Make: Online: Made On Earth Archives

Archive: Made On Earth

July 1, 2009

Lost Knowledge: Timbrel vaulting

The twice-monthly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those just slightly off to the side). Every other Wednesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" was also the theme of MAKE, Volume 17

This week, we look at the largely-lost Medieval art of timbrel vaulting structures and the related, more modern (late 19th century) system of interlocking terracotta tiles which create what are known as Guastavino domes, after their inventor, Rafael Guastavino.

Low-Tech magazine has an excellent introduction to timbrel vaulting and Guastavino domes, called "Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault." Here's an excerpt:

The method of timbrel vaulting was developed in the 14th century around the Mediterranean, although its precise origins are unknown. The timbrel vault is also known as a "masonry vault", "Catalan vault", "tiled vault", "laminated vault", "flat vault" and "layered vault" (derived from Spanish, French, Italian and Catalonian descriptions).

A roof of tiles

Timbrel vaulting differs substantially from the Roman method of arch building, which relies on gravity. A Roman vault consists of a single layer of thick, wedge-shaped stones (see below).

The timbrel vault does not rely on gravity but on the adhesion of several layers of overlapping tiles which are woven together with fast-setting mortar. If just one layer of thin tiles was used, the structure would collapse, but adding two or three layers makes the resulting laminated shell almost as strong as reinforced concrete.

The result defies common sense, because a timbrel vault is very thin compared to a Roman vault, while at the same time it is capable of bearing much higher loads. This of course enables wider spans and gentler curves.

Read full story

June 29, 2009

Scottish rotary boat lift - The Falkirk Wheel

This amazing machine transfers boats between the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals of central Scotland, which are some 80 feet apart vertically. It was opened in 2002. Gareth wrote last year about artist Andy Scott's proposal to install a pair of titanic mythical sea-horse heads as part of the lock mechanism below the wheel. Via Neatorama.

June 17, 2009

MADE ON EARTH: Real-Life Concept Cars

MOE_conceptcars

Photograph by Sally Myers

Like many people of his generation, Baron Margo was dazzled by the futuristic concept cars Detroit trotted out year after year. And, like many people, he was disappointed that those streamlined vehicles remained unobtainable concepts to the average motorist. But unlike many people, Margo did something about it. He, as he describes it, "stepped up."

He started to build his own cars. Cars that appear to come from a parallel world, one where you debate whether to vacation on the beaches of Venus or go skiing at Olympus Mons on Mars.

I first saw one of Margo's rocket cars parked at a local diner, a gleaming silver torpedo wedged between unremarkable Corollas and SUVs. Closer inspection showed the work of an incredible craftsman: the sleek aluminum surface was covered with metallic detail, bristling with rivets, lights, and a massive faux jet exhaust with a rotating outer rim.

The three-wheeler uses recognizable parts -- a modified front suspension from a VW Beetle, a motorcycle engine -- in clever reworkings of proven designs, a practical approach that makes Margo's vehicles not just beautiful to look at, but also legally roadworthy.

But these quite noticeable cars are just the surface. Margo's home is a treasure trove of robots, rockets, and intricate machines, made primarily from found scrap, aerospace salvage, and construction remnants from the Glendale Galleria. Standing in one place, you can see a brass-and-steel train, an old Crosley auto, a gigantic robotic dragonfly, a family of upright robots and their android dog, and so much more. It's dizzying, inspirational, and humbling.

Margo is a reserved man, and while he's sold some works to the rich and famous and to the movies (rayguns for the Men In Black series), Margo does what he does simply because he loves it.

Margo is a wildly creative man, a dreamer who manages to actually make things real, thanks to a strong sense of the pragmatic, as seen in the two pieces of advice he gave me: "Take the easiest path" and "Don't burn yourself." Sage advice for every maker.

>> Baron Margo's Cars and More: baronmargo.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 12, page 18 - Jason Torchinsky.

June 15, 2009

Rock Art

"By the end of the 20th century and the millennium (1997), a new ecological and interactive art expression came into being which, combining elements and materials whose colors are 100% natural, exalts nature... Rock Art."

This is how Mario Balderas (Mexico) presents the beautiful and original art work he creates.

I am talking mainly of terracotta pots fired at high temperatures, with different kinds of cacti or crassulas and original designs made with sand, clay, earth, and semi-precious stones - the colors of which are all 100% natural - sealed with natural, transparent, and permeable resin. Besides the materials mentioned before, river stones, seeds, seashells, wood, and other materials are used as well.

These are semi-precious stones hand-ground with a hammer and sifted. All colors are natural.

Why Rock Art? It could be mixed up with what we commonly know as rock art - prehistoric drawings found on rocks or caves. But, in the case of these pots, the name is used in the sense that they are made with materials that have existed on this Earth perhaps for thousands of years, like sedimentary metamorphic stones which Mario collects in places that go from Valsequillo to the fossil desert of Tehuacan. Likewise, as in prehistoric times, the designs are an expression of the surroundings, of nature, and an example of how materials of all types found in nature are used to make a handicraft of infinite creative possibilities. It is a sensory work, of sensitivity more than technique.

The idea of making these pots emerged from Mario's interest and liking for cacti, which he acquires in specialized nurseries in Tlaxcalancingo and Tenango de las Flores, in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, near Huauchinango. (It is important to emphasize that, as a sign of respect towards our planet and nature, all the cacti that Mario uses are grown in nurseries and bought; not one of them is plundered.) Designing came later, little by little and as the result of a trial-error process, since Mario never studied anything that had to do with design, drawing or painting (he's a psychologist). It was an ability that he discovered having and that he developed and perfected with time, because "practice makes perfect".

Making these pots - or the gardens or the stones or the pictures - is a complete step-by-step process that goes from traveling to the places where the materials are, getting the pots made, sanding them down, painting them, planting the cactus, making and sealing the design, and finally selling them.

Pots with planted cactus and prepared "bed" drying in the sun to make the design on top afterwards.

Mario also builds these carriers to transport the pots.

This work has become Mario's life philosophy, a way of becoming aware and realizing his surroundings, of using his intellect, intuition, and common sense to make something that requires patience and all the creativity he's capable of, because each pot has a unique design that is not copied from anywhere or anybody else and is created one by one by the skillful hands of Mario, my father.

-Elena Balderas from Make: en Español

May 26, 2009

Helping to support Maker Faire Africa

As we've mentioned here before, Maker Faire Africa is an unofficial Maker Faire (that we've given our blessing to). It's taking place on August 13-15 at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Accra, Ghana. Our pals over at Afrigadget and Afromusing are trying to get people to spread the word on the event and they're looking for donations to help make it happen. Check it out and support however you can.

Support Maker Faire Africa

May 16, 2009

Homemade massage chair looks way scifi

Beijing retiree Lin Shuseng wanted to help his wife find relief from joint pain - so he built her this amazing massage chair completely from found scrap. The project apparently took about eight years to complete, but judging from the look on his face it seems it was worth it. (that is an expression of relief/comfort … right?) [via Ananova]

April 29, 2009

Cheap, efficient LED lighting in West Africa

Matt Berg, of BuildAfrica.org, put together a photo montage (PDF) on the increasing use of super-cheap Chinese LED lighting in Mali, in West Africa. The middle picture is of a street-corner cell phone charging station. It costs about .25 to get your phone charged.

That last picture is basically of a motorbike filling station (with the fuel inside of recycled bottles). The little 36-lamp LED light on the left is the station's nighttime lighting. The light costs around US$4.75 and can be powered for a week to a month of 4 D-cell batteries.

LED Lights and 12V Cell Phone Charging Mali [via AfriGadget]

April 27, 2009

Knife wire inlay tutorial

In this tutorial, bladesmith Ben Potter shows how he inlays a Celto-Norse design in non-ferrous metals into a steel blade. You can see one of the tutorials of him making one of his incredible blades and hilt here.

Celto-Norse Wire Inlay Tutorial [Sent by MAKE subscriber David DelaGardelle. Thanks, David!]

More:
HOW TO - Make a machete from a leaf spring

April 24, 2009

HOW TO - Make a machete from a leaf spring

MAKE subscriber FrankG sent us this nice, sort of mesmerizing, video tutorial on turning an old truck leaf spring into a basic, but effective machete. Kind of a long and involved process, but I can only imagine how gratifying it would be to forge/machine your own tools and then use them on a regular basis.

