse engineering unknown technology. No previous technology posed anything like the level of overt and covert danger; you might electrocute or poison yourself if you neglect protective gear, or at worst cause a moderate fire or explosion trying to operate the machinery. Now we have nuclear power plants as an analogy for technology that can kill you (and possibly poison a large area) just by looking at it and nuclear bombs reinforce the point that a relatively small machine is quite capable of destroying a city, if so designed. It would be interesting to compare the procedures taken in investigating say a crash-landed alien spacecraft in 1955 versus 1925.

[PeZook]

I do wonder if the discovery of nuclear energy is itself a watershed in the approach we'd take to reverse engineering unknown technology. No previous technology posed anything like the level of overt and covert danger;

That's a pretty good observation: a Victorian engineer simply won't be able to comprehend that technology can be so morbidly dangerous. Their biggest, baddest weapons don't have anywhere near the kind of power necessary to wipe out entire cities with the press of a button.

[folti78]

What's a torpedo?

Sorry, couldn't resist :

Back in 1870:
- "'Forward torpedo room' ?!? Why do they want to release torpedoes in front of them when they are underway? Are they suicidal?"
- "Maybe they stop before releasing them? Or they release them while going in reverse?"
- "That's possible, but it's still a bad idea. Better take a look inside..."
...
- "Hmm... I don't think this cigar shaped things can float very well. They are made out of steel. And where are the anchors and the chains to anchor them?"
- "Maybe they are inside the cigar? And it breaks apart when released?"
- "Why should they waste steel on that?"
...
- "Hey look! There is a screw at the rear end of the cigar! With what looks like some small rudders."
- "Interesting, but how they propel it?"
- "Umm... Large spring propelled clockwork?"
- "That wouldn't get too far, and i don't see any outlet where you can put the wind-up winch..."
- "How about compressed air?"
- "That's possible, I heard rumors about some Austrians and a British engineer playing with that at the Austro-Hungarian coast."
- "So this could be a new kind of 'self-propelled' torpedo? That would be very valuable to the Navy!"
- "yes, yes. But how they launch it?"

And our scientist start to play with the launch tubes, but I'm too tired for that...

[Stuart]

Well, if he carefully visually examines the reactor he should gain vague understanding that it indeed is very very strange boiler. It`s hermetically sealed, there is no way where coal could be shoveled in, no smokestack, no way to provide air to sustain combustion, when searching the sub top to bottom he won`t find any stores of coal.

Actually, there is a mechanism for raising and lowering the reactor rods and a search of the boat will reveal she carries some bunker oil. We can asusme the investigator is going to be aware of the energy content of oil. So there are just enough familiar things to be deadly.

After all that scientists and engineers examining the sub should come to conclusion that boiler is heated by some unknown highly energetic process, perhaps some sort of exotic chemical reactions.

And what would be the immediate reaction? Take a sample and analyse it.

Next step before opening anything going trough that boiler should be asking what if these chemical reactants are highly poisonous/explosive when contacted with air/under very high pressure.

This is where your modern familiarity is leading you astray. Put yourself in the mind of a Victorian scientist and look at fuels. We start with wood - is it harmful? Nope. Then we move to charcoal it's a lot more energetic than wood but is it harmful? Nope. Thenw e move to coal. Its a lot more energetic that charcoal but is it dangerous? Nope. So now we have the new miracle fuel, oil (some rapscallions are suggesting using it on ships but the world is full of dreamers). it's a lot mroe energetic than coal but is it dangerous? Nope. So now we have the fuel in this strange ship. It's obviouslya lot more energetic than oil but is it dangerous? Precedent says nope.

We know that certain things are very, vary dangerous and that knowledge influences everything we do and think. That wasn't the case back then. For example, wwould you sell cosmetics containing large quantities of lead and arsenic? Of course not, yet such cosmetics were once commonplace. Our Victorian engineer has no reason to believe that he's handling something very dangerous and precedent tells him that he isn't. To him, uranium is a pigment used to color glass.

what if water piped trough boiler is contaminated by those hypothetical reactants, after all there must be a good reason why everything is so carefully sealed.

