history

Here's every key spacesuit NASA astronauts have worn since the 1960s — and the new moon suit it just unveiled

NASA astronauts have donned a lot of different spacesuits over the...

Did Vienna ever exist or was it just misinformation?

Did Vienna ever exist or was it just misinformation? This question comes with...

Retrotechtacular: The Revolutionary Visual Effects of King Kong

Today, it’s easy to take realistic visual effects in film and TV for granted....

Measuring a Millisecond Mechanically

If you are manufacturing something, you have to test it. It wouldn’t do, for example, for your car to say it was going 60 MPH when it was...

The First Gui? Volscan Controls the Air

In the 1950s, computers were, for the most part, ponderous machines. But one machine offered a glimpse of the future. The Volscan was...

7 Teachings From History On The Pursuit Of Happiness

“Happiness, Happiness, the greatest gift that I possess….”Photo by D...

Hidden Patterns in Street Names [Part 2]

Analyzing streets’ names in Tirana, Albania using data sciencePhoto by Mario Beqollari on UnsplashHello!This is part two of my story on street names in Tirana (you can find part 1 here: Hidden Patterns in Street...

Ký tự pháp đầu thế kỷ 20 - Từ Kiến tạo Nga tới Times New Roman (Phần 2)

Trong phần thứ hai của bài viết về ký tự pháp đầu thế kỷ 20, ta tiếp tục xem xét di sản của trường Bauhaus thông qua các di sản của Herbert Bayer, Ký tự pháp mới của...

The unintentionally-expanding scope of the SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX flag

In the old days, the fancy graphics cards were 640 × 480, computer memory was measured in megabytes, and there was no Windows Error Reporting. Back in those days, the SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX flag was the last check before we displayed the “box of doom”: ;-----------------------------------------------------------------------; ; Display_Box_of_Doom -- Display the Unrecoverable Application Error ; box that everyone...

Ký tự pháp đầu thế kỷ 20 - Từ Kiến tạo Nga tới Times New Roman (Phần 1)

Thiết kế đồ hoạ theo chủ nghĩa Hiện đại nói chung và ký tự pháp đầu thế kỷ 20 được đánh dấu bằng các quy tắc mới táo bạo: sự bất đối xứng, các yếu tố hình...

Retro Gadgets: Make Your Scope Dual Channel

We live in a time when having an oscilloscope is only a minor luxury. But for many decades, a good scope was a major expense, and almost no hobbyist had a brand new one unless it was of very poor quality. Scopes were...

Why are the Windows chassis hardware button hotkeys so strange?

Someone asked the shell team, “Why did you pick Power+VolumeDown as the hotkey to take a screen shot? Why not something simpler?” Set the time machine to 2010. Windows 8’s tablet-focused user interface is being...

Groundhog Sees Its Shadow: We’ll Have Six More Weeks Of Chinese Spy Balloons

Why use a balloon, how can it sneak across a border, and is it anything to be worried about?Chinese Surveillance Balloon, Billings, Montana (2/1/23) — By Chase Doak Via Wikimedia CommonsIt’s been an unreal...

What is Hawking radiation?

The black hole loses mass through Hawking radiationA simulation of a black hole’s accretion disk, where matter collects into a thin, hot, turbulent churn of gas as it is drawn in by the object’s...

10 Brand Logos with Meaning You Never Knew Existed

Let’s play a game of Where’s Wally with logosSource: AdobeThere always seems to be a Toblerone — or three — in my house.I just opened the pantry, and there are currently four waiting to be devoured.My...

The frustration of finding a suitable time to hold a meeting when the participants are evenly spaced around the globe

One of my friends worked on USB way back in the early days. As you would expect, things were rather unreliable back then, seeing as the entire platform was getting off the ground, and the specifications were still being written. I remember one email he sent me that said, simply, “Just letting you know, I had to reboot my mouse.” Anyway, the committee members fell into three geographic areas: East Asia, Western United States, and...