The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the Oldest Surviving Animated Feature Film, Is Now in the Public Domain (1926)

in Animation, History | March 3rd, 2026


Die Aben­teuer des Prinzen Achmed, or The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, lays fair claim to being the ear­li­est ani­mat­ed fea­ture film in exis­tence. If we do grant it that title, it beats the next con­tender by more than a decade. While Prince Achmed came out a cen­tu­ry ago, in 1926, Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, whose pro­duc­tion was presided over by a cer­tain Walt Dis­ney, did­n’t reach the­aters until 1937. The lat­ter pic­ture holds great dis­tinc­tion in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, of course, not least that of being the first fea­ture made with cel ani­ma­tion: the dom­i­nant tech­nique through­out most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and one whose dig­i­tal replace­ment has been lament­ed by clas­sic ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts. But the quiv­er­ing sil­hou­ettes of Prince Achmed show an alter­na­tive.

The mak­ing of Snow White was, by the stan­dards of the day, a vast under­tak­ing, requir­ing Dis­ney to mar­shal artis­tic and indus­tri­al resources at a scale then unknown in ani­ma­tion. Prince Achmed, by con­trast, owes its exis­tence most­ly to the work of one woman: Lotte Reiniger, who first learned the craft of scheren­schnitte sil­hou­ette-mak­ing as a lit­tle girl in Berlin.

Scheren­schnitte was inspired by what was thought to be ancient Chi­nese arts of paper-cut­ting and pup­petry, but when watched today, Prince Achmed or the oth­er ani­ma­tions Reiniger cre­at­ed bring more read­i­ly to mind tra­di­tion­al Javanese wayang kulit shad­ow pup­pet the­ater: an aes­thet­ic that, in a sense, suits the source mate­r­i­al ide­al­ly.

The episodes that con­sti­tute Prince Achmed’s nar­ra­tive are drawn in large part from One Thou­sand and One Nights, a text whose cen­turies-long evo­lu­tion bears the marks of not just many dis­tinct cul­tures across Asia and the Mid­dle East, but also those of more dra­mat­ic trans­for­ma­tion through its folk­tales’ cul­tur­al trans­po­si­tion into French, then oth­er Euro­pean lan­guages. What Reiniger brings to enchant­i­ng hand­made life isn’t any par­tic­u­lar place at any par­tic­u­lar time, but rather an ele­gant, mys­te­ri­ous, quite lit­er­al­ly arabesque realm that nev­er real­ly exist­ed. In oth­er words, Prince Achmed takes place in what can only be called the Ori­ent — which, now that the film has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, we can all vis­it when­ev­er we like. And if such vis­its hap­pen to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of Lotte Reinigers in this world of mar­ket-researched mega-bud­get ani­ma­tion, so much the bet­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film: The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Ani­ma­tion Pio­neer Lotte Reiniger Adapts Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute into an All-Sil­hou­ette Short Film (1935)

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Rome in 1890 Captured in Color Photographs: The Colosseum, Forum, Trevi Fountain & More

in History, Photography, Travel | March 3rd, 2026

1890 Colosseum

For almost two hun­dred years, Eng­lish gen­tle­men could not con­sid­er their edu­ca­tion com­plete until they had tak­en the “Grand Tour” of Europe, usu­al­ly cul­mi­nat­ing in Naples, “raga­muf­fin cap­i­tal of the Ital­ian south,” writes Ian Thom­son at The Spec­ta­tor. Italy was usu­al­ly the pri­ma­ry focus, such that Samuel John­son remarked in 1776, per­haps with some irony, “a man who has not been to Italy is always con­scious of an infe­ri­or­i­ty.” The Roman­tic poets famous­ly wrote of their Euro­pean sojourns: Shel­ley, Byron, Wordsworth… each has his own “Grand Tour” sto­ry.

1890 Trevi Fountain

Shel­ley, who trav­eled with his wife Mary God­win and her step­sis­ter Claire Clair­mont, did not go to Italy, how­ev­er. And Byron sailed the Mediter­ranean on his Grand Tour, forced away from most of Europe by the Napoleon­ic wars. But in 1817, he jour­neyed to Rome, where he wrote the Fourth Can­to of Childe Harold’s Pil­grim­age:

Oh Rome! my coun­try! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone moth­er of dead empires! And con­trol
In their shut breasts their pet­ty mis­ery.

For the trav­el­ing artist and philoso­pher, “Italy,” Thom­son writes, “pre­sent­ed a civ­i­liza­tion in ruins,” and we can see in all Roman­tic writ­ing the tremen­dous influ­ence visions of Rome and Pom­peii had on gen­tle­men poets like Byron. The Grand Tour, and jour­neys like it, per­sist­ed until the 1840s, when rail­roads “spelled the end of soli­tary aris­to­crat­ic trav­el.”

But even decades after­ward, we can see Rome (and Venice) the way Byron might have seen it—and almost, even, in full col­or. As we step into the vis­tas of these post­cards from 1890, we are far clos­er to Byron than we are to the Rome of our day, before Mussolini’s mon­u­ments, noto­ri­ous snarls of Roman traf­fic, and throngs of tourists.

1890 Trumphal Arch

“These post­cards of the ancient land­marks of Rome,” writes Mash­able, “were pro­duced… using the Pho­tochrom process, which adds pre­cise gra­da­tions of arti­fi­cial col­or to black and white pho­tos.” Invent­ed by Swiss print­er Orell Gess­ner Fus­sli, the process involved cre­at­ing lith­o­graph­ic stone from the negatives—“Up to 15 dif­fer­ent tint­ed stones could be involved in the pro­duc­tion of a sin­gle pic­ture, but the result was remark­ably life­like col­or at a time when true col­or pho­tog­ra­phy was still in its infan­cy.”

temple rome

The Library of Con­gress hosts forty eight of these images in their online cat­a­log, all down­load­able as high qual­i­ty jpegs or tiffs, and many, like the stun­ning image of the Colos­se­um at the top (see the inte­ri­or here), fea­tur­ing a pre-Pho­tocrom black and white print as well.

1890 San Lorenzo

Aside from a rare street scene, with an urban milieu look­ing very much from the 1890s, the pho­tographs are void of crowds. In the fore­ground of the Tri­umphal Arch fur­ther up we see a soli­tary woman with a bas­ket of pro­duce on her head. In the image of San Loren­zo, above, a tiny fig­ure walks away from the cam­era.

forum rome 1890

In most of these images—with their dream­like coloration—we can imag­ine Rome the way it looked not only in 1890, but also how it might have looked to bored aris­to­crats in the 17th and 18th centuries—and to pas­sion­ate Roman­tic poets in the ear­ly 19th, a place of raw nat­ur­al grandeur and sub­lime man-made decay. See the Library of Con­gress online cat­a­log to view and down­load all forty-eight of these post­cards.

1890 Great Cascade

 

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Bring­ing Tsarist Rus­sia to Life: Vivid Col­or Images from 1905–1915

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en a Cen­tu­ry Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist & Poet James Clerk Maxwell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Behold the First Realistic Depiction of the Human Face (Circa 25,000 BCE)

in Art, History | March 2nd, 2026

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In 1894, archae­ol­o­gist Édouard Piette dis­cov­ered the “Venus of Brassem­pouy,” oth­er­wise known as the “Lady with the Hood.” Unearthed in south­west­ern France and dat­ing to around 25,000 BCE, this carv­ing rep­re­sents the ear­li­est real­is­tic depic­tion of a human face. The figure’s fore­head, nose, and brows are care­ful­ly carved in relief, as is the hair, arranged in a neat geo­met­ric pat­tern. But what hap­pened to the mouth? Or the eyes? We’re not sure.

The Venus is carved from mam­moth ivory, like­ly using a stone flint, and stands just 3.65 cm tall. For some, it marks a major devel­op­ment in fig­u­ra­tive art. Or, as his­to­ri­an Simon Schama has sug­gest­ed, this fig­urine may well be the “dawn of the idea of beau­ty” in human cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The World’s Old­est Cave Art, Dis­cov­ered in Indone­sia, Is at Least 67,800 Years Old

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

A Styl­ish 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

Exquis­ite 2300-Year-Old Scythi­an Woman’s Boot Pre­served in the Frozen Ground of Siberia

