In response to our post on the 1930s car-based mechanical mapping device, MAKE reader Simon posted a link to this earlier, wrist-borne scroll-map navigator, from the 20s! Here’s a bit more background on it. Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator: Original GPS More: 1930s answer to GPS
Found this on Bored Panda, in a round-up of cool, wacky inventions from the past. Apparently the paper-roll map advanced based on the speed of the car. But wait, what happened when you turned onto a new street? You’d have to have quite the library of map-scrolls stashed in your car, and be doing a […]
One of the many very cool things about my job is getting to watch ideas evolve in the community over time. Since I first saw Mikal Hart present the original reverse geocache puzzle at Dorkbot Austin more than a year ago, we’ve seen a number of cool variations and improvements on the theme (see the “More” block, below). This latest twist, from Donald Papp, adds a couple of cool features including reprogrammable “solution” locations, allowing the box to be used over and over again, specifically with the intent that, in an analogy to regular geocaching, it will have multiple users over its lifetime. The idea is that you can solve it, reprogram it, and then pass it on to somebody else. Donald has also added a camera to the box that records a photo every time it is activated for a “hint,” making the journey of the box and its user(s) self-logging. [Thanks, Donald!]
This latest version of Mikal Hart’s original reverse geocache puzzle–a box that only opens in one location on the Earth’s surface–is by Markus. At just 3.75″ on its longest side, Markus’s box is by far the most compact and elegant version of the puzzle I have ever seen. [via Hack a Day]
Brain Dereu of Hollow Spy Coins has done it again. As if the solid stainless steel version of their original aluminum dead drop spike I recently blogged about weren’t cool enough by itself, the Dereu family is now offering the same product machined in solid freaking titanium. Incredibly, they’re selling it for exactly the same price as the stainless steel version.
For those who aren’t up on their tradecraft, a “dead drop” is a place where spies or other clandestine-y folks drop off items for later retrieval by other agents. A “dead drop spike” is a particularly ingenious little container devised for the purpose. Basically, it’s a hollow metal spike, with a threaded watertight closure at the top. You put your top-secret microfilm or whatever inside the spike, take it to your dead drop, and stomp it into the ground with your foot. Then you cover it up with a rock or a piece of trash or whatever. The lid has a pull-loop built into it, so that when your contact comes by later to clear the drop, he or she can grab the spike by the loop and yank it out of the ground again.
In Russia and other post Soviet countries there were a real craze on independence after they finally got it with USSR collapse. Sometimes this took some weird forms like, for example, making the globes of their own country. Yes, those were just like regular globes we used to see on geography classes but instead the whole world only their own country was mapped on it.
