Make: Online: Retro Archives

Retro Archive: Retro

November 20, 2009

Vacuum tube prototyping board

Bruce Heran made this prototyping board for his tube projects. He writes:

This is a project that I made to take care of an ever increasing need to prototype vacuum tube (valve) circuits. As you can see from the photos, it really is a test "board." I do a lot of work with tubes and love to design and improve circuits. In the process I often use various CAD type programs to rough out the designs. I have frequently found that the models do not agree with the final build. Some are right on, but most are off enough to turn a good idea into a waste of time. Thus the need to quickly prototype designs. Now I could have created this board with many additional features - speakers, output transformers, LEDs... But what I needed was a simple way to test single stage tube circuits. So for simplicity I wired the tube pins together (pin 1 to pin 1 and so on). The leads from the pins are brought out to terminals on a "Euro" style terminal strip. I included several other "Euro" strips, a pair of RCA jacks, a 100 k-ohm variable resistor and solderless prototype breadboard. This solderless breadboard is available in various sizes from several sources. If you build one of these boards, feel free to use the idea to adapt it to your needs and use whatever parts you so desire.

[Thanks, Gio!]

DIY Vacuum Tube Prototyping Board

November 19, 2009

The glass is aligned to concentrate the sun's rays, lighting the cannon's fuse at high noon. More pics here, and a very detailed .pdf from the British Sundial Society on so-called "noon cannons" here. [via Neatorama]

November 16, 2009

Nintendo cartridge throne

A throne fit for a retro gamer! Nintendo cartridges comprise this seven foot chair.

November 13, 2009

Piano music composing computer from 1965 on TV

Inventor, author and futurist Ray Kurzweil appeared on I've Got a Secret in 1965 when he was 17 years old. He made a computer that plays music, at the end of the video they show the computer - via Bruce Sterling.

1979 LEGO minifig patent

LEGO minifig patent from 1979! [via @grantimahara]

Update: A reader writes in with this clarification:

Its not a patent but a design, in the legal sense (and practical). The difference is subtle, a patent is protects something like an apparatus (thing), a method of doing this apparatus and possibly how to operate said apparatus (let's stay away of medical/chemical patents for now). Unless there's a "technical effect" you cannot have a patent. A Design protects a shape/form of a product, toys usually fall under this class. Things get interesting when the shape has a technical effect (i.e. providing better grip in a hand mixer) then you might actually be able to get a patent on a design.

November 9, 2009

Teacup Stirling engine

Gorgeous teacup Stirling engine, spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool.

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue! Buy your copy in the Maker Shed, Subscribe to MAKE, or Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber).

We have a teacup Stirling engine project in MAKE, Volume 17.

Another Wimshurst build

Jake has posted pics and info on Steampunk Workshop of another maker's build of his Wimshurst machine, a project featured in MAKE, Volume 17. Jake writes:

...This is a very elegant machine and some of Bruce's innovations make it superior to my own!

Here's what the builder, Bruce, says about his version:

These are some differences in my machine from the construction article. The drive bands are 1/8" black braided cord with white strands inside from an army surplus store with the ends melted together. The current Leyden jars are plastic toothpick containers on top of pieces of florescent light tube protector material salvaged from one of several protector tubing jars that shorted between the foil edges. The collector supports are pieces of small size PVC tubing with brass couplings hammered into the ends and glued with thin CA glue. The set screw collars are made from nylon spacers and 6-32 brass screws.

Bruce's Wimshurst Machine

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue! Buy your copy in the Maker Shed, Subscribe to MAKE, or 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.

November 4, 2009

Beached submarine home theater

Kiwi businessman Wayne Eyre dropped a pretty penny on this fantasy home theater build, but the results are impressive. Many have suggested that it's supposed to be Captain Nemo's Nautilus, but there's no mention of deliberate Verne overtones in the original article. The last photograph above, for instance, shows leaking "plutonium torpedoes" in part of the installation, but plutonium wasn't even discovered until 50 years after 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was published. [via Dude Craft]

November 3, 2009

Steampunk exhibition documentary

Here's a very nice bit of video documenting the recent Steampunk exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.

Steampunk Art @ Oxford

October 23, 2009

Musical Go boards

Some years ago, a conversation with my old friend Billy Baque turned to the subject of adapting board games for sightless play. When it came round to Go, Billy mentioned having read of an antique Korean board, hollow inside and strung with wires along the lines of the grid, the wires being tuned such that each intersection produced a unique musical interval when a stone was placed upon it. Whether this was simply an aesthetic embellishment or a means to make the game more accessible to sightless players, he did not know.

I was fascinated, and made every effort to run down Billy's original reference, which I eventually determined was R.C. Bell's Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, Revised Edition. From p.100:

Traditional Japanese boards are made of a solid block of wood about eighteen inches long and sixteen broad, and some five inches thick, fitted with four detachable feet about three inches high. The board and feet are stained yellow. A square depression is cut into the underside of the board to lighten it, and also to increase its resonance; the pieces making a pleasant click when placed upon it. The Koreans have gone a stage further and some of their boards have wires stretched beneath to produce a musical note when the stones are played.