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The Greatest Double Agent Ever: How a Spanish Chicken Farmer Became the Most Important Double Agent in WWII

in History | March 2nd, 2026

Juan Pujol Gar­cía was one of the rare indi­vid­u­als whose par­tic­i­pa­tion in World War II made him a Mem­ber of the Order of the British Empire and earned him the Iron Cross. He gained that unlike­ly dis­tinc­tion in per­haps the riski­est of all roles in espi­onage, that of a dou­ble agent. Despite ulti­mate­ly work­ing for the Allied cause, he cre­at­ed an elab­o­rate fic­tion­al per­sona — com­plete with an invent­ed spy net­work oper­at­ing across Great Britain — who pro­fessed loy­al­ty to the Nazi cause. Not only did Pujol get this char­ac­ter plugged into the real Ger­man intel­li­gence sys­tem, he also got him on its pay­roll, receiv­ing what came to the equiv­a­lent of more than $6 mil­lion in today’s U.S. dol­lars for sup­ply­ing infor­ma­tion — infor­ma­tion that ulti­mate­ly con­tributed to the Axis’ loss of the war.

The sto­ry of how this chick­en farmer from Barcelona became the most impor­tant dou­ble agent of World War II is told in the ani­mat­ed Pri­mal Space video above. Unlike many of the spies his­to­ry has remem­bered more clear­ly, Pujol did­n’t begin his espi­onage career in the employ of any gov­ern­ment in par­tic­u­lar.

Rad­i­cal­ized, if that be the word, by the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing been draft­ed into the Span­ish Civ­il War, he vowed to ded­i­cate his life to “the good of human­i­ty.” Turned away by the British embassy, to which he’d offered his ser­vices because Britain opposed Nazi Ger­many, he went free­lance, re-invent­ing him­self as a Third Reich-loy­al Span­ish mil­i­tary man seek­ing an assign­ment in the U.K. Tak­en on by Ger­many, he instead decamped to Lis­bon, where he began man­u­fac­tur­ing ersatz intel­li­gence reports using news­reel footage and tourist brochures.

How­ev­er makeshift, Pujol’s craft proved impres­sive to both Ger­many and Britain, which launched an inter­na­tion­al spy hunt for him. He thus accom­plished his goal of becom­ing an offi­cial British dou­ble agent, in which capac­i­ty he arrived at his finest hour: mis­lead­ing the Ger­mans as to the 1944 “D‑Day” inva­sion of Nor­mandy in an effort called Oper­a­tion For­ti­tude. In Span­ish, that would be For­t­aleza, which became the title of an RTVE doc­u­men­tary about Pujol’s long-untold sto­ry a few years ago. But if any sin­gle word reflects Pujol’s con­tri­bu­tion to his­to­ry, that word must be Gar­bo, the code name assigned him by his first British case offi­cer. After all, what oth­er name — at least in 1942 — could quite so evoca­tive­ly befit an agent whose skills of craft­ing and inhab­it­ing invent­ed char­ac­ters made his han­dlers regard him as “the best actor in the world”?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The CIA’s For­mer Chief of Dis­guise Show How Spies Use Cos­tumes in Under­cov­er Oper­a­tions

The Sto­ry of Elize­beth Fried­man, the Pio­neer­ing Cryp­tol­o­gist Who Thwart­ed the Nazis & Got Burned by J. Edgar Hoover

The French Designed a Fake Repli­ca of Paris to Fool Ger­man Bombers Dur­ing World War I

Dis­cov­er the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The CIA’s Rec­tal Tool Kit for Spies — Cre­at­ed for Tru­ly Des­per­ate Sit­u­a­tions Dur­ing The Cold War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created the Blueprint for Modern Science Fiction (1927)

in Film, History | February 27th, 2026

A vast, mis­er­able pro­le­tari­at squan­ders its days in mean­ing­less toil. Soci­ety is under the con­trol of ultra-wealthy busi­ness mag­nates. In order to paci­fy the under­class, the rul­ing class pins its hopes on a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Wel­come to the year 2026, as envi­sioned in Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. When the film pre­miered, not long after 1926 had come to an end, that date would have seemed arbi­trar­i­ly futur­is­tic. Now, of course, it’s the present, though our world may nowhere look quite as styl­ish as the Art Deco dystopia craft­ed at great expense and an unprece­dent­ed scale of pro­duc­tion by Lang and com­pa­ny. Yet when we watch Metrop­o­lis today, the ele­ments that now seem pre­scient stand out more than the fan­tas­ti­cal ones.

