Rob Beschizza

If only these retro fake ads were for real products!

Bobster855's collection of ancient "National Lampoon" advertisements is fantastic--like a cross between comic book ads and Skymall.

I'm pretty sure that digital grandfather clock came to be.

Steven Leckart

More Video Games Should Look Like This.

Rob Beschizza

The Apple Cafés that 1996 nearly saw

Photo: Landmark Entertainment Group.

In November 1996, Apple announced it would open a chain of cafés. Videoconferencing and on-demand movies and music were among the touted attractions, but its the retro design vibe that seems strangest now. The plans ground to a halt by December, 1997.

The Apple Store that never was [GUIFX via Cult of Mac]

Xeni Jardin

BB Video - Boiler Bar: Oilpunk Creations + Sexy Burlesque Gyrations

(Download / Watch on YouTube)

Today's Boing Boing Video episode is a special pre-Maker Faire warmup extravaganza: the oil-punk creations and sexy burlesque gyrations of the Boiler Bar. Creator and host Jon Sarriugarte (who I first met through SRL) explains:

Oilpunk: is Punk, Hot Rod, Geek, Blue Collar, and Maker Culture mixed together with the Petroleum Golden Age of the last century. It's the intersection of petroleum products, art, and science. It harkens back to a time when hard work, combustion engines and industry shaped us, yet it speaks to the future. It's taking the castoffs of modern industrial culture and objects from the last decade to reuse today. Dirty, greasy, sweaty, it's a work hard, play hard style.

The Boiler Bar is what blue collar out of work down on their luck Bay Area artist decided to do with their spare time and last dollar. Come by and share our delight of the sparkle in the dust of this golden age of petroleum. Drink our hooch and watch the girls sing and dance their way to you heart, then be dazzled by the labor of men spent in seconds in glorious aerial and earthly displays of plenty. And as always ravers and DJ's are welcome to talk.

Also in this episode: The snail car! a real-live blacksmith! Who also happens to be a chick! And the Neverwas Runabout, cousin to the giant Neverwas Haul! All of this and more awaits this weekend at Maker Faire Bay Area 2009. Image below courtesy dharmabum90: the Neverwas Haul, being towed by a 90-year-old steam-powered tractor.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Shannon O'Hare of the Neverwas and Jon Sarriugarte of Boiler Bar. And big thanks to BBV guest host Aaron Muszalski and our field producer and shooter Eddie Codel.)

Joel Johnson

The Blue Cat

Joel Johnson

Atomic Disruptor Raygun

Joel Johnson

Music Video: DeGarmo & Key "666"

When I was a fundie pup, this sort of Christian pop music was strictly verboten. "Be in the world, not of it" was taken a little too literally. My parents saved me from the Floppies of the Beast.

Interestingly:

DeGarmo & Key were the first Christian group to have a music video appear on MTV. The original video for the song "Six, Six, Six" was one of a number of videos that MTV pulled from rotation due to violent content. The purge was a public reaction to the U.S. Senate hearings on sex and violence in music. MTV had ironically misinterpreted the song "Six, Six, Six" as an anti-Christian statement. According to industry news reports at the time, MTV exec Sandra Sparrow was unaware that DeGarmo & Key were a Christian band when she included the video in a list of videos to be excised. An embarrassed MTV allowed DeGarmo & Key to submit a re-edited version, which was placed back into rotation. Removed from the re-edited video was a short scene of a man representing the Antichrist being set on fire.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: ARPANET turns 40, and Vintage Computers in Slovenia

(Download this video in MP4.)

This year marks the 40th anniversary of an important milestone in internet history -- the development and successful link of the first host-to-host internet connection.

On April 7 1969, Steve Crocker of UCLA circulated around a memo entitled 'Request for Comments, the first of thousands of "RFCs" documenting the design of ARPANET and the Internet. A few months and many memos and experiments later, in October, 1969, Charley Kline at UCLA sent the first packets on ARPANET as he tried to connect to Stanford Research Institute. Below, a copy of the transmission log.

Boing Boing Video is celebrating internet history in the months to come with a look back at the people, devices, and places that are part of our shared internet history.

In today's episode of the show, we revisit an episode hosted by monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner, in which we explore the "Cyberpipe" museum of internet history in Slovenia, where computers and networking devices from those early years can be found. Cyberpipe is hosting related retro-tech exhibits throughout 2009.

Closer to home for our viewers in the US, the Museum of Computer History in the San Francisco Bay Area offers a world-class repository of exhibits, and their website includes a helpful timeline of key events that led to today's web.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

Joel Johnson

Dharma Initiative ads from National Geographic

Hot Meteor has created these "vintage" ads from National Geographic for LOST's Dhama Initiative. [via Kottke]

Charles Shopsin

Video: Russian School for the Blind

Charles Shopsin is a New York City-raised and Brooklyn-based software developer. In his spare time, he runs the Modern Mechanix blog.

This is a film I saw last year at the Anthology Film Archives in New York. It was part of a series called "Trash-Picking and Eye-Popping: Offbeat Gems from America's Oddest 16MM Collectors."