"A musical note" tends to suggest that the board as a whole played a single tone, interval, or chord, rather than a unique tone or interval for each playing position. Still, it seemed worthwhile to try to run down Bell's original reference, which, thanks to his meticulous bibliography, I eventually found was Stewart Culin's 1895 Korean Games with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan, which is out of copyright and available in its entirety on Google Books. From p. 91:

The Korean board, pa tok hpan, differs from that of Japan, in being made in the form of a small hollow table, while the Japanese board consists of a solid block of wood. The Korean board is resonant and by an arrangement of wires stretched within emits a musical note when a piece is played. A specimen in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (Fig. 96) is eleven inches high and about sixteen inches square.

Again, "a musical note," but the language in both cases is ambiguous.

Culin's Figure 96 is reproduced at the top of this post. I've contacted The Penn Museum to see if collection number 16,431 still exists and/or if they have any record of it. I was hoping, at least, to show you all a photograph. Can't seem to get anyone to respond, however. If anyone has any information about this artifact or about musical go boards in general, I would love to have it. Please drop us all a comment or e-mail me directly.

October 22, 2009

Retro futuristic classroom enforcer robots

As an unruly second grader I often endured the chalk-throwing rage of Mrs. Seaman (*giggle*). Not much fun, but at least I wasn't being corporally punished by these "watchful robots that rap students on the head if they lose focus or act up."

This vision of the future, ominously entitled "The Rise of the Computerized School", was illustrated by Shigeru Komatsuzaki for an article in a 1969 Shōnen Sunday magazine. The "Computopia" feature predicted that by 1989 our lives would be equal parts carefree and terrifying thanks to the pervasiveness of computers, telecommuting teachers, and pugilistic enforcer robots.

[via Pink Tentacle] [Thanks, Contorto!]

Orrery based on Ferguson's "mechanical paradox"

Beautiful photographs by Tina Buescher of Jim Donnelly's orrery based on the mechanism known as "Ferguson's mechanical paradox." Good information about the orrery is provided by Ian Coote's page. As for the "paradox," well, it boils down to this: the three apparently-identical stacked gears on the end are driven by a single gear, yet move at different rates, which, of course, would be impossible if they were truly identical. News flash: They're not. But I'm sure it was harder to fight boredom in the 18th century than it is now, and the build is undeniably gorgeous.

October 21, 2009

"The joy of sex don't last like the fun of shootin' anvils"

To "shoot," an anvil, for the record, is to blast it several hundred feet into the air using a charge of black powder. This delightful man, Gay Wilkinson, is apparently the world's champion anvil-shooter. The fireworks start at 1:30. [via Boing Boing]

Amazing fantasy armor leatherwork

I'm not sure exactly what it means to be "hell bent for leather," but I am sure that this is the outfit you want to be wearing while you're thusly engaged. Prince Armory is (mostly) Samuel Lee, who goes by *Azmal on deviantART. Beautiful craftsmanship. [via Geekologie]

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Steampunk leather masks and helmets

Tom Banwell is one of the artists featured in the currently-ongoing Steampunk exhibition at Oxford's Old Ashmolean building. Shown here is "Sentinel." [via Propnomicon]

October 19, 2009

Harmony Generator vintage kit

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Matt the modulator picked this rather sweet 80's Maplin Harmony Generator kit on ebay. Though nonfunctional after the initial assembly, a bit of rewiring got things up and running for the above-seen demo processing a Gameboy/LSDJ sequence. He was also kind enough to post the relevant schematics/article for those interested.

October 18, 2009

Steampunkin!

Hans Scharler just submitted this cool hack-'o-lantern to our Make: Halloween Contest 2009. It includes a motion detector, some LEDs, and a fog machine, and when someone approaches it lights up and shoots "steam" out of its ears.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

October 15, 2009

Custom case for Chumby Guts

My friend Joe Bowers bought a Chumby Guts kit. Step one: get it up and running. Step two: give the poor, naked thing some clothes. Joe designed a case for it and asked me to laser cut it for him. It reminds me of an old television set. This is an early prototype; we plan to refine the design, add some etched graphics, and more. Maybe some rabbit ear antennae?

Clever trick alert: Joe put the Chumby on a scanner and traced the rounded-cornered bezel in CorelDraw to get an exact fit. It pops in there beautifully!

In the Maker Shed:

Chumby Guts

Joe's blog

How-To: Corpsified faerie

Cobwebs of The Art of Darkness shows how to turn a tiny plastic skeleton into a mummified pixie for Halloween purposes or for hoaxing gullible Britons. She calls it a "doom it yourself" project.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

October 14, 2009

Keef's teef

UT Austin student/librarian/artist Keef calls this project "Professor Teeth." It incorporates a dental mannequin with the jaws fixed up to chatter like that thing from Hellraiser that chatters? I think it's called "The Chatterer?" Also it tells fortunes and stuff. There's video here. [Thanks, Keef!]

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.