The new short doc­u­men­tary from DW above exam­ines the mak­ing and lega­cy of Metrop­o­lis, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to its con­sid­er­able influ­ence on much of the sci­ence-fic­tion and dystopi­an cin­e­ma since. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Blade Run­ner, Ter­mi­na­tor 2, Madon­na’s “Express Your­self” video: these are just a few of the pro­duc­tions that take no great pains to hide — and in some cas­es, even empha­size — their debt to Lang’s vision.

Ver­tig­i­nous, inten­sive­ly illu­mi­nat­ed, infra­struc­ture-webbed sky­scraper canyons and labor­ers at once manip­u­lat­ing and being manip­u­lat­ed by over­sized clock­work are only the most obvi­ous images that have come down through decades of pop­u­lar cul­ture. For the ori­gin of the wild-haired “mad sci­en­tist” sur­round­ed by tubes and coils, look no fur­ther than Metrop­o­lis’ Rot­wang.

Much could also be writ­ten — and indeed, much already has been writ­ten — about the lega­cy of Rot­wang’s inven­tion, the robot woman who takes on the like­ness of a work­ing-class hero­ine. Beyond the ground­break­ing nature of its design, Metrop­o­lis has also retained atten­tion after near­ly a cen­tu­ry thanks to the folk­loric, even myth­i­cal res­o­nances of its sto­ry. It may be tech­ni­cal­ly implau­si­ble, at least from our point of view, to imag­ine large-scale automa­tion coex­ist­ing with large-scale employ­ment, how­ev­er dire the jobs, but age-old nar­ra­tive under­cur­rents allow even mod­ern audi­ences to sus­pend dis­be­lief (a phe­nom­e­non that has­n’t gone unno­ticed by the mak­ers of more recent sci-fi and fan­ta­sy block­busters). We may not live in quite the 2026  that Metrop­o­lis puts onscreen, but in some sense, we do inhab­it the world it made.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1927 Film Metrop­o­lis Cre­at­ed a Dystopi­an Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026 — and It Hits Close to Home

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Film in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

How Movies Cre­at­ed Their Spe­cial Effects Before CGI: Metrop­o­lis, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

H. G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Medieval Cathedrals Were Built Without Science, or Even Mathematics

in Architecture, History | February 26th, 2026

Sci­ence and engi­neer­ing may be con­flat­ed to some degree in the pub­lic mind, but any­one who’s spent much time in an aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ment belong­ing to one or the oth­er of those branch­es of endeav­or knows how insis­tent­ly dis­tinc­tions can be drawn between them. Bill Ham­mack, a pro­fes­sor of engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign who’s been there since he was a mas­ter’s stu­dent in 1986, sure­ly has his own thoughts on the sub­ject. The video above from his pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nel Engi­neer­guy explains how cathe­drals were designed in the Mid­dle Ages, using the exam­ple of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Specif­i­cal­ly, it gets into how such a build­ing’s arch­es and sup­port­ing walls could have been engi­neered with­out the aid of sci­ence at all, or even the use of math­e­mat­ics.

Com­pared to today, the scope of knowl­edge human­i­ty com­mand­ed back in medieval times may have been impos­si­bly nar­row — to say noth­ing of the knowl­edge pos­sessed by any giv­en human, espe­cial­ly out­side the lit­er­ate elite. Yet what was then known proved more than suf­fi­cient to build struc­tures that still stand, and indeed impress, many cen­turies (and in some cas­es, more than a mil­len­ni­um) lat­er.

Ham­mack explains that, in the place of mak­ing cal­cu­la­tions, their builders would per­form actions. For instance, a medieval mason would have made a life-size chalk draw­ing of the arch, laid a rope along its form, and cut the rope’s length to match that of the arch. He could then use the rope to deter­mine just how thick the wall would need to be, between a fourth and a fifth of the arch’s span, with­out a num­ber ever being involved.

