Category:
Technology
Technology
Meet Miss Electronic
Once upon a time answering machines were considered strange and dumbfounding.
Wilmington News Journal - Mar 31, 1956
Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 18, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Technology, Telephones, 1950s
A brief history of mass-production shaving machines
Around 1780: "An anonymous British printmaker, perhaps from Birmingham, issued a satire of mechanization and factories occuring during the Industrial Revolution, in the form of an imaginery 'New Shaving Machine, whereby a number of persons may be done at the same time with expedition, ease, and safety.'" (text from historyofinformation.com)
Around 1825: "British illustrator and caricaturist Robert Seymour... issued Shaving by Steam... In his creation of this print Seymour was undoubtedly inspired by an earlier anonymous print entitled 'New Shaving Machine.' The sign above the door on the right in Seymour's image announces 'Patent Shavograph!!!'" (text from historyofinformation.com)
Oct 1960: English comedian Eric Sykes built a working "New Shaving Machine" (modeled from the 1780 print) on a pilot show for a proposed television series called 'Brainwaves.' The premise of the show was recreating strange old-time inventions. However, the show never aired.
images source: vintag.es
Lincolnshire Echo - Sep 29, 1960
History via reddit user KBHoleN1
Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 29, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Technology, Satire
Snail Dough Maker
Thankfully it's for making dough to wrap snails in, rather than making dough out of snails.
source: Catalog of the Unusual (1973), by Harold H. Hart
Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 16, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Food, Technology
1963 Prediction of Mobile Phones
In 1963 the Mansfield News-Journal predicted that, "Some day, Mansfielders will carry their telephones in their pockets."So when did the first phone debut that could be carried in a pocket? Depends on the size of the pocket, I guess. But I think it was arguably the Motorola StarTAC, that came out in 1996 — 33 years after the News-Journal prediction.
Mansfield News-Journal - Apr 18, 1963
Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 15, 2024 -
Comments (4)
Category: Technology, Telephones, Yesterday’s Tomorrows
Mystery Gadget 109
What's it for?The answer is here.
Or after the jump.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 07, 2024 -
Comments (3)
Category: Technology, Nineteenth Century
The Sony SmartWig
Sony was granted a patent for its "SmartWig" in 2016, but, to date, it doesn't seem to have brought the device to market.The idea was that a person could pair their smartphone with the wig and then receive "tactile feedback" (such as a vibration) when they received a text or email.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The SmartWig had many more potential uses, such as the following:
During a presentation the user may, for example, move forward or backward through presentation slides by simply pushing the sideburns, i.e. by pushing the one or more buttons. Thus, the user can control the presentation slides simply by natural behavior like touching side burns. Additionally, the wearable computing device may comprise a laser pointer that is arranged in or on the wig. The laser pointer may, for example, be arranged on a forehead part of the wig, so that the user may point out relevant information on the projected slide in the above-explained presentation mode.
I imagine it would be a lot more difficult to aim a laser pointer with your head rather than your hand. Not to mention it would look bizarre.
#40 represents the possible location of a laser pointer
Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 24, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Technology, Patents, Hair and Hairstyling
The Avrocar Military Flying Saucer
If only this project had succeeded, we'd all have Jetson-style flying saucers today!Here is the Wikipedia page.
But I do think the version patented by one C. P. Lent right around the same time has a classier shape.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 25, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Flight, Military, Technology, Patents, 1950s
Mushroom-Based Air Conditioning
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have invented (and patented) a mushroom-powered air cooling system that can reduce the temperature in a semiclosed compartment by approximately 10 °C in 25 minutes. They call it the "MycoCooler." From their recent article in PNAS:We constructed a mushroom-based air-cooling device, MycoCooler™, based on previous observations that mushrooms can cool the surrounding air via evaporative cooling. The device was made from a Styrofoam box with a 1-cm–diameter inlet aperture and a 2-cm–diameter outlet aperture. An exhaust fan was attached outside the outlet aperture to drive airflow in and out of the box. The MycoCooler™ was loaded with ~420 g of substrate-detached A. bisporus mushrooms, closed, and placed inside a larger Styrofoam box previously equilibrated inside a warm room (37.8 °C, <10% RH). The temperature inside the closed Styrofoam box decreased from 37.8 °C to 27.8 °C, 40 min after the addition of mushrooms, cooling at approximately 10 °C, at ~0.4 °C per min.
It's an interesting concept, but somehow I don't think a MycoCooler would be powerful enough to beat the heat here in Arizona. (Though in the days before AC, everyone here used evaporative coolers. But they also say that it's much hotter here than it used to be... a combination of global warming and the urban heat-island effect.)
More info: Johns Hopkins, Patent No. 11871707
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 23, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Technology, Patents
Sheaffer Pen accurately predicted the future
In 1963 and 1964, Sheaffer Pen ran an ad campaign in which they made a variety of predictions about future technologies of the 21st century. The company contrasted these technologies, which must have seemed a bit pie-in-the-sky at the time, with the timeless performance of a Sheaffer pen. The surprising thing is that all their predictions have come true: instant mail delivery, checkbooks that balance themselves electronically, portable visual phones, ring tape recorders, camera sunglasses, credit card rings, electronic translators.They don't all exist in the specific form that Sheaffer imagined (credit card rings?), but in each case the equivalent or better exists.
Newsweek - Sep 23, 1963
Posted By: Alex - Sun Jan 21, 2024 -
Comments (4)
Category: Technology, Advertising, 1960s, Yesterday’s Tomorrows
Mystery Gadget 108
This is not an iron lung machine. So then, what's going on?The answer is here.
Or after the jump.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 18, 2024 -
Comments (4)
Category: Technology, Twentieth Century
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |