100-year-old?
There are engineering ideas that are thousands of years old, which are still relevant. Why wouldn’t they be?
This is a bronze ram for a warship, it’s 2000 years old. It was cast in one piece. This is not a trivial task, because this thing is supposed to smash into enemy ships without breaking, which means it cannot have internal weak spots. Now, back then they didn’t use the same methods, but the idea behind it remains the same: If you want a single piece of cast metal, without fracture lines or air bubbles, you need to keep it hot as the metal flows in, then ensure the entire piece cools down at the same rate. We don’t know how they managed to do it, but they clearly did. This particular ram was subjected to tests, and the scientists concluded that it would pass a modern inspection in most industries.