Theworkshop.ca

April 21, 2009

Announcing Make: en Español

As part of our ongoing Pinky and the Brain-worthy plot to take over the world, or in our case, make over the world, we're thrilled to announce Make: en Español, a version of Make: Online for the Spanish-speaking world.

Welcome to the Maker Media family editor Mauricio Gómez and his staff of writers. We look forward to seeing what great projects and participation we get from makers in Mexico, Central and South America, Spain, and the entire Spanish-speaking world. ¡Hola!

Here's a message to MAKE readers from Mauricio:

Me complace darles la bienvenida a Make: en Español. Mis amigos y yo hemos trabajado arduamente para llegar a este día, para realizar nuestro sueño. Creemos que, siendo el español uno de los idiomas más hablados en el mundo, se puede lograr con este proyecto divulgar toda esta fuente de información que representa Make a cientos de personas que están interesadas en encontrar proyectos que enriquezcan su conocimiento, aprendizaje y sobre todo entretenimiento. Desgraciadamente, hoy en día y para muchos, el idioma aún sigue siendo una limitante para obtener y compartir información que se puede encontrar fácilmente en la red. Es por esto que en Make: en Español, estamos dispuestos en apoyar y motivar a todos los Makers de todas las edades de Latino América y España para que compartan con la comunidad sus proyectos y trabajos. Todos en el equipo en español nos sentimos muy contentos en formar parte de Make.

Muchas gracias a todos y bienvenidos.

Make: en Español

April 1, 2009

Lights made from water bottles

Talk about your village ingenuity. (And yes, clearly, it's only for indoor lighting during the day).

Use a 2-Liter Bottle as a 50 Watt Light Bulb lightbulb hack

March 31, 2009

Lost Knowledge: Island tricks

The weekly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly off to the side). Each Tuesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" is also the theme of the current issue of MAKE, Volume 17 (on newsstands now)

In this installment of Lost Knowledge, we tap into the "slightly off to the side" and "street tech" aspects of our brief. The current issue of MAKE's "Heirloom Technology" column, by Tim Anderson, has a bunch of nifty tips and tricks Tim's picked up on his Pacific island travels, from tool tips to how to drink a coconut to how to make a chair out of an old surfboard. He gave us so many, in fact, we didn't have room for them all in the issue. Here are the rest of them.

Coconut Milk: Blender Style

Coconut juice or coconut water is a clear liquid that comes as-is out of a coconut. Coconut milk is different. You make it from shredded coconut meat.

Here's how to do it with a blender:

If raw coconut bothers you, cook the meat first in a microwave for a couple minutes. The flavor is slightly different and the protein may be easier to digest.
Cut the meat up into chunks your blender can handle.
Put the meat in the blender.
Cover it with enough water for your blender to be happy. If you saved the coconut juice, use that. But you probably drank that right away while fighting with the nut. It's like nature's Gatorade, only better.
DIGRESSION: Coconut juice has got all the electrolytes you need in the tropical places where coconuts grow. It's also sterile, if it's from a picked coconut. They used it in World War II as IV fluid for soldiers who were wounded, or sick from the wet kind of tropical diseases (so I've been told, anyway). A coconut on the ground is probably sterile also, but some of them crack and go sour after they hit the ground.
Blend it up. If the whole pitcher isn't churning, stop and pulse the blades or add more water. When it stops getting thicker, you're done.
Pour it into a piece of cloth. I used a pair of boxer shorts. Of course mine are always cleaner than the Pope's CPU factory in outer space.
Squeeze out the ambrosia. They call it milk but it's a lot like cream. Use it for cooking or making umbrella drinks. The mix of fats goes well with the deepwater fish you speared under that navigation buoy with your giant spear gun.
What you have left is dry, shredded coconut meat. Mix it with some eggs and fry it. It'll fluff up like a pancake and be really satisfying to eat. Just the thing for when you're done surfing, or on your way to go surfing.

Pickup Bed Passengers and Hitchhiking

You see lots of people riding in the beds of pickup trucks in Hawaii. It's apparently legal. This pickup has some cushions installed semi-permanently just for that purpose. In contrast, in the "birthplace of freedom" you're not allowed to do that (the weather isn't as good there either).

Here on Maui I've seen many hitchhikers. I've been one myself and picked up others. On the mainland, one party is expected to kidnap and/or murder the other. Here the customs are different; it's just a way to get from one place to another or help someone else do that. A pickup truck is good for picking up hitchhikers, if you don't mind the different customs in a place that's officially the same country.

