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This 200-Year-Old Mechanical Caterpillar Does Everything But Turn Into a...
Robots are so commonplace now that we use them to entertain kids at amusement parks. But even though modern technology has given us artificial lifeforms that can walk, talk, and even fly, there’s still...
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The First Gaming Console Made Christmas So Much Better
The greatest development in the history of Christmas presents was the Magnavox Odyssey. It’s incontrovertible. Not for its success or awesomeness—it sorta flopped—but for beginning the worldwide...
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This 1960s Gadget Is More Kid-Friendly Than Today’s
The Kenner Close n Play was a modest gadget from the outside: you put in a vinyl record, closed the lid, and it would play. It looked like a lunchbox. It was simple. But above all, it was for kids....
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Where Is This Mind-Blowing Antique Transforming Desk Hiding Its Autobot Logo?
Maybe we’ve all been looking in the wrong place for proof of extra-terrestrial life. Because it’s hard to imagine this incredibly complex transforming desk coming from anywhere but Cybertron, the home...
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Apple Ignored Qualcomm’s Suggestion of Adding a Radio to the Newton
All the way back in the ’90s, Qualcomm approached Apple to suggest that it might want to put a radio in its Newton PDA. It could have led to the first ever iPhone two decades early —but instead, Apple...
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The US Military Tested a Tsunami Bomb That Could Rival the Nuclear Bomb
We’ve all seen the destruction that tsunamis can cause. It doesn’t play around. But back in 1944, the US military wanted to play around with tsunamis in hope of creating a man made tsunami...
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Dear IBM, Your Computer’s Psychotic—Just Letting You Know
Two years before Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey, he was starting to worry that IBM would get a little mad when HAL 9000, the computer they helped design, came off, well, psychotic. To...
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Every Apple.com Homepage From the Last 15 Years
I was looking at screenshots of Apple.com’s former homepages (using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine) and decided to compile them into a slideshow. With the exception of Apple’s homepage in 1997,...
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Why Aren’t Telephone Towers This Beautiful Anymore?
You’re looking at what was once the main junction for telephone connections in Stockholm. See all the wires? That’s because it was used for around 5,000 phone lines—literal lines—from 1887-1913. But...
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Remembering Apollo 1, NASA’s First Major Disaster
46 years ago yesterday, veteran astronaut Gus Grissom; first American spacewalker Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee were killed in a cabin fire during an Apollo 1 launch pad test. The first...
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Lego Was First Patented 55 Years Ago Today
On January 28th 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen patented the humble Lego brick. His company had existed, making other toys, since 1930—but it was 55 years ago today that the infamous studded plastic...
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What We Thought the Year 2001 Would Look Like Back in 1967
The godfather of US network news, Walter Cronkite, had a regular show on CBS called “The 21st Century” that showed off technology of the future. One episode that aired on March 12, 1967 showed off what...
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This Victorian Mustache Spoon Is Your Nose Neighbor’s Best Friend
With the trends of today’s disaffected youth being what they are, mustaches have gained an unfortunate affiliation with hipsterdom and the ironic ramifications that follow This gloriously dignified...
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Soothe Your Achey Joints by Sticking Each Limb Into Its Own Tiny, Electrified...
What looks like some horrific, early 20th century polygraph test cum torture chamber was, in fact, a gentle medical solution to a common, achey problem. The Schnee Four Cell Bath was a type of galvanic...
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Remember the Hilarious Horror of Geocities with This Website
Oh my god. This is perfect. Because things on the Internet never really die and because old terrible things on the Internet eventually become wonderful and especially because Geocities was so...
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This Was the First Banner Ad on the Internet
Here’s the grandaddy that spawned the thing you guys like least on the Internet: ads. This artsy, graffiti’d print on a black background telling you to click “right here” is supposedly the first banner...
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The Only Woman Who Ever Got Hit By a Meteorite Survived
Imagine going about your day like the people in Russia only to be smacked against a wall by a meteorite’s shockwave. That’s already crazy. But imaging being in your home, napping on your couch and...
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The Good Ol’ Fashioned Way to Calculate Exposure Time
Forget auto-exposure, or even light meters. Back in the day this booklet and some mental arithmetic was all that was required to achieve the perfect exposure when taking photographs. The Exposure Time...
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The Life and Explosive Death of the World’s First Ferris Wheel
1893 marked the 400 year anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the New World. To commemorate the anniversary, the 51st US Congress of 1890 declared that a great fair—the World’s Columbian...
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Meet the World’s Oldest Kindle: A Ferris Wheel for Books
It might be hard to imagine, but there was once a time where thousands upon thousands of books and arguably the sum totally of human knowledge was not readily available at your fingertips. And while...
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