Derived from Eurobad '74 - Europe's Worst Interiors

Today on Modern Mechanix we looked at these oh-so-cool sport binoculars, an advertisement for Harley Davidson's 1951 Hydra-Glide motorcycle, a centuries old automaton of an old woman that writes letters and learned that Canada is full of courteous people and fresh fish. This 1932 Modern Mechanix article documents the birth of the nascent US electronics industry, complete with a bunch of nifty photos. Also be sure to check out this 1968 Mechanix Illustrated article introducing the Boeing 747 and this 1934 piece about the construction of the Pan-American highway, stretching from Alaska to Argentina.

This is what the Nintendo Entertainment System would look like if it were made now, but if now was still in the 1980s. Designed by Javier Segovia of Spain, it's very much a refinement of the original, a curious speculative interpolation of two gaming zeitgeists, decades apart. But something holds it back from being truly wonderful, at least for me.

Perhaps it's the awareness that its a pretty but otherwise unoriginal rehash, all shiny 21st century case-molding and modeling techniques. A real redesigned NES could be smaller than the NES's cartridges, while a machine this large could play more than just NES games (and in fact already exists, being called the Wii.)

I think my ideal retro remake consoles would look something like an elongated pyramid, the size of a bar of Toblerone, just large enough to accommodate the cartridge slot. One could line them up in a neat (perhaps modular!) row atop thin TV sets, with identically-shaped but differently-designed models for each console.

Portfolio Page [reNESED via Kotaku]

Recently on Modern Mechanix we looked at this nifty wrist watch camera from 1939 that holds enough film for 36 photos, an odd cure for hay fever, a shipboard kennel located in a false funnel on the ocean liner Normandie , another "compact" hearing aid that isn't so compact, a 1914 amphibious vehicle called the Hidromobile that bares a striking resemblance to a clog and a tubby, well dressed robot that can dance. From 1939 we learned what Popular Mechanics thought a stay on Mars would be like, and Mechanix Illustrated asks the frightening question: "Will Polar Waves Swamp America?" along with some awesome illustrations in case the headline didn't sufficiently scare you.

At times, inventors of ages past showed enormous ingenuity in the construction of their charmingly intricate devices. Other times? They just took an existing idea and, bereft of creativity, made it smaller, more fiddly and less functional. Come to think of it, not much has changed: only the aesthetics.

At first glance, this 1927 map watch is pretty nifty: an antediluvian GPS, don't you know. It was called the Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator, a name so clunky, unmemorable and artless that it even sounds like the name of a modern GPS device. The idea was simple: the Wooster-esque motorist would putter around England, scrolling a tiny paper map loaded in his wrist as he went with two black knobs. If you took a turn, you simple slid out one map and inserted another one and continued on your way.

What ho! Ingenious! Except a complete road map only cost a few pence back in 1927, where as this device would have set you back around 5 quid. And just like modern GPS map providers, the real business model was in selling you additional maps.

Which leaves the design. I quite like it: it's cheap, but whimsical and adventurous, like something you might strap on your wrist to traverse Oz.

Fancy driving with this... the earliest wind-up sat-nav [Daily Mail via Gizmowatch]

One of my favorite retro-techno-fetishistic sites, Retro Thing, has a great post-up looking at the Adix Calculator ... a wonderfully gear driven adding machine from the early 20th century that looks like the cerebral base processor of some fantastic Victorian mechanical man.

Adix calculators in good condition sell for well over $1000. Part of their charm is that - like steam engines - they're fascinating to watch in action. You get the feeling that you understand intimately how they function, even if you don't really grasp the fine details. The charm of precision engineered mechanics is at the heart of the 'steampunk' movement, although lately the term has been co-opted to mean "modern electronics in a neo-Victorian case." This, on the other hand, shows that the steampunk movement is rooted firmly in the mechanical reality of a century ago.

