Tag: Wayback Machine - Page 4
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Delirious Pneu York: When The Subway Ran On Compressed Air
Jennifer Ouellette writes in io9 a post about pneumatic tube transport systems, strangely calling it A brief history of the pneumatic tube transport systems that never were and immediately showing images of a system in New York that actually
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Clever Folding Garage Saves Space, Improves Streetscapes
Modern Mechanix shows an interesting idea for saving space; after all, why take up all that room in a house for a garage when the car is gone so much of the time? Why make every facade of every house in America a blank wall of a garage door, when you
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Keep Cool Without Air Conditioning With Your Private Elevator Tower
We are always looking for ways to live without air conditioning, but here is one we missed, courtesy of modern mechanix.
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The History of the Bathroom Part 3: Putting Plumbing Before People
The really amazing thing about this standard "bathroom" from 1915, ninety-seven years ago, is how much it looks like the standard bathrooms of today. How did it get this way, and how did we get stuck
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The History of the Bathroom Part 1: Before the Flush
Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables that "the history of men is reflected in the history of sewers."... The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else. "
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Plywood Designs from '60s Have Lessons For Today
BoingBoing points to a 1960 publication from the Douglas Fir Plywood Association, Second Homes for Leisure Living, calling it " a rather glorious bit of propaganda for super-modernist plywood living." But it is a lot more than that. It is another
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A Brief History of the Kitchen From Core77
We recently did a very brief history of the fitted kitchen inIs It Time To Rethink the Built-In Kitchen?. For those who want a bit more information, Core77 has produced six parts of a history of the kitchen, starting with the work of Catharine Beecher
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The Revolator Could Have Been Revolutionary
We know that increasing density and going vertical can be a good way to go green, but how do you entice people off the ground floor? Modern Mechanix recently showed an interesting idea: The Revolator, a different kind of elevator for vertical shopping
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David Orr on Framing Sustainability: What Would Lincoln Say?
While reading up on David Orr for my recent interview of him, I came across an interesting essay entitled "Framing Sustainability" that is suitable reading for Memorial Day, which began as a ritual of remembrance after the Civil War. Orr writes:
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Transformer Furniture From The 18th Century: The Bachelor's Chair
It would never quite fit aesthetically into Graham Hill's LifeEdited, but Core77 shows this "Bachelor's Chair" that cleverly transforms from a chair to a stepladder to an ironing board. They note that "It's weird to think there was
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Locomotive Ran on Compressed Air at 125 MPH- Or Did It?
Mike once askedIs There a Future for Compressed Air Cars? Now, in this era of the rebirth of our railways, we might ask, "Is there a future for compressed air locomotives?"
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Post Office (Remember It?) Releases Stamps Honouring Dead Designers Doing Dead Products
Just as I said when the Eames stamps came out a few years ago, when I mail my posts to Ben in the linotype department I am so going to use these new stamps honouring America's great designers of the streamline
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3D Fast Bus Is Taking A Long Time Coming- Like 40 Years
Six months ago Mike wrote about China's '3D Fast Bus' that Straddles the Road So Cars Can Drive Under. Now, Mike Elgan complains at the Raw Feed that it was all vaporware:
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A Picture Is Worth: Early Evidence of Peak Oil
Some say we are hitting peak oil about now; Rick Prelinger sent this evidence of peak oil in 1963 to the Atlantic Monthly. I don't think it is real, though; who spells Lloyd with one L?
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Einstein Invented A Fridge That Runs On Heat, Had No Moving Parts
TreeHugger has published a lot of posts about absorption refrigerators; they are common in off-grid situations and because they run on heat, they are possibly key to the holy grail of solar powered air conditioning. Jennifer
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We Call It Transformer Furniture; Lester Walker Called It "Turniture"
While looking for LifeEdited ideas in the July 1969 issue of Popular Science, what should pop up but this amazing bit of "turniture"- it is a bed, which turns into a small dining room table, a larger table for four, and even a discreet "tete-a-tete"
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Charles Waldheim's Brief History of Agrarian Urbanism
The politics and planning of our food system is a big topic these days, with urban farming being all the rage. In Design Observer, Charles Waldheim, Chair of the Department of
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Better Than Vacuum Elevators: The Balloon Elevator
Philip Proefrock at Inhabitat discovers vacuum elevators, a slow but energy-efficient way of building an elevator that will rise one atmosphere, or about 33 feet. He notes that they have no nasty hydraulic fluids like conventional elevators, (although