Ham­mack notes that the Romans, too, under­stood this nec­es­sary pro­por­tion for arch con­struc­tion. “The pro­por­tion­al rule does­n’t come from some sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis of stone and its prop­er­ties,” he says. “It comes from cen­turies of expe­ri­ence, from tri­al and error.” Such heuris­tics, or rules of thumb, con­sti­tute “an impre­cise method used as a short­cut to find a solu­tion to a prob­lem, often by nar­row­ing the range of pos­si­ble solu­tions.” They’re also employed in the engi­neer­ing method to “cause the best change in a poor­ly under­stood sit­u­a­tion using avail­able resources.” Its thor­ough­go­ing prac­ti­cal­i­ty would seem to have lit­tle to do with the dif­fer­ent sort of rig­ors that apply in sci­ence, where estab­lish­ing truth, or at least the absence of false­ness, is all. Belief in the engi­neer­ing approach to prob­lems like this does­n’t require faith in the reli­gious sense, but if you like, you can find proof of its effec­tive­ness in hous­es of wor­ship from Sainte-Chapelle to the Pan­theon to Hagia Sophia — or at least in their arch­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Göbek­li Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Ruins That Rewrite the Sto­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

An Ani­mat­ed Video Shows the Build­ing of a Medieval Bridge: 45 Years of Con­struc­tion in 3 Min­utes

Behold a 21st-Cen­tu­ry Medieval Cas­tle Being Built with Only Tools & Mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle Ages

How Design­ing Build­ings Upside-Down Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture, Mak­ing Pos­si­ble St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, Sagra­da Família & More

The Longest Con­struc­tion Projects in His­to­ry: Why Sagra­da Família, the Milan Duo­mo, Greek Tem­ples & Oth­er Famous Struc­tures Took Gen­er­a­tions to Com­plete

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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What Did the Instruments in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Sound Like? Oxford Scholars Recreate Them

in Art, Music | February 26th, 2026

Wel­come to The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

You’ll find no angel­ic strings here.

Those are reserved for first-class cit­i­zens whose vir­tu­ous lives earned them pas­sage to the upper­most heights.

Down below, stringed instru­ments pro­duce the most hell­ish sort of cacoph­o­ny, a fit­ting accom­pa­ni­ment for the horn whose bell is befouled with the arm of a tor­tured soul.

How do we know that’s what they sound­ed like?

A group of musi­col­o­gists, crafts­peo­ple and aca­d­e­mics from the Bate Col­lec­tion of Musi­cal Instru­ments at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, took it upon them­selves to actu­al­ly build the instru­ments depict­ed in Hierony­mus Bosch’s action-packed trip­tych—the hell harp, the vio­lat­ed lute, the gross­ly over­sized hur­dy-gur­dy…

…And then they played them.

Let us hope they stopped shy of shov­ing flutes up their bums. (Such a place­ment might pro­duce a sound, but not from the flute’s gold­en throat).

The Bosch exper­i­ment added ten more instru­ments to the museum’s already impres­sive, over 1000-strong col­lec­tion of wood­winds, per­cus­sion, and brass, many from the stu­dios of esteemed mak­ers, some dat­ing all the way back to the Renais­sance.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the new addi­tions don’t sound very good. “Hor­ri­ble” and “painful” are among the adjec­tives the Bate Col­lec­tion man­ag­er Andrew Lamb uses to describe the aur­al fruits of his team’s months-long labors.

Might we assume Bosch would have want­ed it that way?

Bran­don McWilliams, the wag behind Bosch’s wild­ly enthu­si­as­tic, f‑bomb-laced review of thrash met­al band Slayer’s 1986 Reign in Blood album, would sure­ly say yes, as would Alden and Cali Hack­mann, North Amer­i­can hur­dy-gur­dy mak­ers, who note that Bosch’s painter­ly des­e­cra­tions were not lim­it­ed to their per­son­al favorite instru­ment:

Bosch and his con­tem­po­raries viewed music as sin­ful, asso­ci­at­ing it with oth­er sins of the flesh and spir­it. A num­ber of oth­er instru­ments are also depict­ed: a harp, a drum, a shawm, a recorder, and the met­al tri­an­gle being played by the woman (a nun, per­haps) who is appar­ent­ly impris­oned in the key­box of the instru­ment. The hur­dy-gur­dy was also asso­ci­at­ed with beg­gars, who were often blind. The man turn­ing the crank is hold­ing a beg­ging bowl in his oth­er hand. Hang­ing from the bowl is a met­al seal on a rib­bon, called a “gaber­lun­zie.” This was a license to beg in a par­tic­u­lar town on a par­tic­u­lar day, grant­ed by the nobil­i­ty. Sol­diers who were blind­ed or maimed in their lord’s ser­vice might be giv­en a gaber­lun­zie in rec­om­pense.