The Adix: Proto-Steampunk Calculator [Retrothing]

Recently on Modern Mechanix we look at this cool little fish shaped submarine, a 1902 ad for an adding machine called the Comptometer, a 1936 Popular Science piece that explains why we might have another ice age, a dome light for Japanese cops, a comparison of the New York skyline from 1880 and 1930 (and today) as well as a 1977 Hewlett Packard computer advertisement touting their astoundingly inexpensive ECC RAM, just 5 cents (17 cents in 2007 dollars) per byte.

Moon-mad steampunk engineers have constructed Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 from the master's original plans. It is now on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., after being completed last month.

"The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8,000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long. We invite you to learn more about this extraordinary object, its designer Charles Babbage and the team of people who undertook to build it. Discover the wonder of a future already passed. A sight no Victorian ever saw."

Online exhibit [Computer History]

The Harmonium is an autistic mechanical brain solely concerned with sine wave synthesis and Fourier Anlysis, built by a Dutch genius who constructed her first oscilloscope at the 14. But we can't do a better job describing the Harmonium's useless beauty than the word perfect summary of the illustrious Retro Thing: "Let's just say that this entire machine elegantly replaces a single function of a $100 graphing calculator with a few thousand dollar-euros of precision engineered metal." I never thought a device would come around that would make me wish I had a reason to plot sine waves by the mere dint of its captivating aesthetic design, but here we are.

The Harmonium [Official Site via Retro Thing via Matrixsynth]

Recently on Modern Mechanix we looked at a 1950 Mechanix Illustrated article about how some of history's most famous inventions were discovered by accident. Pictured at right is Wilhelm von Roentgen's simultanious discovery of both the X-Ray and the electric razor. We made a brief stop in the seventies today with this Popular Science piece about preventing Skyjackers, and a trippy 1977 science fiction themed ad for Fairchild Semiconductor. We also looked at the booming business of balloon manufacturing, early abstract animations set to music, scientific highlights of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, phono/photo post cards, experiments with oxygen, a parachute jump tower and a 1961 ad for an IBM punched card modem. Lastly you really should check out this article about a co-ed crew of crazy miners in 1902 who built a sail powered car to cross the desert and gain access to their gold mine. The picture alone is worth the price of admission.

Today on Modern Mechanix we looked at this gasoline powered radio that gets 160 hours of playtime per gallon, a pretty precarious looking sled-bike, a lengthy 1931 Popular Science article about evolution, and a 1928 plan for passengers in a hurry to be loaded into bi-planes and catapulted off of the deck of ocean liners when they get within a couple of hundred miles of their destination. We also learned how scientists of 1947 planned to raid the ocean floor and that automobiles are not popular in Holland.

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at a wonderful 1954 article from Colliers magazine that predicted the huge changes coming due to solid-state electronics. Published just a few years after the invention of the transistor this article talks about color VCRs, touch-tone phones, solar power and many other inventions including the surprisingly modern looking flat screen TV at right. Today we also looked at a cute profile of a goofy inventor, a bar tender automat , the oh-so-stylish cigarette hat, and little house shaped motorbikes for home repairmen.

This weekend we learned about a government program to breed raccoons, how the greeting card industry works, and how crimes are solved by using hypnosis. We also looked at a doughnut handle, a rain coat that is also a map, a gas-raid shelter for pets, a monster bus that is also a movie theater, an expanding mobile home, a lip shaped stamp used to apply rouge and a rather scary looking cage mounted on the rumble seat of a car to take convicts off to prison.

Today on Modern Mechanix we have a 1956 Mechanix Illustrated article about scientist's plans to redesign the human body, including moving the mouth to the stomach and adding an eye to the tip of a finger. Showing that hucksters never miss a chance to exploit people's ignorance of new technology Popular Science wrote a 1939 expose about sham spiritualists using "Spirit Televisions" to fleece their marks. We also looked at an assembly line technique for rapidly developing color photos, a round-up of cool kids toys and a milk wagon towed by zebras. Lastly there is this theater impresario's 1929 prediction that future theaters will be shaped like an egg with multiple slide projectors providing "sets" for the films. Oddly, he doesn't even mention the idea of talkies.