The film features what appears to be a Russian school for the blind and vision-impaired, although it took me a really long time to figure that out. I'm not sure if the school existed or if this was just some Soviet era propaganda/futurism piece. If anybody wants to translate, please post it in the comments, because I'd love to know.

It looks like a cross between a science museum and a vacation resort. They have all sorts of nifty gadgets to teach the kids astronomy, engineering, anatomy, and, er ... massage. Plus there's a kick-ass computer lab complete with Braille teletypes.

When I found out I was going to be guest blogging here I sent an email to Stephen Parr, owner of Oddball Films+Video asking him if he had a digital version that I might share with the class. He graciously provided me with this. Thanks, Stephen!

Joel Johnson

CGSociety's Steampunk art contest winners, incl. "Steamnocchio"

There are tremendous toots of talent at CGSociety's "Steampunk: Myths & Legends" contest winners' page, with the finest of both moving and still images selected, but Fabricio Moraes's rendered image "Steamnocchio" is easily my favorite. Rarely does an image provoke such noises in my head. Not to be missed: "Alice's Adventures in Steamland", "Legend of Yamato", and "Don Quixote: Suppressor of Engines". (Thanks, Ryan!)

Joel Johnson

Predicting the Predictions: Sun's Starfire (1993)

"Starfire" was a concept video from Sun Microsystems, developed by a team led by noted interface engineer Bruce Tognazzini. It's full of telepresence, multitouch, and all sorts of other other interactivity that we basically have today. It's from 1993—but it was brought to my attention by PopSci's Stuart Fox, who noticed that it is remarkably similar to a "This is the future" video recently released by Microsoft. Except for the special effects and animation looking similar (as well as being free from the awkward narrative of Starfire), it's really not remarkably different.

What struck me was how much that it's mostly showing off the future of interface. Interesting enough, but it seems to me that the interesting part of how we interact with gadgets in the future will be more than just multitouch and transparent devices, but will be the subsumption of interface directly into our bodies and environments. Still, I like both videos in their way—it's just that Microsoft's is much more immediately believable, as it projects a future that is nearly in reach.

Xeni Jardin

Lovely Steampunk-esque Science Teaching Instruments.

Boing Boing reader Theodore Gray wrote in to say,

Much as I hate the term steampunk, I love the style, and I notice a lot of it on boingboing, so I though you might appreciate this company, Teachspin.

I saw their booth at a trade show recently and their instruments are absolutely beautiful, exactly what you'd expect of 19th century fine machining and woodworking, except they are sophisticated modern devices like NMR machines, rubidium time oscillators, and torsion balances, and you can actually buy them. I particularly like the two earth field NMR machines, "Earth's Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance" and "Earth's Field NMR Gradient/Field Coil System." Here's the optical pump, and the torsion oscillator (which looks much better in person that in that photo.)

Joel Johnson

Buzludzha, the abandoned UFO amphitheater of Bulgaria

[Artificial Owl via MicroKhan]

Joel Johnson

Sanyo Ultrasonic Bath invites you to experience its spurting endometrial nozzles (1970)

Pink Tentacle collates snippets about the Sanyo Ultrasonic Bath, an egg-shaped prototype appliance shown at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, in which a bather sits inside and is cleaned, massaged, and dried in an "automated 15-minute process." Consider me fully willing to place this in my bathroom should Sanyo ever decide to produce this wet Orkian womb.

Joel Johnson

Steampunk Plasma bell jar sculpture by Lisa Snellings

David K. writes:

Lisa Snellings, who has done amazing artwork for years (including pieces for Neil Gaiman that have inspired a number of his short stories) has a great work of art on eBay right now, that is a Victorian steampunk scene with a plasma ball, done in the Victorian style complete with framing bell jar. Well worth checking out!It is indeed. $750 at the moment but for once seemingly worth the price. But if that's still too much for you grousers, you can buy similar real working vacuum bell jars for around $120, or ornamental ones for $45. Brain and plasma not included.

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Joel Johnson

iSteamPhone: iPhone exploded by 15th Century ingenuity, steam

From the people who sold you the "Exploded iPhone" schematic t-shirt comes this off-white remix, the "iSteamPhone", in which the iPhone is reimagined as some sort of anachronistic da Vinci invention.

$26 for the shirt; $16 for a poster, with shipping. (They're $20 and $10 if you can somehow make them materialize at your corner matter maker.)

John Brownlee

Retrofuturism finally gets it right: 1959's Roomba

That mechanical maid, scurrying across the floor like a hovering robot cockroach. That's a Roomba.

[via BotJunkie via Modern Mechanix]

Joel Johnson

Battlestar Galactica, Series 0, S1E1

(Thanks, Fitley!)

Rob Beschizza

Square traffic lights

It's about time someone responded to the inefficient spitefulness of round traffic lights.

The shape of traffic lights has barely changed since they were invented—there have always been three round lights: red, yellow and green. Initially, the sections were round simply because this allowed the spherical bulp inside light the glass evenly.

