Being a year-round cyclist in Minnesota, Frank Yost had a problem. “Car drivers can lock things up while running errands,” he noticed, “so why should cyclists have to carry everything around with them?” And when Frank has a problem, he reaches for his pop-rivet gun. So he designed and built this all-weather, lockable College Bike […]
The Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technologies of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly forgotten or just off to the side). We look at retro-tech, “lost” technology, and the make-do, improvised “street tech” of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. “Lost Knowledge” was also the theme […]
Check out Doctor Laser, a nicely done mini-documentary about one of the last remaining laser holography artists in the world. In the heyday of holography, back in the 1970s, there were four schools dedicated to the holographic arts around the world, and five studios in New York City alone. Today, there are only a few […]
Throw a stone at any gathering of makers, and you’re likely to hit somebody who owns a set of DIY-savant Dave Gingery’s classic books on building your own machine shop by casting scrap aluminum, melted in a charcoal-powered bucket furnace, into sand molds formed by wooden patterns. I’ve owned a set myself, for more than a decade, and “at least starting on the lathe,” which is the first tool in the series, has been on my someday list since the first time I ever saw the books advertised in Lindsay Technical Books’ classic ad in Popular Science.
There’s something about plush renderings of objects that would otherwise be terrifying that really appeals to me.
Before you reach for your incredulous hat, however, understand that the “passages” in question are really more like pipes. Approximately 20 cm square and winding upwards through the massive stone structure along a series of sharp corners, the two shafts in question connect to the so-called “Queen’s Chamber” in the middle of the pyramid, and were hidden until the late 19th century when a British explorer, reasoning by analogy to the two well-known shafts in the upper “King’s Chamber,” dug into the walls and discovered them. Unlike the shafts in the King’s Chamber, however, the Queen’s Chamber shafts do not connect to the outside of the pyramid. Starting in 1992, a series of ROVs have discovered that their distant ends are sealed by limestone “doors” incorporating copper fittings probably used as pulls. The implication seems to be that the shafts were sealed by the original builders by pulling the “doors” into place, from inside the Queen’s Chamber, using lines run down the shafts. Which raises some intriguing questions about what might be behind them.
Zork Stained Glass Window, Jason writes – By Brian Gaines. “I loved Zork so much that a high school buddy and I made ourselves stained glass windows of the logo in 1983. To the best of my knowledge, they are the only such windows in existence (but I could certainly be wrong)” No, I think […]