To the best of our knowl­edge, no gaber­lun­zies were grant­ed, nor any sin­ners eter­nal­ly damned, in the Bate Collection’s caper. Accord­ing to man­ag­er Lamb, expand­ing the bound­aries of music edu­ca­tion was rec­om­pense enough, well worth the tem­po­rary affront to ten­der ears.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Song Writ­ten on a Sinner’s But­tock in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Hierony­mus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spot­ted Rid­ing the New York City Sub­way the Oth­er Day…

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  

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The Ingenious Engineering of Silk: How the 2,000-Year-Old Pattern Loom Powered the Silk Road and the Wealth of Ancient China

in History, Technology | February 25th, 2026

The Silk Road’s long peri­od of high activ­i­ty spanned the sec­ond cen­tu­ry BC and the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry AD, but its name was­n’t coined until more than 400 years after that. Schol­ars have argued it prac­ti­cal­ly ever since, giv­en that the ref­er­ent was­n’t just one road but a vast and ever-chang­ing net­work of them, and that silk was hard­ly the only com­mod­i­ty car­ried by its traders. Yet the name per­sists, and not only due to Mar­co Polo-type roman­ti­cism. Silk may not have been the high­est-vol­ume item on its epony­mous road — more busi­ness was sure­ly done in every­day tex­tiles, to say noth­ing of spices, grains, or dyes — but it was per­haps the most vis­i­ble, and sure­ly the most glam­orous. From the per­spec­tive of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion, it can also look like the most impor­tant.

In the new Pri­mal Space video above, you can hear the sto­ry of “the machine that made Chi­na rich”: the pat­tern loom, that is, a mod­el of which was unearthed in 2017 dur­ing sub­way con­struc­tion in the city of Cheng­du. At some­where between 2,100 and 2,200 years old, they rep­re­sent the ear­li­est known evi­dence of pat­tern loom tech­nol­o­gy, of which Chi­na made high­ly pro­duc­tive use dur­ing the time of its three-mil­len­ni­um monop­oly on silk.

As far away as the Roman Empire, those who had the means could­n’t get enough of the stuff, espe­cial­ly when it came in designs nev­er before seen in human his­to­ry. Hence the high pri­or­i­ty Chi­na placed on keep­ing knowl­edge of its har­vest­ing and weav­ing pro­pri­etary — at least until a cou­ple of Roman monks man­aged to smug­gle silk­worm lar­vae back to Europe in the mid­dle of the sixth cen­tu­ry.

Yet even hav­ing lost its sta­tus as the only land capa­ble of pro­duc­ing silk, Chi­na retained a great advan­tage in the form of its sheer man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty. (This sto­ry rings some­what famil­iar about a mil­len­ni­um and a half lat­er, when none of us can dis­pute which coun­try holds the title of “the world’s fac­to­ry.”) Its silk indus­try could achieve that scale thanks to the rel­a­tive ease of use of the pat­tern loom, which required no spe­cial skills to oper­ate. The most com­plex aspect would have been “pro­gram­ming” the pat­terns to be formed by the strands, which, though an entire­ly ana­log process, has its basic sim­i­lar­i­ties with the dig­i­tal com­put­er pro­gram­ming we know today. Chi­na’s trade net­works have great­ly mul­ti­plied since the days of Mar­co Polo, and the tech­nol­o­gy it uses has devel­oped to a pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able degree. Yet some­how, the “Elec­tric Vehi­cle Road” does­n’t have quite the same ring, does it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the World’s First Earth­quake Detec­tor, Invent­ed in Chi­na 2,000 Years Ago

How the Ornate Tapes­tries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

Watch a Trans­fix­ing Demon­stra­tion of Kumi­hi­mo, the Ancient Japan­ese Art­form of Mak­ing Braids & Cords

