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Tech NewsThe Castle of Shadows, a 15th Century Virtual Reality Room
In 1420, Venetian engineer Giovanni Fontana proposed an elaborate mechanical room he dubbed the Castellum Umbrarum, or “castle of shadows.” Sound awesome? It is. In a recent paper, French professor Philippe Codognet described it as “a room with walls made of folded translucent parchments lighted from behind, creating therefore an environment of moving images,” adding … Continued
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Tech NewsSocial Media
How Hacking Facebook Got This Man Hired… By Facebook
Back in 2005, Chris Putnam needed a hobby. The one he settled on, a series of Facebook hacks and pranks—including one that made your profile page look like MySpace—ended up scoring him a job at the very company he targeted. So maybe GeoHot‘s just been after Sony’s generous benefits package? Check out his full story … Continued
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Tech News
A Man Finds His Lost Wallet After 40 Years
Back in 1970, a man named Rudolph R. Resta lost his wallet. Amazingly, some 40 years later, a security guard found that very wallet and somehow returned it to the now 77-year-old Resta. Imagine that. What a wonderful time capsule to stumble upon. There’s pictures of his lovely wife, who he says “still is glamorous”, … Continued
By Casey Chan -
io9
Amelia Earhart’s old letters hold clue to her disappearance
The Amelia Earhart disappearance hasn’t actually been a mystery so much as a jumping-off point for as many fantastical theories as possible. Earhart had often been credited as a better self-promoter and daredevil than a pilot. Her last stunt, in 1937, was an attempt to make the record books as the first woman to circumnavigate … Continued
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Tech News
Back in the Day, Everything Was Sold in Vending Machines
The other day I stumbled upon one of those futuristic vending machines that sell ridiculous items that I’d never buy from a vending machine. There was no way in hell I was dropping 200 bucks in that machine just to see an iPod get stuck. Ah, vending machines, when did they get so complicated? I … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
Ice Age People Used Human Skulls As Cups
Bones recently excavated at a cave in Southwestern England show that some 14,700 years ago, people used human skulls as cups. The people of the Ice Age even had the decency to clean the skulls of any soft tissue and use stone tools to shape the skulls to be more cup-like. Resourceful, I guess. [PLoS … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
The World’s Oldest Artificial Heart
In honor of Valentine’s Day, Gizmodo presents you with the Liotta-Cooley heart, the world’s first totally artificial blood-pumper. Developed by Dr. Domingo Liotta and implanted by Dr. Denton A. Cooley on April 4, 1969, the Liotta-Cooley heart kept a 47-year old man alive for three full days before a human organ became available. And to … Continued
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Tech News
The Inside Story of the Very First Macintosh
Contrary to what you might think, Apple’s revolutionary first Macintosh computer didn’t spring fully formed, Athena-style, from a crack in Steve Jobs’s head. The user-friendly desktop was largely the creation of Jef Raskin, the man who fought fragmentation, urged Apple to “think small,” and encouraged top-to-bottom control over the product’s ecosystem. In other words, all … Continued
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Tech News
9 Dangerous Devices from the Heyday of X-Ray
In the days before filtered cigarettes and seat belts, Radiography was hailed as a miracle of science with seemingly endless commercial applications. Too bad they were dangerous as all get-out. Oobject.com has some amazing examples. If you weren’t already feeling squeemish after seeing those devices, don’t worry – these 24 silently screaming medical mannequins , … Continued
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Tech News
What the Heck Was a Comptometer?
This 1942 ad for a comptometer is just perfect because first of all, I had no idea what a comptometer was (a mechanical calculator, basically) and second, the spec sheet is wonderful: no glare dials, elimination of non-essential zeroes, and a “Keystroke Censor.” We’ve really come quite a ways in advancing technology. The things the … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
What Did Our Earliest Presidents Really Look Like?
Before photoshop, there was painting. If you were commissioned to do art, you weren’t about to paint an ugly portrait of the guy. So chins were lifted, skin was cleared, etc. and it gets sorta hard to tell what people really looked like. Until now. Eric Altschuler, a history buff, studied the early 19th century … Continued
By Casey Chan -
io9
Why some animals can never be domesticated
Dogs, sheep, pigs, cows, horses – all these animals and more have been fundamentally changed by humans to make our lives better. Domestication has fundamentally altered the course of human history, reshaping the land and other species to fit our new agricultural lifestyle. But how do you take a wild species and turn them into … Continued
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io9
How Mongolian hordes reduced the Earth’s carbon footprint
In the 1200s, Genghis Khan and the Mongolian army built an empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe, ruling over a fifth of all land on Earth and over 100 million people. And all that conquering reshaped the Earth, reducing carbon dioxide levels enough to offset a year’s worth of gasoline usage … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
A Brief History of Rockets, and Why They’re Not Getting Any More Advanced
Over at Slate, Neal Stephenson charts a brief, fascinating history of the rocket, starting with Hitler’s V-2 during the second World War and ending with today’s sophisticated rockets, capable of launching complex communications satellites that can cost up to $100,000 a pound. But here, Stephenson explains, we find ourselves locked in: To employ a commonly … Continued
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io9
Was George Washington the victim of 18th century airbrushing?
It’s not just modern magazines that tweak people’s faces to fit the standard of beauty. For hundreds of years, portraits have been altered to reflect whatever ideas of beauty that people had at the time. Every woman in the 18th century appears to have the same nose. No one in the 17th century had any … Continued
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Tech NewsWhat Is This?
This one may be too easy, but I had forgotten how beautiful it can be. So, what is it? Stylized ornaments? Blowing glass? Maybe even earrings? No, the answer is much more functional than that. It’s called Galileo’s Thermometer and yep, named after Galileo Galilei, the man pretty much responsible for the birth of modern … Continued
By Casey Chan -
io9
New discovery explains why a mundane book of poetry stayed in print for a century
Do you want to read The Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon, a volume of eighteenth century poetry? No? Well, other people did. They read it so repeatedly, and recommended it to their friends so assiduously, that it was reprinted over twenty times throughout the eighteenth century. In later years, it was resequenced … Continued
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io9
Forget pirates. Navigate like a viking.
Vikings did a lot of navigating in their line of work. Those who didn’t know how to use the sun to get exactly where they wanted to go would end up razing only sandcastles, pillaging only bird’s nests, and setting fire only to their own beards. So when cloudy, foggy, gray days caused these intrepid … Continued
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io9
Does fake torture save real souls?
The Milgram Experiments showed that sixty percent of volunteers would help ‘torture’ someone if ordered to. What happened to the people who volunteered to be the torturers afterward? Not what you’d expect. At Yale in the sixties, Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most infamous experiments in all psychology. He recruited volunteers, and had them … Continued