Yesterday, the description of a monitor slathered with brass and oxidization as 'steampunk' caused me to get so hysterical that I evacuated myself all over BBG's front page. Please ignore this conniption fit, because as much as I like to bitch, I'm about three stiff drinks shy of trying to fit this wonderful steampunk Nerf gun into my little theory of steampunk purity. I think we can bend the rules here.

Professor Shagnasty is selling his Model 101 Steampunk Nerf Assault Rifle on eBay. It's the typical eBay steampunk listing, accompanied by the usual overly formal, proto-Victorian prosaic wankery. But this is something I really dig about the steampunk art community: it's never enough for them to just make a Nerf gun look like the official ordnance of an airship captain. They come up with their own in-universe sales patter

In phase warp configuration, and with a proprietary steam assisted coil driver set, the 101 is capable of both Ground and Ariel engagements. Dirigibles, balloons and other lighter than air machinery are easily dispatched using the simplest of maneuvers. Yet, with another turn of the switch, the model 101 can eject plasmatical beams tuned to perfection and capable of dropping any apparition, out of body ghoul or spectral anomaly.

Current bid is $224.72, with 12 hours left on the auction.

STEAMPUNK NERF MOD LARP COSPLAY ASSAULT RIFLE Sci Fi [eBay via Gizmodo]

Today on Modern Mechanix we have this bizarre contraption designed to torture teach your baby how to walk, a "compact" gauge to measure the speed of baseball pitches, a round up of cool gadgets used in store windows to attract shoppers, a 1965 ad for Bell's Data-Phone which appears to be an early modem and a big truck that can transform into a complete airport. We also looked at Mechanix Illustrated's vision of future peace keepers in "Space Cops to Enforce World Peace". One commenter pointed out the similarity of this idea to the plot of H.G. Wells' 1936 movie "Things to Come". You can read a Modern Mechanix article about it here. Or watch the whole movie at archive.org.

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at this 1973 Popular Science article about the debut of the world's first cell phone, Motorola's Dynatac.

In super-dense Manhattan, for example, a transmitter and its antenna may be designed to cover a 15-block area. Another transmitter in a residential Brooklyn area may cover several miles. As the number of subscribers grows, more transmitters would be added.

I don't think they realized quite how many more antennas they'd need. Here is a map of all of the cell station antennas within 1 mile of the 10001 zip code in NYC. There are 1494.

Also today, a beard clinic that helps men develop their own custom shaving strategy, Polish dogs trained to lay telephone lines, deep sea divers used to solicit cash, an interesting approach to preventing bank robberies by using mirrors and a pretty nice looking home on a train.

Today on Modern Mechanix we look back to a simpler time when earstwhile wiretappers only needed a pair of vampire clips and a contact microphone to do their job instead of a bevy of wireless digital network sniffers. I imagine they also wouldn't have any trouble listening in on this cordless phone from 1970. It looks like it is just a standard bell telephone spliced onto a rather bulky radio base station. We also looked at Lady Nora Docker's pimped out 1956 Daimler complete with genuine zebra skin interior, a test to see if couples about to be married are compatible with one another, a cure for the cross-eyed and learned how to build your own very own Meditation thingy. Note: Meditation thingy is defined as a giant 12 sided plywood fort plastered with magazine pictures (or pholaged if you want to get fancy) that one gets inside to gently rock themselves to sleep while dreaming of a better world.

Commenting on Alex Handy's remarkable find—the legendary Atari 2600 version of Cabbage Patch Kids Adventure in the Park—reader SC_Wolf points to an entire cloud of these mysterious vapors.

Somehow, I don't think we'll be finding these at the flea market. But we may dream!

