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Drawings of Early Microscopes Show Artistry in the Pursuit of Science
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 7:45 AM on August 24, 2008
Ah, where would science be if not for the contributions of the humble microscope? Did you know that the development of the world's first microscope began in 11th century Iraq, when scientist and polymath Ibn al-Haytham recorded all sorts of data about lenses, binocular vision, mirrors and observable properties of light his The Book of Optics? That would make this pioneering technology more than a thousand years old. BibliOdyssey has amassed a great collection of drawings of pre-20th century microscopes and some of them look more like art pieces than instruments of science. Check out my favourites: [Bibliodyssey via MAKE]
No, this isn't an alternate Waterworld costume for Dennis Hopper--it's Miroslav Tichy, posing with one of his amazing trash cams, which he fabricated from paper towel tubes, thread spools, rubber bands and other bits of detritus and has used since the 1950s. Now in his 80s, Tichy and his works have only recently (as far as the art world goes) been discovered. And like all good photographers, he trained his intentionally imperfect camera rigs on the considerably more refined female form.
If there were only a market for such intricate and fantastical smoking devices, maybe even I could become a Marlboro man. Who knew my smoking habits would so closely mirror those of English clowns from the 1930s? [
Back in 1969 RCA made an attempt at a high-end 
Since it came about in the 1930s as NASA's rocket research lab, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been a part of just about every major unmanned U.S. space mission to date. JPL also has a somewhat surprising history of running major missions out of modular trailers scattered around their Pasadena HQ, which are packed with all of the stuff you need to, oh, I don't know, monitor a spacecraft on its way to Mars. Photographer Richard Harrington stumbled upon one of these trailers, abandoned on a dusty lot somewhere between L.A. and Las Vegas, which as you would expect is retro space-tech dream inside.
Sure, some of us remember using the Commodore 64, but do any of us recall what the ads for it were like? Boingboing has aggregated a wonderful collection of 101 classic computer advertisements by everyone from AT&T (yeah, I forgot they tried their hand in making PCs too) to Texas Instruments. Aah, to be back in a world where everything fit inside a bulky keyboard and displays were monochromatic. [
Medgadget found this 1938 issue of Popular Science with a really, really fun baby branding gadget designed to make sure hospital mixups were a thing of the past. Did it work? Oh, I'm sure it did. Did it eliminate hospital baby mixups? No, because somebody somewhere along the line thought it was a bad idea. We say bring this back! I don't want to raise some dirty stranger's baby for five years before I discover that he or she is not mine. [
Way back in the days of 2007, courier company Deadline Express treated their New Zealand patrons to a particularly evocative printed advertisement. It was a US$14,000 billboard that featured a timer counting down to when it would blow up, proving "when Deadline Couriers gives you a time, they actually mean it." We can't speak for the service, but the explosions were spectacular in video:
Sound engineers have digitally restored some of the earliest recordings of stereo sound by the technology's inventor, Alan Blumlein. Blumlein, a research engineer at EMI, had lodged a patent for "binaural" sound in 1931 and made several experimental recordings to see if they could sell it to the fledgling film and audio industry. In 1934, EMI decided that nobody really needed surround sound and shelved all projects related to it. File that under late great historical oopses.
