Tag: HISTORY

Japan has been at the forefront of automotive design for quite some time. As if that point needed to be reinforced, Pink Tentacle has collected photos of Japanese concept cars dating back to 1957 that make even modern models out of Detroit look retro. Sure, some are completely impractical, but, if GM had ever made a car like the EX-III above, it probably wouldn't have needed bailing out. ...

This Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of German reunification. Not coincidentally, it also marks the release of a new shoot 'em up game called '1378 (km),' set along the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. Although the game's creator insists that '1378 (km)' has a very real educational value, that hasn't done much to quell the controversy in Germany, where the memories of East-West violence are ...

As gadgets progressively shrink in size and expand in function, reminiscing about vintage tech gear generally becomes a mocking and condescending exercise. Ridiculing the massive and relatively simple devices -- on the surface -- can be effortless, but, put in the proper context, cumbersome and clunky gadgets again appear revolutionary and inspiring. Wired is providing a retrospective glimpse at ...

The New York Times has a fun slideshow of educational tech spanning the past 140 years. (The only earlier entry was for a wooden paddle dated at 1650, but that seemed more punishing than edifying.) Recall those musty libraries with their filmstrip viewers, language lab headsets and Scantrons (recently reincarnated as New York voting machines) as you realize the iPad now falls into their ...

About a week ago, Jackie Kennedy, the wife of our 35th president, tweeted from beyond the grave -- sort of. According to the AP, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is re-releasing (to Twitter) a series of newspaper columns written by Jackie during the 1960 presidential campaign. Fifty years ago, Jackie was pregnant with John, Jr., and couldn't join her husband, John, on the campaign trail. ...

Though Mario made video game appearances before the launch of 'Super Mario Bros.,' it was the 1985 platforming classic, launched 25 years ago today, that pushed everyone's favorite plumber to the spotlight. The Mario universe spawned countless sequels, an instantly recognizable soundtrack, cartoons and one of the worst video game movies of all time. Happy 25th, Mario! Don't miss the Nintendo recap ...

James Bridle has compiled the editing history of the Iraq War Wikipedia entry from December 2004 and November 2009 into a twelve-volume collection "the size of a single old-style encyclopaedia." With relevant and irrelevant additions, defacements and debates, Bridle presents not the history of the war, but the way in which we remember it. "This is historiography. This is what culture actually ...

As good as we are at wrangling Google's Image Search to locate what we want, we've always found the selection of NASA photos lacking. Earlier today, photo-sharing site Flickr announced NASA's new photo contributions to the Commons project, ensuring that we'll be spending our afternoons crawling through snapshots, like that of the amazing delta-shaped HL-10 above. ...

If It Was My Home brought the tragedy of the BP oil spill to your backyard by laying an outline of the environmental disaster over a Google Map of your own neighborhood. Dimensions, an experiment created in partnership with the BBC, may have been conceived before the debut of the oil spill-specific site, but they use the same trick to put world and historical events into perspective. ...

Robots are adept at many things, among them pouring beer and giving us nightmares. But oft overlooked is their ability to squeeze into tight spaces. Leeds University and the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt will be relying on a tiny bot, equipped with a drill, a camera and some lights, to weasel its way into tiny shafts and through doors in the Great Pyramid of Giza to discover what secrets ...

Share A few days ago, Republican prizefighter Sarah Palin posted a Facebook note titled 'An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground.' In the statement, Palin railed against a proposal to build a new mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, comparing the proposed construction to a "stab in the heart" for many Americans. [Ed. Note: As New Yorkers who pass this daily, we'd like ...

As it's widely argued that the Internet has depersonalized and globalized human communication, it's easy to forget that the Web was invented by a person, and in a place. With that thought in mind, Web entrepreneur and Yelp co-founder David Galbraith decided to find out, once and for all, where and by whom the Internet was brought to life. Over the course of an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, who ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. Remember Hot Topic poster-boy VJFranzK, he of the receding-hairline devillock and Mantaray iTar? The mastermind behind one of YouTube's ugliest iPad peripherals ...

In our first installment of the history of technology in modern art, we examined the works that helped breed an art-making culture in which machines and electronics were either figured or utilized in the creative process. From just before Marcel Duchamp to Nam June Paik, modern art quite literally transformed from the centuries-old traditions of painting to complex and sometimes inscrutable modes ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. Jason Kottke uncovered a fascinating 1982 report from The Atlantic on the early days (and revelations) of personal computing. [From: The Atlantic via: Kottke] With ...