Make: Online: Retro Archives

Retro Archive: Retro

February 7, 2010

Warship camouflaged as tropical island

A commenter on my recent dazzle camouflage post alerted us to the fascinating story of the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen which, in 1942, escaped destruction by the Japanese fleet because the crew moored her among other small islands and covered her in a thick layer of tree branches, thereby disguising her as a small island. [Thanks, rekinom!]

February 6, 2010

Matt Cottam's talk on Heirloom Electronics at interaction10

Matt Cottam at interaction10

Matt Cottam, founder of Tellart, presented Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics at interaction10 yesterday. Here are my running notes on his discussions of sketching with tangible objects, physical interfaces to the iPhone, and heirloom technology.

February 5, 2010

Dazzle camouflage

Interesting article over on TwistedSifter about the use of so-called "dazzle" or "razzle-dazzle" camouflage beginning during WWI. (The Wikipedia article is pretty good, too.) It's a kind of practical op-art: The idea was not so much to make the ship invisible against the background, but to confuse enemy weapons operators as to its distance and heading. The Rhode Island School of Design has a wonderful online collection of various paper plans for dazzle camouflage schemes donated by Maurice L. Freedman, who was district camoufleur for the 4th district of the U.S. Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation, and would go on to invent the board game "Battleship." [via Dude Craft]

February 2, 2010

More tiny trailers

In response to my posting about the teardrop trailer, several people pointed us to the T&TTT Forums (for "Teardrops & Tiny Travel Trailers"). Thanks for the link!

Teardrops & Tiny Travel Trailers

More:
"Cutest trailer in the known universe"

February 1, 2010

How-To: Make a three-pendulum rotary harmonograph

MacArthur fellow and MIT Media Lab alumnus Karl Sims brings us this great tutorial on how to build your own complex harmonograph (Wikipedia) for making cool...um..."geometric figures?" I'm looking for a 50-cent mathematician's word (which may or may not exist) for these periodic spirally figures. Can anybody help me out? [Thanks, David!]

January 31, 2010

Back to the earth in Maymand Village

Maymand Village in the Kerman province of Iran has been carved out of the rock over the ages. The village has a population of 140, and was recognized by UNESCO in 2005.

The kinds of dwelling-place dug out of the mountains are not of a temporary nature but rather are permanent homes (having been lived in for the last 2000 or 3000 years). The pastoral type architecture (shepherd huts known as kapar or gambeh, and barns or sheepfolds) can be seen here and there about the landscape and is part of the built heritage.

Maymand bears some similarities to Derinkuyu in Turkey.

January 29, 2010

Retro Thing's hackable USB joystick

Touchscreen and computer vision interfaces are slowly starting to replace the traditional game controllers in next generation systems. Today's Wiimote will be tomorrow's joystick. Speaking of joysticks, the guys over at Retro Thing are producing some pretty cool classic Atari-style joysticks using clear plastic and a USB interface. Besides being an awesome retro game controller, the USB controller board is fully hackable and comes with labeled solder points to connect up to 8 additional control~~ler~~s (buttons, switches). Perfect for a homebrew MAME cabinet or tabletop build.

More:

January 28, 2010

How-To: Amplify your gamer guitar

Randy Sarafan made a cigar box style guitar from an old NES, and shows us how to add a pickup to amplify the sound in his Instructable. He uses a NES controller cable for the audio, so classy!

January 27, 2010

Lost Knowledge: Wood engraving and Pictorial Webster's

The 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

Hot on the heels of acquiring a copy of the book Artistic Printing, which inspired my last Lost Knowledge column, I also got a copy of another book cataloging the lost wonders of a printing technology, namely, Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities, by John M. Carrera (Chronicle Books, $35) and the painstaking art of wood engraving. My last column struck such a nerve with those who shared my enthusiasm for old-school printing, that I decided to share this second amazing book and the type of engraving that inspired it.

Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities is a collection of hundreds of the wood-engraved illustrations that were found in 19th century editions of Webster's dictionaries. The author, fine-press bookmaker John M. Carrera, began a fascinating ten year odyssey to bring the book to print after he discovered a brittle and yellowing copy of the 1898 edition of Webster's International under his grandfather's favorite reading chair. He was so taken by the wooden engravings in it that he contacted the Merriam-Webster Company and was told that there was a collection of the original "cuts" (the engravings) housed at Yale University. Carrera traveled there and discovered 150 drawers chaotically crammed with more than 10,000 wooden engravings and copper electrotypes (duplicates of the cuts). After he decided to create a new visual dictionary with these engravings, it took him a year just to identify and alphabetize the collection he chose for the book.

January 26, 2010

Single-digit nixie clock

These single-digit nixie clocks seem to be showing up a lot these days, inspired, at least in part, by this project page. The one seen here is a single Russian IN-12 tube, controlled by a PIC16F628A. It's housed in a brass former table clock.

Steampunk Single Digit Nixie Clock II

More:
Check out all of our nixie tube coverage on Make: Online

Ceramic IC

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Karl W. shares a pic of his newly acquired artifact -

This ceramic wafer is a real mystery to me. I purchased it from a Ebay seller in Kfar Saba, Israel and during the shipment it cracked on the upper edge of it. It's about 4" x 4" and just a bit thicker than a normal silicon wafer. I was thinking it could have been a early attempt at making small ICs, before silicon? […] I'd love it if anyone could give me more information on what this is, it seems like quite a rare item from what I can tell.

A larger version of the image can be seen here.

January 25, 2010

Piecing together a vintage Radio Shack 150-in-One kit

Craig Smith (South Milwaukee, WI) wrote to me to share this amazing project he's been working on and to ask for your help:

I was one of the lucky kids that received a Radio Shack Science Fair 150-in-One electronic project kit on Christmas morning. I spent hours making the different projects, such as sound effects, radio, light experiments, etc... I credit this toy as the reason I can solder up circuits from electronic kits or schematics, as well as circuits from scratch. As a teen, I robbed some of the components from the toy.

What started out as a project to make the incomplete toy whole again, I decided to make into a quality working wood replica art piece. Made from a piece of 1/4" plywood and built into an old silverware box, I am using old beat-up junker kits to donate the spring connectors. I am locating as many new components as I can instead of using 30 year old components. I have the radio tuner parts, transistors, and 7-segment LED display.

But I'm having a heck of a time locating the input and output transformers. Also, the "advanced integrated circuit" is going to be impossible to find, not to mention the projects involving it weren't that interesting. So I believe I will install the 555 timer circuit and include schematics in the booklet that would be interesting projects with the 555 timer.

Perhaps Make: Online readers can help me locate the proper ohm transformers, as well as provide other helpful and nostalgic tidbits on this toy that so many of us geeks got started with.

I definitely had one of these! Still do...er... someplace. How about you? Any helpful suggestions for Craig?

January 22, 2010

Alt.CES: Flashback to CES 1979

ABC News fires up the archival video time machine and refreshes our memory regarding what was cutting edge tech 31 years ago. Satellite feeds, laser discs, and TV-printers? - The future is ~~now!~~ then!

January 18, 2010

Awesome/morbid Cold War era Civil Defense poster

This wall-mounted flyer titled IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK was produced by the city of Portland, Oregon, some time between 1981 and 1985. Thanks to step #7, I now know the international stick-figure symbol for "Comfort the dying." Those were the days, eh? [via Geekologie]

January 14, 2010

Steam-powered bi-plane, circa 1933

MAKE subscriber Will Pickering sent us a link to this fascinating video. Will writes:

This came through one of my steam email lists. Pretty cool plane modified with a 150hp flash boiler steam engine. Made for an almost silent airplane. And it can even go in reverse!

From the lengthy YouTube description:

A Travel Air 2000 biplane made the world's first piloted flight under steam power over Oakland, California, on 12 April 1933. The strangest feature of the flight was its relative silence; spectators on the ground could hear the pilot when he called to them from mid-air. The aircraft, piloted by William Besler, had been fitted with a two-cylinder, 150 hp reciprocating engine.

[Thanks, Will!]

