Announcing the first Philadelphia Type-IN A Pleasant Afternoon of Manual Typewriting Long before the laptop or the mainframe, writers, reporters, and bureaucrats alike relied on the typewriter to get the word out. Today, only a few companies make typewriters—but thousands of classic Remingtons, Underwoods, and Olivettis are still around, waiting to be dusted off. Just […]
Ãœbermaker Simon Jansen of Auckland, New Zealand, wrote in to share his Arduino-controlled, steampunk (literally!) turntable. This is my steam powered record player built to play a Sex Pistols LP. Yes, it is true steampunk. The engine was made mainly from bits and pieces I had lying about in my junk box. The boiler was […]
EdenTXlocation.jpgBack in 2008, I wrote a series of posts about Alvin E. Gandy’s 1965 patent “Gandy Slide-A-Way” mechanical gate opener, which uses the weight of an approaching vehicle to automatically open and close a remote vehicle gate without electrical power. The story has apparently gotten back around to Mr. Gandy’s surviving family. His niece Annie just commented:
It’s probably not much good against the rain, but this handy bit of urban fieldcraft from YouTuber sumitsumit would be hard to beat for showing off your DIY-fu at the local hackerspace, coffeeshop, or school. Pretty much guaranteed to impress that attractive gentleman or lady in your engineering class. It takes about 20′ of rope, includes an adjustable shoulder-strap, and–I suspect–could probably be tied or untied in ten seconds or less with practice. I don’t want to spoil sumitsumit’s reveal, so I didn’t include a screen-cap, but you can scan forward to 4:20 to see the finished product. [via Boing Boing]
My choice of updates to include in last Thursday’s round-up of controversial posts turned out to be somewhat, ah…well, you know: Starts at “c” and gets to “l” by way of “ontraversia?” In the interest of shameless click-baiting fairness, here’s a few that didn’t make my initial cut, as well as a couple that escaped my attention altogether. And–what the heck–I’ll arbitrarily format it as a Top 10 list.
What do you do when all of the megabytes, megahertz, and megapixels over-complicate holiday shopping for the beloved nerds on your list? Let’s take a look back in time at some classic inventions that still stand up to the year 2010. The following rundown includes a number of fun gift items to accommodate most budgets, […]
A reader who saw last night’s post about human-powered cranes and lifting machines e-mailed me to point out that many of the Fairbairn hand-cranked cranes featured in that post’s title image are still around, and that there is in fact a Flickr group that collects photos from enthusiasts. At least one of the cranes has […]
