Ancient aluminum? Flexible glass?: looking for the real heart of a legend

If not became of its "truth," why then was the story retold again and again for almost 2,000 years? The trivial explanation missed so far by all the scholars and scientists: Consider the main characters, look at the plot - it is just a good story! An inventor is surprisingly, but convincingly, punished for economic reasons instead of being rewarded as expected, and the invention is discarded.

Certainly, like modern urban legends, an interesting story might appear in very different versions. Twenty years ago I heard the following: an inventor filed a patent on a razor blade that would never become blunt. He sold his invention to a big company for a share in the sales of that type of blade. But the company didn't start production, so as not to lose the market for its normal blades. The man therefore died poor. Despite the modernizing changes (another invention, a big company taking over the role of the tyrant, not getting rich instead of capital punishment), this is essentially the old story.

Tales that the breakthrough of an invention is prevented by conspiracies are quite frequent today, see, e.g., the rumors on green-powder inventor J. Andrews's death (SI, Fall 1993, p. 20).

Stories might be true or false; perhaps the most fascinating and remarkable ones are those where you do not know exactly which, as in the case of still not knowing today of the possibility of manufacturing razor blades that remain sharp for a long time. (There may be better methods than to put them inside a pyramid!) The ancients might have thought similarly of glass with unusual metallic properties. What a challenge it is to our human endeavor to search for the truth in such stories.

Conclusions

There is a lesson to be learned from this case study. As we have seen, scientists like to speculate. That is part of their normal work of finding hypotheses that are open to experimental falsification or support by further evidence. When publishing uncertain explanations, scientists must always make clear their limited probability, otherwise it becomes bad science and may be exploited by pseudoscientists. What a grand opportunity our story is for those who need ancient aluminum or thermally toughened glass for their religion of ancient spacecrafts! (So far, I am unaware of such exploitations. Are there any?) Don't forget: when finding a possible explanation for something, your job is not done. See if you can find (or others have found) alternative ones. Then apply Occam's razor! I am convinced that the "just a good story" hypothesis performs best with this test, at least in our case. So, when looking for the true material heart of a legend in reality, don't forget the zero-hypothesis: there might be none!

* There are also claims of ancient Chinese aluminum (see Editors of Time-Life 1990:26, and Needham 1974), not under investigation here. As opposed to the purported Roman aluminum, they refer to real objects and can therefore be taken more seriously. However, the analyses, the dating of them as ancient, and the speculations on production methods are not beyond every reasonable doubt.