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Homebrewed CPU
"Intel’s fabrication plants can churn out hundreds of thousands of processor chips a day. But what does it take to handcraft a single 8-bit CPU and a computer? Give or take 18 months, about $1,000 and 1,253 pieces of wire."
Magic Motorways
In the "Highways and Horizons" pavilion at the 1939-40 World's Fair in New York, General Motors presented Americans with "Futurama", a vision of the city of 1960. Norman Bel Geddes designed an enormous scale model, showing a utopian city rebuilt for the motor age, completely separating cars and pedestrians. Five million people came to see the exhibit, waiting more than an hour for their turn to get a sixteen-minute glimpse at the motorways of the world of tomorrow. There is a technicolor movie of the show online, as well as the accompanying book that Geddes wrote to explain his (and the motor industry's) ideas (or propaganda): "Magic Motorways".
Update: another movie here (via). Related: London traffic improvements (the Bressey Report, 1938).
How to Depave the Planet
The crack garden. "A crack team of guerrilla gardeners will undertake tactical missions to etch similar tectonic fissures in the parking lots of failed suburban malls and abandoned inner neighborhoods of post-industrial cities. With pneumatic drills or with pick axes and some elbow grease, they'll wound the earth's (un)natural asphalt skin, so that forgotten ecologies may return and hopefully fester". Via Pruned. More how-to information here.
A Perpetuum Mobile Railroad
The March 1925 issue of Science and Invention featured this Aerial Railroad. By a combination of inclined ramps and overhead suspension from cleverly curved tracks the "trolley car" passenger vehicle could go forever without power. It falls while suspended in the air from the downward inclined track, swinging forward as it does. When it contacts the lower tracks its momentum carries it up the inclined track until the whole process repeats. Source.
The Flying Oven
That is how they call it, and they ask me what I think of it. Honestly, I have no clue.
"This research project proves a new and novel method of winter solar heat gathering. Based on February to December 2008 UK tests, a solarsphere of this type can produce enough heat to make a well insulated house self sufficient in both space heating and hot water."
Prison Treadmills
The prison treadmill was invented in England in 1817 by Sir William Cubit, who observed prisoners lying around in idleness and put himself to the task of "reforming offenders by teaching them habits of industry." Forty-four prisons in England adopted it as a form of hard labour that could also grind grain (although some treadwheels were only "grinding the wind").
The punitive treadmill was then implemented in America for two long years, between 1822 and 1824, at Bellevue penitentiary outside New York. Prisoners stepped on the mill for 10 hours a day (with 20 minute breaks per hour), grinding grain, often with a large audience of jeering onlookers housed in a specially built viewing house. Read here and here. Picture credit. See more images.
Related: Human powered cranes and lifting devices.
Supporters and Opponents of Technology
"Having read and listened to the arguments of technology enthusiasts and technology critics, I find it striking that different people look at the same history, the same society, the same products and services, the same jobs - and come to diametrically opposed conclusions about what they see. There is a fundamental difference in the world view of supporters and opponents of technology. It is more than the difference in seeing a glass half full or half empty.
The difference seems to be one of contrasting views of what should be in the glass. Supporters of technology see an upward trend in quality of life beginning with people living at the mercy of nature with an empty glass that technology has been gradually filling. Neo-luddites view the glass as originally full when people lived in small communities with little impact on nature; they see technology as draining it."
Quoted from: "A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computing and the Internet
, by Sara Baase (Amazon link). Excerpts of the book.
The difference seems to be one of contrasting views of what should be in the glass. Supporters of technology see an upward trend in quality of life beginning with people living at the mercy of nature with an empty glass that technology has been gradually filling. Neo-luddites view the glass as originally full when people lived in small communities with little impact on nature; they see technology as draining it."
Quoted from: "A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computing and the Internet
, by Sara Baase (Amazon link). Excerpts of the book.
The Folly of Building-Integrated Wind
"The study found that predicted performance exceeded actual performance by a factor of 15 to 17. With the worst-performing systems, the electricity required to run the electronics exceeded the electricity production, so the wind turbines were net consumers of electricity". Read.
Thanks, Brent Eubanks. Related: Small windmills put to the test / Urban Windmills harm the environment.
Sailing Rockets
This unconventional sailing boat, named the SailRocket, reached a record speed of 47.35 knots (87.6 km/h or 54.43 mph), on average over a distance of 500 meters. During another run, the boat reached a speed of 52 knots before lifting off for a spectacular in-the-air wipeout (also caught on video). More below.
Materials = Energy
Following the intriguing but oversimplified graphic on materials scarcity published by New Scientist (a graphic that turns out to be 2 years old, by the way), this in-depth article at the Oil Drum Europe (original article here) gives a well founded look at the problem of metal minerals scarcity. Especially interesting is the link between energy and minerals:
"In case of unlimited energy supply, metal minerals extraction would only be limited by the total amount of mineral resources. However, due to the scarcity of energy, the extraction rates of most types of metal minerals will cease to follow demand. Probably the only acceptable long-term solution to avoid a global systemic collapse of industrial society, caused by these resource constraints, is a path towards managed austerity. Managed austerity will have to be a combination of changes in technology and changes in both individual and collective human behaviour."
Related: Historical statistics for mineral and material commodities.
Bookbinding: a tutorial
Step-by-step instructions. More tutorials can be found here, here and here.
Steam engine galleries
Locomobiel Stoommachine is a Dutch site, but it is worth clicking around because of the quantity and the quality of pictures and drawings of all possible steam engines and their applications. (note 02/2011: site has been moved and renamed).
