Collaborate Disseminate
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
We have often wondered if people dreamed in black and white before the advent of photography. While color pictures eventually became the norm, black and white TV was common for …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Color TV
Although we think of air-to-air radar as a relatively modern invention, it first made its appearance in WWII. Some late war fighters featured the AN/APS-13 Tail Warning Radar to alert …read more Continue reading Bogey Six O’clock!: The AN/APS-13 Tail Warning Radar
So far in this series, we’ve talked about man-made byproducts — Fordite, which is built-up layers of cured car enamel, and Trinitite, which was created during the first nuclear bomb …read more Continue reading Boss Byproducts: Fulgurites Are Fossilized Lightning
It’s been said that the best way to stifle creativity by researchers is to demand that they produce immediately marketable technologies and products. This is also effectively the story of …read more Continue reading What Would It Take to Recreate Bell Labs?
You consider yourself a power user. You’ve got lots of files, and damn it, you like to keep them backed up. Around a decade ago, you gave up on burning …read more Continue reading Meet The Optical Data Format You’ve Never Heard Of Before
Bits of material levitating against gravity, a stream of water deflected by invisible means, sparks of light appearing out of thin air; with observations like those, it’s a wonder that …read more Continue reading On the Nature of Electricity: Recreating the Early Experiments
For months before liftoff, the popular press had been hyping up the fact that the Polaris Dawn mission would include the first-ever private spacewalk. Not only would this be the …read more Continue reading Polaris Dawn, and the Prudence of a Short Spacewalk
In an age where our gadgets allow us to explore the cosmos, we stumbled upon sounds from a future past: an article on historical signals from Mars. The piece, written …read more Continue reading The 1924 Martian Signal: A Cosmic Curiosity
Today, you likely often authenticate or pay for things with a tap, either using a chip in your card, or with your phone, or maybe even with your watch or …read more Continue reading Java Ring: One Wearable to Rule All Authentications