Today traffic lights use superbright light diodes that can be arranged in any way. And the sections are plastic, which also means any shape can be created.

Our idea is to produce square traffic lights. This can make the signals more easily noticeable and recognizable, with larger lit area for the same overall dimensions.

They're pitching the idea as a way for a city to distinguish itself without substantial extra cost.

Luxofor traffic lights design concept [Art Lebedev via DVICE]

Joel Johnson

Who couldn't love a hovering Pontiac?

Chris Thunig paints a world I want to live in. [via Concept Ships]

John Brownlee

UFO-like flying car for auction on eBay

Moller International is selling the mid-80s prototype of its UFO-like M200X on eBay, the first flying car to successfully be maneuvered and driven by a pilot with no formal training, and which has apparently completed over 200 successful manned and unmanned demonstrations since 1989.

And if that's not enough to get you to drop almost $19k (with reserve not met), check out this video of the M200X's famous 1989 test flight. Forget the car, I want to buy the rights to that song!

Moller 200X Auction [eBay via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators "Unnatural Selector" Ray-Blunderbuss

If your time-travelling hunting expeditions have netted you a fortune in apatosaurus ambergris, feel free to pick up one of these ornamental "Unnatural Selector Ray-Blunderbuses" from none other than Weta Workshop, New Zealand's most famous prop house. They're only making 50 — and the least expensive number edition is $4,500. Everything works...except the ray.

Unnatural Selector product page [WetaNZ.com via Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Power On Self Test: Nip and Tuck

John Brownlee

Gallery of vintage toy robots

Just in time for us all to slack off on a no-news Friday, Dark Roasted Blend posts a gallery of wonderfully vintage toy robots, repelete in their own wind up, spark spitting retro magnificence. And look at that robot Fido! What a fantastic design: slap some hover pads on his orange belly and a cybertronic brain in his tin cranium and this is my vote for dog of the future, yes sir.

Toy Robots to Have and to Hold [Dark Roasted Blend]

John Brownlee

Russian steampunk ("stimpank!") mouse

Fished from the bottom of a plastic tub of peripherals, a crappy Genius brand mouse is converted to brassy steampunk objet d'art by Russian modders. Don't look for ergonomics here: that mouse would only rest comfortably in the coppery pincer of Tock. Extra points for this picture of a malevolently brooding cat and the forum thread title: "Stimpank mouse = traffic!"

Steampunk Mouse [Modding.ru via MAKE]

John Brownlee

Official Fallout 3 trailer

Crunchgear was kind enough to post up the official E3 trailer for Bethesda Software's upcoming retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic sequel, Fallout 3. The opening live-action, 50s-style educational film strip is just a bit too wink-wink for its own good (if Fallout 1 showed us anything, it is that there is great emotional punch to playing the tropes of the era straight), but the end portions show the open-world Mad Max game I've waited my whole life to play.

Joel Johnson

Glass rayguns by Jeff Burnette

Jeff Burnette has been blowing glass for thirty years, including these awesome glass rayguns. I suspect many glass blowers get frustrated when people make cracks about their artwork being used as drug delivery tools, but really: these should be pipes for smoking spacey drugs.

No pricing information is provided on Jeff's site but I'm sure he'd be happy to give you a quote if you contact him directly.

Project page [JoeBlowGlassworks.com]

Joel Johnson

Exclusive: One-of-a-kind official Blade Runner "Spinner" car from LEGO

Today BBtv and I headed to the house of artist, designer, and futurist Syd Mead, who graciously let us sit around for a couple of hours and talk about, gosh, everything. It was without a doubt one of the most fantastic days of my life, bouncing ideas and picking the brain about car design, utopianism, and Hollywood. We shot enough video we could cut multiple BBtv episodes (and maybe we will!) but I thought I'd give you guys a little something to tide you over.

So here you go: A one-of-a-kind official LEGO version of Mead's "Spinner" flying car from Blade Runner, presented to Syd by LEGO when he attended a design summit in Billund. Syd let me pick it up and swoop it around my head like a child.

I have the best job ever.

Thanks again to Xeni, Dana, and Derek (Team BBtv!) for setting up the whole thing. I owe you big.

Two more pictures after the jump.

READ THE REST

John Brownlee

Vintage Flash Gordon strip shills Union Carbide products

According to this vintage Flash Gordon strip by Alex Raymond, Union Carbide's chemical and plastic empire had already spread its sticky polymer tentacles as far as the planet Mongo by 1936. "We sure could use some rocket carloads of BAKELITE polyethylene in Frigia, Flash," Ronal casually remarks to the shirtless beefcake during an exciting escape from a patrol of murderous alien giants. An ironic wish, considering the fact that Union Carbide was eventually to be forced off of Mongo after what is commonly referred to as the Frigian Catastrophe, a thermonuclear explosion of BAKELITE brand rocket car fuel that was, in itself, a dire foreshadowing of Earth's own 1984 Bhopal Disaster.

Product Placement, Flash Style [Core77, strip via io9]