The Improb­a­ble Inven­tion of Chi­nese Type­writ­ers & Com­put­er Key­boards: Three Videos Tell the Tech­no-Cul­tur­al Sto­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear Aldous Huxley Read Brave New World. Plus 84 Classic Radio Dramas from CBS Radio Workshop (1956–57)

in Radio, Sci Fi | February 25th, 2026


We seem to be liv­ing through yet anoth­er major moment for pod­cast­ing. Over the past two decades, the medi­um has gone from niche exper­i­ment to main­stream habit, becom­ing a reg­u­lar part of how we learn, enter­tain our­selves, and pass the time. The pop­u­lar­i­ty of podcasts—in an age of ubiq­ui­tous screens and per­pet­u­al distractions—speaks to some­thing deep with­in us. Oral sto­ry­telling, as old as human speech, nev­er real­ly dis­ap­pears. The medi­um evolves, plat­forms shift, dis­tri­b­u­tion changes—but the basic appeal remains con­stant.

But the dif­fer­ences between this gold­en age of pod­cast­ing and the gold­en age of radio are still sig­nif­i­cant. Where the pod­cast is often off-the-cuff, and often very inti­mate and personal—sometimes seen as “too personal”—radio pro­grams were almost always care­ful­ly script­ed and fea­tured pro­fes­sion­al tal­ent. Even those pro­grams with man-on-the street fea­tures or inter­views with ordi­nary folks were care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed and medi­at­ed by pro­duc­ers, actors, and pre­sen­ters. And the busi­ness of scor­ing music and sound effects for radio pro­grams was a very seri­ous one indeed. All of these formalities—in addi­tion to the lim­it­ed fre­quen­cy range of old ana­log record­ing technology—contribute to what we imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize as the sound of “old time radio.” It is a quaint sound, but also one with a cer­tain grav­i­tas, an echo of a bygone age.

That gold­en age waned as tele­vi­sion came into its own in the mid-fifties, but near its end, some broad­cast com­pa­nies made every effort to put togeth­er the high­est qual­i­ty radio pro­gram­ming they could in order to retain their audi­ence. One such pro­gram, the CBS Radio Work­shop, which ran from Jan­u­ary, 1956 to Sep­tem­ber, 1957, may have been “too lit­tle too late”—as radio preser­va­tion­ist site Dig­i­tal Deli writes—but it nonethe­less was “every bit as inno­v­a­tive and cut­ting edge” as the pro­grams that came before it.

cbs-radio-workshop

The first two episodes, right below, were drama­ti­za­tions of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, read by the author him­self. The series’ remain­ing 84 pro­grams drew from the work of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, James Thurber, H.L. Menck­en, Mark Twain, Robert Hein­lein, Eugene O’Neill, Balzac, Carl Sand­burg, and so many more. It also fea­tured orig­i­nal com­e­dy, dra­ma, music, and This Amer­i­can Life-style pro­files and sto­ry­telling.

Hux­ley returned in pro­gram #12, with a sto­ry called “Jacob’s Hands,” writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with and read by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood. The great Ray Brad­bury made an appear­ance, in pro­gram #4, intro­duc­ing his sto­ries “Sea­son of Dis­be­lief” and “Hail and Farewell,” read by John Dehn­er and Sta­cy Har­ris, and scored by future film and TV com­pos­er Jer­ry Gold­smith. Oth­er pro­grams, like #10, “The Exur­ban­ites,” nar­rat­ed by famous war cor­re­spon­dent Eric Sevareid, con­duct­ed prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of mod­ern life—in this case the growth of sub­ur­bia and its rela­tion­ship to the adver­tis­ing indus­try. The above is but a tiny sam­pling of the wealth of qual­i­ty pro­gram­ming the CBS Radio Work­shop pro­duced, and you can hear all of it—all 86 episodes—courtesy of the Inter­net Archive.

