Welcome to Paranor

Paranor is the name of the fictional stronghold of the Druids in the Shannara series of fantasy novels written by Terry Brooks. The novels describe events, spanning hundreds of years, that occur thousands of years after the world we know has been destroyed by what Brooks describes as The Great Wars. The fortress sits atop a mountain at the centre of the four lands that make up Brooks' fictional world. The main feature of this virtually impregnable fortress is the Druid's Keep, a massive tower with its roots deep within the mountain's core. Protected by Druid magic, the keep conceals a secret library that contains the Druid Histories, an extensive collection of books containing, among other things, the history and knowledge of the Old World.

This website is - or at least will be - a collection of articles about technologies that are no longer in widespread use, together with anything else that I feel may be of interest to readers. Many of the articles featured here made their first appearance on my technologyuk.net website, but have been removed from that site because they are no longer particularly useful to students taking technology-related courses. In some cases, they cover topics that are still current, but have been relegated from the TechnologyUK website because I don't have time to maintain them, in which case they will carry a footnote to that effect. They may nevertheless still be of interest to readers who wish to gain a historical perspective.

One of the advantages of writing about largely obsolete technologies is that the author is seldom if ever required to revisit what they have written in order to accommodate new developments. Nevertheless, I have attempted to ensure that the articles published here are accurate and complete. Pre-existing articles have been reviewed in this respect, and if necessary, updated (time permitting). I hope the content published here, even if not particularly useful from a practical standpoint, will at least be of interest to readers with a thirst for knowledge.