Fun From Yesterday! [Mighty God King]

Today on Modern Mechanix we have this cute little midget television set with a 2" screen, a $375 four-function 1970 calculator, an attempt to set the non-stop tractor riding record, a talking mailbox, and we learned how Disney made the soundtrack for Fantasia. In 1950 Mechanix Illustrated must have run themselves out of red ink publishing the sensationalist piece "Can Russia Defeat Us with Atom Bombs?"

This weekend we looked at a Playboy ad done in Ascii art, a food cooker that runs off of an automobile's exhaust, a sonic laundry cleaner, an odd insect resistant chair, a spinning house designed to withstand hurricanes, a crazy looking ad for "Auto Eyes", the original fishing video game, a waiting room for hitch-hikers, a giant truck designed to ship prefab housing kits, and a variety of gadgets for the home. We also learned how to get a career from the television boom, how UPS sorted packages, the inside story of rodeos, and that morning is not the best time for work. Also in 1931 Popular Science asked the question: "Can Soft Drinks Poison You?"

You know, the USSR gets a lot of bad press in the Western world, what with its gulag archipelagos and the ruthless oppression of half of Europe and Asia for over half a century. Granted, that all seems pretty bad, but now look at this, the pride and joy of East German Computing circa 1984: The Robotron 1715, a "Worker's PC" based around a Zilog Z80 clone processor running at 2.5Mhz.

Retro Thing explains:

It ran what seems to have been an iron curtain variant of the CP/M OS popular in the west until it was obliterated by the MS-DOS juggernaut in the mid 1980s. The display offered 16x24 or 28x80 green text, and I'm willing to bet it had no graphic or sound capabilities. The machine was initially offered with 64 KB RAM, which was later upgraded to 256 KB.

Now consider: in an alternate history where the Soviet Union stamped unimpeded through Western Europe, we all would be using computers like this. There would be no LOLCats or Rick Rolling. Instead, we would all unite in Marxist harmony, exerting our treasured, state-distributed Robotrons in pursuit of Comrade Pajitnov's Great Five Year Plan 2.0. Isn't a lifetime of Soviet oppression worth living in a society where computers are named after one of the most bitching video games of all time? Added perk: all the Victory Gin you can drink!

Robotron 1715 [Made in the GTR]

In this video, the man responsible for creating the wireframe images of the Death Star and trench that were used in the briefing scenes of A New Hope explains how he used real computers to "digitize" images. I'm sure I'm not the first to make this observation, but it's really hilarious how futuristic Star Wars seems with its space ships and laser swords, the latest versions of which were wholly created by computers.

(Thanks, Instantenemy!)

Today on Modern Mechanix we learn about a 1938 time capsule designed so that people of the distant future can learn about us and restore their shattered world to our glorious standards. This 1929 Modern Mechanics article chronicles inaugural flight of the Transcontinental Air Transport Corporation, piloted by Charles Lindberg. The T.A.T could take someone from Los Angeles to New York in under 48 hours via a combination of airplanes and sleeper trains. We also looked at an elevator that works without cables, an 80mph baby cycle car, a weird 1970 ad for rice, and a rather rotund long distance swimmer who demonstrates how to eat lunch in the water.

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at the ridiculously impractical idea of Rocket Mail. When you absolutely have to get a document from New York to San Francisco in 2 hours, send it via ballistic missile! Or you could use a phone or fax for about one millionth the cost. This 1968 Life magazine piece titled "Scientology: A growing cult reaches dangerously into the mind" chronicles the author's (rather unhappy) experience with the organization. We also looked at a scheme to prevent birds from nesting in reservoirs that looks like it's computer generated, a selection of advertisements for "steam carriages" from a 1902 issue of Scientific American, the grandfather of the Ionic Breeze which looks like it would make a wicked bong, and an early camera that was capable of taking 60,000 pictures a second.

The guys over at MAKE spotted this fantastic clip of a from the 1960s named Leon Berry who designed an