Sam­ple stream­ing episodes in the play­er above, or down­load indi­vid­ual pro­grams as MP3s and enjoy them at your leisure, almost like, well, a pod­cast. See Dig­i­tal Deli for a com­plete run­down of each program’s con­tent and cast, as well as an exten­sive his­to­ry of the series. This is the swan song of gold­en age radio, which, it seems, maybe nev­er real­ly left, giv­en the incred­i­ble num­ber of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences we still have at our dis­pos­al. Yes, some­day our pod­casts will sound quaint and curi­ous to the ears of more advanced lis­ten­ers, but even then, I’d bet, peo­ple will still be telling and record­ing sto­ries, and the sound of human voic­es will con­tin­ue to cap­ti­vate us as it always has.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 230 Episodes of Escape: Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas of Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells & More (1947–1954)

X Minus One: Hear Clas­sic Sci-Fi Radio Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Hear 90+ Episodes of Sus­pense, the Icon­ic Gold­en Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitch­cock

Hear 149 Vin­tage Hal­loween Radio Shows from the Gold­en Age of Radio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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How to Carve Hieroglyphs Just Like the Ancient Egyptians Did

in Art, History | February 24th, 2026

In ancient Egypt, writ­ing hiero­glyphs was a high­ly spe­cial­ized skill, one com­mand­ed by only a small frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. The fact that there were more than 1,000 char­ac­ters to mem­o­rize prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with that, but the vari­ety of sur­faces on which hiero­glyphs were writ­ten could­n’t have made it any eas­i­er. Depend­ing on the occa­sion, ancient Egyp­tians used papyrus, wood, met­al, and pot­tery shards as writ­ing sur­faces. The most mon­u­men­tal or reli­gious­ly impor­tant texts, how­ev­er, got carved into stone, thus ensur­ing the words a kind of eter­nal life — a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in the cas­es of tomb walls and sar­copha­gi.

There may be lit­tle call to write hiero­glyphs today, but the tech­niques to do so haven’t been lost. In the new video above from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, sculp­tor and stone carv­er Miri­am John­son demon­strates how to carve into stone the name of Pharaoh Khu­fu, who built the Great Pyra­mid (and indeed, was buried in it).

The first step is to write that name, sur­round­ed by its car­touche, on a sheet of car­bon paper. This isn’t the brush and ink that the ancient Egyp­tians would have used, grant­ed, but for the rest of the project, John­son sticks to the old-fash­ioned ways. With the image trans­ferred, and using noth­ing more than a mal­let and a chis­el, she carves the hiero­glyphs into the stone not just once but twice.

The first time, John­son carves in “sunken relief,” a tech­nique that involves cut­ting the image out of the sur­face of the stone. The sec­ond time, she ren­ders Pharaoh Khu­fu’s name in “raised relief,” which requires cut­ting out every­thing but the image, cre­at­ing the effect of the hiero­glyphs ris­ing out of the stone. With the for­mer “you see more of the shad­ows”; with the lat­ter, “you’ve got more oppor­tu­ni­ty of putting more tex­ture into the char­ac­ters.” Seen in a state of com­ple­tion — by a lay­man, at least — John­son’s carv­ings would­n’t look out of place in a muse­um exhib­it on ancient Egypt. Even if tools man­u­fac­tured in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry pro­duce a few sub­tle dif­fer­ences from the real thing, give these stones a mil­len­ni­um or two to age, and they’ll sure­ly look even more con­vinc­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Read Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs: A British Muse­um Cura­tor Explains

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Roset­ta Stone, and How It Unlocked Our Under­stand­ing of Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

3,200-Year-Old Egypt­ian Tablet Records Excus­es for Why Peo­ple Missed Work: “The Scor­pi­on Bit Him,” “Brew­ing Beer” & More

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

Watch a Mas­ter­piece Emerge from a Sol­id Block of Stone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How to Make Coffee in the Bialetti Moka Pot: The “Ultimate Techique”

in Food & Drink | February 24th, 2026

In Italy, rough­ly 70% of house­holds have a Bialet­ti Moka Pot. And chances are you have one too. But are you using it the right way? Prob­a­bly not, says James Hoff­mann, the author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee. Above, he sets the record straight, demon­strat­ing the best tech­nique for mak­ing a great cup of cof­fee. Enjoy this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment and use it well.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Deep Fried Cof­fee: A Very Dis­turb­ing Dis­cov­ery

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

The Birth of Espres­so: How the Cof­fee Shots The Fuel Our Mod­ern Life Were Invent­ed

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

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