Instant Convertible Top

This Miata roadster in Kahului has no top. No problem. Just open up your beach umbrella when you park the car. When you're driving, of course you want the top down, so put the umbrella away so it doesn't turn into a Christo-style wind-powered javelin of death.

Ripe Pineapple Test

To find out whether a pineapple is ripe, smell it. It will smell just like it will taste.

To plant a pineapple, twist the top off and put it in a glass of water in a sunny place. After it grows roots, plant it in dirt and keep it watered. In a couple of years it will grow one or more new pineapples!

Potty Pot

Here's a flowerpot made from a toilet. I guess that makes it a potty pot. (If you planted a pot plant in it, then it would be a potty pot pot.) Seen outside the Ding King shop in Kahului. Made by Euroman?

Spare Blade for Jigsaw

My pal's jigsaw has a spare blade taped to the handle. It's still in the original packaging, so when you break it and replace it with the spare, you have the label to buy the right replacement. This Island Trick would work even on the mainland, but here I am, so here it goes.

Cut Cake with Wet Knife

Actually an ancient German trick, but Germans appreciate good climate, too. Cut a cake with a wet knife to keep it from sticking to the knife. Demonstrated by Stephanie Simpson.

More:

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene -- makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

March 18, 2009

The forgotten Zeppelin knot

In response to Chris' Val ties the canoe piece, one of our readers, Dave, wrote:

Zeppelin knot

I bought a used Mother Earth News magazine just because of the article on a knot that it had inside. It is a GREAT knot for tying two lines together. The history makes it interesting. Here is the web link to the same article.

The Forgotten Zeppelin Knot

More:
HOW TO - Tie the 10 most useful knots

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

March 13, 2009

Meteotek high-altitude balloon project

Meteotek is a Spanish high school project to build a meteorological sounding balloon equipped with temperature and pressure sensors, GPS, radio, and a still camera. They had a successful launched on February 28, 2009. Their Flickr pages are in (Catalan) Spanish, but the photos speak for themselves. It's just endlessly amazing to me that the technology now exists for amateurs, high school kids even, to be able to reach into space. Check out that back seat space command center!

Meteotek 08

March 3, 2009

Lost Knowledge: The Antikythera Device

In this week's column, we look at the Antikythera mechanism, the over 2,000 year old "computer" found off the coast of a Greek island at the turn on the 20th century. In Volume 17 of MAKE, it is extraordinarily fitting that Bruce Sterling should write about this ancient mechanical computer in his "Hands On" column. It was Bruce, and fellow cyberpunk sci-fi godfather William Gibson, who fully pressurized the boilers on the steampunk movement with the publication of their 1990 book The Difference Engine. It provided the conceptual yeast which gave rise to the steampunk literary genre, and by extension, the steampunk makers movement. The idea was this: What would have happened to the future if British mathematician Charles Babbage had been successful in building his analytical engine, and the computer revolution had arrived a hundred years earlier?

So, now imagine if the Antikythera Device had been a common appliance of the time around 100 B.C. (assuming that it wasn't), and the computer revolution had arrived several thousand years earlier. Here's the beginning of Bruce's column:

Hands On: The Kosmos in a Box
Bruce Sterling

We call it the Antikythera Device, or sometimes "the world's oldest computer." That's not what the machine's maker called his box. He would never have wanted it lost in a Roman shipwreck, near the obscure, rocky island of Antikythera.

If that maker saw his high-tech gizmo now, boy, what a comedown. It sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean under a tonnage of pottery, statues, and furniture. It was smashed to pieces. Its stout wooden frame flaked away like wet paper. It was also severely corroded. Fossil dinosaurs have been found in better shape.

Once, there was room to claim that modern ideas about this machine's complex functions might be far-fetched. However, in 2005 the machine's fragments were digitally CAT-scanned, revealing that the Greek maker carved specific instructions inside.
Those scales and labels eliminate any doubt: we've got a crank-driven, precisely geared bronze orrery.

The Antikythera Device predicts the position of the sun and the phases of the moon, and it probably tracks all five visible planets. It also predicts eclipses, and, as a final throw-in bloatware feature, it will tell you whenever the Greek Olympic games occur. All this in a single mechanism from 85 B.C., or very near it.

To understand the huge extent of the lost knowledge here, we need to grasp what this lost object once meant -- not to us who found it, because for us it's mind-blowing -- but within the context of its own time and place. All we've got is a few hints. We'll have to blue-sky it a little.

Bruce goes on to weave a fun speculative tale of a student from the Rhodes Academy who's built this device as his graduate project. It's a "pocket universe from a university," it encodes the students education, the box *is* "his working diploma, a physical proof of the
ordeal he had been through."

Read the rest of the piece in MAKE Volume 17. If you're already a subscriber, but haven't received your issue yet, you can read the Digital Edition here.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the Device. Here's an excerpt, on the function of the mechanism:

Function

The device is remarkable for the level of miniaturization and for the complexity of its parts, which is comparable to that of 18th century clocks. It has over 30 gears, although Michael Wright (see below) has suggested as many as 72 gears, with teeth formed through equilateral triangles. When a date was entered via a crank (now lost), the mechanism calculated the position of the Sun, Moon, or other astronomical information such as the location of other planets. Since the purpose was to position astronomical bodies with respect to the celestial sphere, with reference to the observer's position on the surface of the earth, the device was based on the geocentric model.^[10]

The mechanism has three main dials, one on the front, and two on the back. The front dial has two concentric scales. The outer ring is marked off with the days of the 365-day Egyptian calendar, or the Sothic year, based on the Sothic cycle. Inside this, there is a second dial marked with the Greek signs of the Zodiac and divided into degrees. The calendar dial can be moved to compensate for the effect of the extra quarter day in the year (there are 365.2422 days per year) by turning the scale backwards one day every four years. Note that the Julian calendar, the first calendar of the region to contain leap years, was not introduced until about 46 BC, up to a century after the device was said to have been built (and the leap year was implemented with errors until the early first century).

The front dial probably carried at least three hands, one showing the date, and two others showing the positions of the Sun and the Moon. The Moon indicator is adjusted to show the first anomaly of the Moon's orbit. It is reasonable to suppose the Sun indicator had a similar adjustment, but any gearing for this mechanism (if it existed) has been lost. The front dial also includes a second mechanism with a spherical model of the Moon that displays the lunar phase.

There is reference in the inscriptions for the planets Mars and Venus, and it would have certainly been within the capabilities of the maker of this mechanism to include gearing to show their positions. There is some speculation that the mechanism may have had indicators for all the five planets known to the Greeks. None of the gearing for such planetary mechanisms survives, except for one gear otherwise unaccounted for.

Finally, the front dial includes a parapegma, a precursor to the modern day Almanac, which was used to mark the rising and setting of specific stars. Each star is thought to be identified by Greek characters which cross reference details inscribed on the mechanism.

The upper back dial is in the form of a spiral, with 47 divisions per turn, displaying the 235 months of the 19 year Metonic cycle. This cycle is important in fixing calendars.

The lower back dial is also in the form of a spiral, with 225 divisions showing the Saros cycle; it also has a smaller subsidiary dial which displays the 54 year "Triple Saros" or "Exeligmos" cycle. (The Saros cycle, discovered by the Chaldeans, is a period of approximately 18 years 11 days 8 hours -- the length of time between occurrences of a particular eclipse.)

The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, with experts from Britain, Greece and the United States, detected in July 2008 the word "Olympia" on a bronze dial thought to display the 76 year Callippic cycle, as well as the names of other games in ancient Greece, and probably used to track dates of the ancient Olympic games. According to BBC news:

"The four sectors of the dial are inscribed with a year number and two Panhellenic Games: the 'crown' games of Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea, and Pythia; and two lesser games: Naa (held at Dodona) and a second game which has not yet been deciphered."

Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets
I just got my review copy of this book and am very excited to read it. Here's the blurb from the book's companion site:

In 1900 a group of sponge divers blown off course in the Mediterranean discovered an Ancient Greek shipwreck dating from around 70 BC.

Lying unnoticed for months amongst their hard-won haul was what appeared to be a formless lump of corroded rock. It turned out to be the most stunning scientific artefact we have from antiquity. For more than a century this 'Antikythera mechanism' puzzled academics. It was ancient clockwork, unmatched in complexity for 1000 years - but who could have made it, and what was it for? Now, more than 2000 years after the device was lost at sea, scientists have pieced together its intricate workings and revealed its secrets.

In Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant tells the full story of the 100-year quest to understand this ancient computer. Along the way she unearths a diverse cast of remarkable characters - ranging from Archimedes to Jacques Cousteau - and explores the deep roots of modern technology not only in ancient Greece but in the Islamic world and medieval Europe too. At heart an epic adventure story, this is a book that challenges our assumptions about technology transfer over the ages while giving us fresh insights into history itself.

The site offers some brief tidbits from each chapter:

Chapter 7: Mechanic's Workshop
October comes and Wright arrives in Athens with his finished model, grimly triumphant as his competitors complete their imaging. On the day of his talk he demonstrates the workings of his device to a small but captivated audience. He turns the handle on the side like a magician and there's a hush as time passes before everyone's eyes, just a soft clicking sound as the Moon traces undulating circles through a miniature sky, cycling from black to silver as the golden Sun glides slowly round and the planets meander back and forth, their seemingly random paths guided by a hidden clockwork order. Wright sees three decades of his life passing as the heavenly cycles run their course, from the young curator who was once captivated by Price's work and wished it were his own, to the man he is now, standing here with the Antikythera mechanism finally recreated and working again for the first time in 2,000 years.

Chapter 8: The New Boys

There was silence. The surface images from Tom Malzbender's team had been stunning, but everyone knew that for the project to be a success they needed to see inside; they needed to see the internal workings. Andrew Ramsey tapped his computer keyboard to scroll down through the depth of the fragment. At first all they could see was a blur, but then a crackling sharp gearwheel emerged from the fuzz, as if being hauled up out of grey sand. It was better than any of them had dared hope. The letters 'ME' had been scratched into the side of the wheel. It was like a signal from the past, an 'I WOZ ERE' from 2,000 years ago. Suddenly, they felt a direct, almost physical conncection with this ancient machine, and with whoever had carved those letters so long ago. Then Tony Freeth started to laugh. 'Somebody email Mike and tell him we've found a gearwheel with his initials on!

For up-to-date news and research findings related to the Antikythera Device, check out the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. For instance, they have a piece on a recent article in the journal Nature about new findings that suggest Corinth (or a Corinthian colony) as the possible place of origin of the Device:

The research team has also deciphered all the months on the Mechanism's 19-year calendar, revealing month names that are of Corinthian origin, probably from a Corinthian colony of the western Hellenic world - overturning the previous idea that the Mechanism was from the eastern part of the Mediterranean. For the first time we have direct evidence of its cultural origins.

Additional research has also transformed our understanding of the Mechanism's sophisticated eclipse prediction dials. These results have extended the previous work of the AMRP on the complex structure of the Mechanism's gears and dials and have added new and intriguing cultural and social dimensions.

More:

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

February 12, 2009

Guitar amp storefront

Woah, check out this storefront in Southampton in the UK, it's dressed up like a guitar amp, and the illusion is particularly convincing when the place is closed with the grate down. Also, the knobs go to 11. Via Buzzfeed.

January 30, 2009

Eco-Gym

MOE_ecogym
The modern gymnasium is very much a 19th- century creation, no matter how much the fitness freak is kitted out with bad hair, retro headbands, and spandex, or contemporary embedded LCD interfaces and computer-generated body plans. Gyms harken back to a world of classical mechanical physics, plugged into equations of work and energy.

To the strains of Olivia Newton-John's aerobics anthem, the puritan work ethic is transformed into a sweatshop for the body beautiful. The slick machines, treadmills, and cross trainers merely serve to disguise antique apparatuses more at home in a world of steam engines, and to stifle enquiry into thermodynamics and economy.

Then there's artisan Manuel de Arriba Ares. Under the sign of his "eco-gym," Gimnasio Ecológico Lumen, Arriba has turned the demon of entropy on its head. Making use of the very waste and byproducts of the modern entropic economy, Arriba has created a truly practical monument in the form of a supremely low-tech gymnasium. Its fitness machines, created with a good deal of physical effort over three years from raw and junked materials such as wood, rope, and rubber, directly mirror both the design and functionality of those found within its wasteful counterpart.