Three words, high pressure steam. Something every engineer even back then would be aware of - although what he called high pressure is a joke by our standards. He'll know steam is deadly at high pressure - a 1,200 psi steam leak will cut a man in half - and steam at that temperature and pressure is invisible (which is why when a steam plant in that environment goes bad, one shuts the engine room down). So, he'll attribute the careful sealing to high pressure steam and depressurize the whole system before taking it apart - and remember, he can't reverse engineer the system until its taken apart. Of course, by depressurizing the primary coolant loop on a PWR, he's already started a process that he'll find, scientifically speaking, very interesting.

[Jonen C]

This has some relevance, I think. Even if most of it has been covered in the discussion so far at greater detail...

[Glass Pearl Player]

Some Usenet thread from long ago, containing some interesting stories, especially posts number 32 and 34.

Well... Peter Wright (of _Spycatcher_ fame) claimed to have debriefed
some German radar researchers after WWII. It was known that the Germans
had never duplicated the H2S ("Home Sweet Home") microwave radar set
carried on many Allied planes; the set was sufficiently secret that it
was supposed to be destroyed by any crew abandoning their craft.

Wright discovered that, in spite of these precautions, the Germans _had_
captured some sets, but could never get them to work. The sets would
always be damaged in the crash, and the first thing the researchers did
was always to straighten out the metal tubing that had apparently been
bent by the impact.

So there you have some people faced by a technology gap of a couple of
years, and completely flummoxed. It had simply never occurred to them
that the waveguide had to be bent into that particular shape to work.

Heck, read up on the history of British/American co-operation in radar.
The US had developed the Magnetron tube, which was *much* better than
what the British had. So we sent over plans. The Brits built some
according to the plans, and they didn't work.

So we sent over some working tubes. The Brits disassembled them to
check out the way they were built, then reassembled them. Yes, they
were built so they could be taken apart and put back together. That was
because they were still experimental. They didn't work when assembled.

So they asked for more samples. This time they tested them before they
did anything else. They worked. They diassembled them to see how they
differed from the others. They didn't. So they reassembled them. They
no longer worked.

It wasn't until they sent a member of the US team over that things were
cleared up. The tubes were *bolted* together. And the Americans
typically used a 12-16 bar on the socket when they tightened the bolts.
Under that sort of torque the "cavity" in the tube changed shape. Just
enough to make it work....

And this was with people who were *co-operating*!

Back to the sub-thread (HAHA! I makes funny puns!) and the steam gauges: What would the victorians reaction to the gauges be? Pressure gauges redlined at *mumblemumble* psi, log calibrated "in excess of 25 knots", same for depths...

Next culture shock: Crew quarters. When was the first Royal Navy ship commisioned that had showers installed? Freezers for food storage? Does our time-travelling sub have a microwave in the galley? Why are the differences between regular crew and officers that small? Why is the chow that good? Where's the alcohol (if it's a US sub) and lemon juice (how do they deal with scorbut)?
Manuals: The very fact that there are a whole bunch of them, apparently for every piece of equipment, should give them a hint about the literacy of the crew (that is: EVERYONE aboard is functionally literate) and maybe, maybe about the society that built the submarine.

Electricity: I doubt that they would think "that wire might carry lethal current". I mean, seriously, there's not a single Van de Graaf generator or a Leiden bottle or anything that could generate significant electrical charge, no? Or would they recognize the emergency battery bank for what it is?

Speaking of the battery, there would be happy fun times if they mishandled that. Ironically, that might be the part of the ship they would handle most carefully.

Finally (for this post), there actually are pieces of technology aboard they can reverse engineer (I think):

• The emergency diesel generator (if the compression ratio can be achieved)
• The fridge (if they have a reliable power source, it might be very useful)
• The electrical generators and motors
• The small arms in the weapon's locker (once they get past the lock. How good where victorian locks?)
• Steam turbines might get a boost - HMS Turbinia was launched 1894

[Zixinus]

Small arms: I wonder whether they can understand the working principles of the gas piston that, say, assault rifles have. Surely, they would understand gas pressures?
I doubt the lock would be much of a problem, unless its digital.

Of course, its unlikely they would necessarily make use of it. The reason why automatic weapons weren't used for quite some time is that the military considered them to be a waste of ammunition and thought that soldiers were incapable (and not really trained to) conserve ammunition.