The Besler Steam Plane

Masters of the Universe tribute art show

Chad of Devoted Bee points out this sizable collection of artwork inspired by the He-Man universe. Just about every character from the 80s era cartoon/toy-series (yes, even Stinkor) is re-imagined in a creatively humorous, dramatic, or otherwise stylistic perspective. The art, along with an impressive Castle Grayskull facade, can be seen @ LA's Gallery 1988 until the end of the month.

January 11, 2010

Alt.CES: Life-sized R/C VW Bug

Francisco Fondi, of Hobby Media, sent us news of this wonderful project, by some German mechanics who call themselves The Bug Box. They're building a life-size replica of the Tamiya R/C Scorcher, released 30 years ago. The original R/C VW Bug model was 1/10th and is probably the bestselling (and one of the most beloved) R/C cars ever produced. The Bug Box staff is also reproducing a 10/1 scale Acoms transmitter (used back in the day to control model cars). The 1/1 Scorcher replica will be exhibited during the next Toy Fair, held in Nuremberg in February.

What this piece doesn't say is whether the car with actually be a working life-size R/C replica.

Full-size Tamiya vintage radio-controlled car replica

January 9, 2010

Alt.CES: Andy Warhol at the Amiga launch, 1985

Here we are in the Wayback Machine, at the press conference launch of the Commodore Amiga, in 1985. Andy Warhol paints Debbie Harry in real time. There are a couple of great moments in this:

Andy: "...such a great thing"
[Laughter]
Interviewer: "What more can you say?..."
Andy: "Oh, I could say a lot of things."

Interviewer: "What other computers have you worked on before?"
Andy: "Oh, I haven't worked on anything. I've been waiting for this one."
[Laughter]

January 8, 2010

Nixie tube clock in voltmeter case

MAKE Flickr pool member shklaw found an old voltmeter in the trash and made it into this awesome Nixie tube clock.

These Nixie tubes are NL-5440A's. The banana sockets were replaced with switches to set the hours and minutes. When the rotary switch on the left is set to OP, the clock is off, when it it's set to AC, the clock is on (but can't be set) and when the switch is set to DC, the clock it still on and you can set the time using the push buttons. The ohms adjust dial on the right controls the brightness of the blue up-lighting (fully off to quite bright!). I used the schematic and PIC code from this site.

[via HackedGadgets]

4 digit multimeter Nixie clock

More:
Complete Nixie tube coverage on Make: Online

January 6, 2010

Lost Knowledge: "Artistic printing"

Sorry we haven't run a Lost Knowledge column recently. We had the winter holiday rush to contend with, all those gift guides, etc. And there was a short holiday break in there somewhere. Anyway, we're back on track now and looking forward to a year of lost, nearly-forgotten, or preciously-preserved technologies. If you have ideas for columns (some of our more popular pieces last year came from you, our readers), please pop them into the comments below.

This week's column is on a letterpress printing style I knew nothing about. One of the things I'm most proud of in my life is that I'm a printer by trade, or I used to be. It's actually the only trade or discipline in which I have any formal training. To my over-romantic mind, there's something extremely noble, even patriotic, about being a printer. It's no wonder that William Blake and Ben Franklin are a couple of my heroes. I co-ran a small job shop for about five years in the late 70s, doing everything from flyers for the local supermarket to full-blown newsletters and magazines, even a couple of books. We did offset lithography, not letterpress, but I was basically familiar with letterpress and the techniques and technologies involved. So I was surprised when I came across a book in a paper store (I'm such a printer nerd that I still haunt paper stores) on the Victorian heyday of "artistic printing," something I'd never even heard of. (FWIW: Wikipedia doesn't even have an entry for "artistic printing.")

The book (which I, of course, had to get) is called The Handy Book of Artistic Printing, by Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas (2009, Princeton Architectural Press) and it's a wonder. It covers the history of artistic printing, shows examples of the machines used to create it, and offers dozens of gorgeous examples of the artform, along with thoughtful commentary on each example. The book itself is a lovely piece of bookart (er... offset lithographic bookart).