Located in the small town of Valdespino de Somoza in the north of Spain, Arriba offers free access for all to this functional work of Art Brut, a wonderful Heath Robinsonesque assemblage constructed from remnants of strollers, boats, bicycles, and automobiles salvaged from neighboring dumps.

Helpful signs, painted on the tarnished white remnants of refrigerators, instruct the would-be eco-gymnast on exercises and operation of the intricate machinery, reflecting Arriba's knowledge and experience over many years as a physical education teacher.

Lumen is a "gymnasium that was born of the nature, (and which) will return to her," Arriba philosophizes. The cycle of waste, embodied by so many aspects of the smogged-out city gym, is closed.

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 12, page 17 - Martin Howse.

January 29, 2009

Ball Pendulum

eklux writes -

This video shows a self oscillating ball pendulum, that feeds a ten counter balance. If I've had enough time, Meccano and balls, the idea was to built a complete clock, with a set of sequential balances, that together would display the current time. Also, it would have been nice to fall a sleep at night to the gentle sound of a ticking ballclock.

January 28, 2009

Blue Spark

MOE_spark

"A custom-made life is better than a Wal-Mart world," says Sean Barrow. Tall, dark, and tattooed, Barrow looks more like a rock star than the avid eco-design aficionado he is.

His post-apocalyptic appearance at first glance seems at odds with the elegant, minimal, Japa-nese-inspired aesthetic he studies and employs in his sustainable furniture making. But both display his practical approach to 21st-century salvage: to reveal rare beauty and utility from former chaos.

Case in point: the sleek Electron Monument, a bewitching handmade side table that hides an array of outlets for electronic devices and their chargers. "'Charging station' sounds so unsexy -- hence the name," laughs Barrow, who installed six outlets, capable of handling power blisters as well as standard plugs, in the table's inside base.

Sitting high on salvaged metal legs, the box is made from spalted pin oak that Barrow snagged from a dying tree (which creates the zigzagged black segments in the wood grain), and held together by wooden finger joints. The removable top is reclaimed and sanded zebrawood and rosewood, with sides angled in at 13 degrees (a favorite angle he uses in much of his furniture), finished with nontoxic Osmo oil.

The most compelling feature of the Monument is the hypnotic, softly glowing cobalt light in the front of the box, with machined metal pieces added to create an abstract power-outlet motif. Using almost no energy, it is illuminated with an LED plucked from an old night light.

The combination of traditional Asian design, sustainable resources, and the sci-fi hieroglyph glowing from within the Electron Monument make it a perfect example of Barrow's work, and one of the coolest ways to hide your electronic clutter.

Sean Barrow: skrewgun.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 8, page 24 - Kirsten Anderson.

January 25, 2009

Time Is on Your (Garage's) Side

MOE_garagetime
If you're driving through the rural town of Panama, N. Y., and forgot to wear a watch, you're in luck. Engineer John Miktuk used scrap LEDs and a GPS to assemble a giant clock on the side of his garage.

The timekeeper began as a sign of self-appreciation. Miktuk had a bunch of red LEDs and resistors laying around, scraps from the auto industry, so he drilled holes through the galvanized steel cladding of his four-car garage, plugged them with the lights, built the necessary circuits, and flipped the switch to reveal his surname in glowing letters along a 30-foot wall facing the road.

When it dawned on him that he had plenty of room and materials to add another line of text, Miktuk decided to display something more useful: the time. He circuited together another round of LED-resistor series and connected these to a microcontroller, programmed to ferry information from a GPS unit to the LEDs.

Miktuk mounted a GPS unit 20 feet above the ground and linked it to the microcontroller via a long serial cable. The cable transmits the GPS unit's time and location (calculated from a satellite signal) down the line to the microcontroller, which then directs the appropriate LEDs to turn on. The chip's software even calculates local time from the GPS unit's UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) reading and corrects for daylight saving.

Now anyone with an inkling can build their own LED-GPS clock. In July, Miktuk released "GPS Time on YOUR Garage," a kit for sale on his website for around $300. Although the garage clock is plugged into his home utilities, Miktuk estimates that the entire array (now shining bright green) costs him just $25 a year to power -- and it's been running for four years and ticking.

When asked what motivated him to build the clock, he says, "Nothing compares to the sense of accomplishment when a DIY project is finished and working. Except the thrill of the next one. And the next one ..."

oldvan.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 7, page 25 - Megan Mansell Williams.