[Sarevok]

Are not modern assault rifles made of high quality materials and all their parts manufactured to high degree of precision ? Victorian factories may be able to achieve at best crude replicas at best

[TheLostVikings]

Are not modern assault rifles made of high quality materials and all their parts manufactured to high degree of precision ? Victorian factories may be able to achieve at best crude replicas at best

Yeah, rifled barrels for more accuracy/range was known for a long time before it actually become more than a novelty, simply because the level of precision required, and the dificulty of mass producing it.

So they would have a hard time even making a few, and even if they they the lack of modern advanced steels would mean that they would wear out a lot faster.

[PeZook]

Crude Sten submachine guns could (and were!) made by village blacksmiths. It's no FN-2000, but hey...

[Stuart]

Crude Sten submachine guns could (and were!) made by village blacksmiths. It's no FN-2000, but hey...

A lot of the problem will come not with making an SMG, there's very little technology there. After all, guns are routinely made in backyard workshops using tools purchased at a hardware store. The engineers could increase the thickness of metal to overcome material problems and use a smoothbore barrel to avoid rifling. The big difficulty will come with making the ammunition. Not just making individual rounds but mass producing it so that the weapons can actually be used. After all, in the good old days, a musket-armed infantryman was issued with a pouch containing 40 round-equivalents and that would last for an entire campaign. An SMG will fire that in one burst. It's interesting to speculate which of the components of the round will cause the most problems. Personally I suspect it will be mass-producing the primers; percussion caps were known long before they were used in mass but were simply too expensive and hard to produce to be used for standard weapons. Making cases that will function properly and are mass-producible will also be a challenge. Then we have the thought of a black powder SMG........

[PeZook]

Yeah, the chemicals used in primers will be simply impossible to reverse engineer, and the sub's technology won't provide any hint for mass-producing the Hg(ONC)2 necessary (they would know the chemical, but knowing it is not the same as mass-production, obviously).

Especially since the Stens and their ammo were clandestinely made for partisans, who generally didn't have the kind of ammunition requirements as a regular army. Although...even a single SMG mag would work wonders when fired into the crowd during a naval boarding - instant thirty musket salvo.

[folti78]

Crude Sten submachine guns could (and were!) made by village blacksmiths. It's no FN-2000, but hey...

Just a little nitpick here, Sten fired the 9x19mm Parabellum which was used by the occupying German forces too. They didn't have to build a ammo factory to supply themself.

[Zixinus]

A note: there have been quite a few excellent weapons in the past that we now would consider modern but were rejected at their time. The reasons? Too modern for the conservative leaders of the Army, political cases and most of all, the price it would require for mass production.

However, starting out in niché applications, like self-defence or hunting, there is less such limitation.

[PeZook]

Just a little nitpick here, Sten fired the 9x19mm Parabellum which was used by the occupying German forces too. They didn't have to build a ammo factory to supply themself.

Well, the Polish resistance nevertheless operated a network of clandestine workshops making ammunition, small arms and grenades. They had to employ qualified chemists, though, and obviously based their operations on modern knowledge and industrial base.

[Sky Captain]

Well, if he carefully visually examines the reactor he should gain vague understanding that it indeed is very very strange boiler. It`s hermetically sealed, there is no way where coal could be shoveled in, no smokestack, no way to provide air to sustain combustion, when searching the sub top to bottom he won`t find any stores of coal.

Actually, there is a mechanism for raising and lowering the reactor rods and a search of the boat will reveal she carries some bunker oil. We can asusme the investigator is going to be aware of the energy content of oil. So there are just enough familiar things to be deadly.

Hmm, if they disassemble control rod drive mechanism and pull out the rods they could cause meltdown. If that happens what are the chances that radiation and nuclear power gets discovered few decades earlier? At first doctors would probably think that boiler which ruptured while our scientists and engineers tried to take it apart contained some nasty chemicals and that`s why they became ill and died. Of course after the meltdown sub would become contaminated and anyone who goes in and stays there some time will get radiation sickness even if wearing breathing protection gear if they had any at that time. How obvious for Victorian era doctors and scientists would be something is not like it should be in case of chemical poisoning.