Collaborate Disseminate
These days, very few of us use optical media on the regular. If we do, it’s generally with a slot-loading console or car stereo, or an old-school tray-loader in a …read more Continue reading Why Did Early CD-ROM Drives Rely On Awkward Plastic Caddies?
Nuclear fission is a powerful phenomenon. When the conditions are right, atomic nuclei split, releasing neutrons that then split other nuclei in an ongoing chain reaction that releases enormous amounts …read more Continue reading It’s Critical: Don’t Pile Up Your Fissionable Material
The cable car system of San Francisco is the last manually operated cable car system in the world, with three of the original twenty-three lines still operating today. With these …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: 1980s Restoration of San Francisco’s Cable Car System
Having a penchant for cheap second-hand cameras can lead to all manner of interesting equipment. You never know what the next second-hand store will provide, and thus everything from good …read more Continue reading Disc Film,When Kodak Pushed Convenience Too Far
Ever wonder how those scratch and sniff stickers manage to pack a punch of aroma into what looks like ordinary paper? The technology behind it is deceptively clever, and has …read more Continue reading Scratch And Sniff Stickers And The Gas Panic of ’87
When humans counted on their fingers, everyone had a state-of-the-art (at the time) calculator at all times. But as we got smarter about calculation, we missed that convenience. When slide …read more Continue reading A Brief History of Calculator Watches
So now we’ve talked about all kinds of byproducts, including man-made (Fordite), nature-made (fulgurites), and one that’s a little of both (calthemites). Each of these is beautiful in its own …read more Continue reading Boss Byproducts: Corium Is Man-Made Lava
What’s life without a little mystery? There’s one less rolling around after historians finally identified a donated mystery machine that had been in storage for years. The main pieces of …read more Continue reading Your Undocumented Project May Also Baffle People Someday
What if GPS had existed in 1565? No satellites or microelectronics, sure—but let’s play along. Imagine the bustling streets of Antwerp, where merchants navigated the sprawling city with woodcut maps. …read more Continue reading Hacking Global Positioning Systems Onto 16th-Century Maps
Some brand names become the de facto name for the generic product. Xerox, for example. Or Velcro. Teletype was a trademark, but it has come to mean just about any …read more Continue reading A Teletype by Any Other Name: The Early E-mail and Wordprocessor