Nietzsche's Writing Ball, an historical re-formed invention

Typing as we know it, has for sometime relied upon using qwerty keyboards, but unremarkably perhaps, the worlds first typewriter was hemispherical.

The worlds first commercially sold typewriter ever made was engineered by a Danish inventor, Rasmus Malling-Hansen in 1870, known as the Hansen writing ball.

As can be seen in the image here this writing ball was not a qwerty keyboard that apparently arrived a mere 4 years later from Sholes & Glidden otherwise known as the Remington typewriter.

As we know the qwerty keyboard typewriter has been and still is our main technical interface for writing and publishing. Thus when the Remington emerged onto the stage for writers the western world over, the Malling-Hansen's invention was almost completely forgotten. 

Captivating Video of a Marc Newson 'Hourglass' being manufactured

Apart from a sundial, an hourglass is perhaps the most basic historical example of a 'Time Machine', where the earliest use of one dates from the 14th Century. 

The hourglass had a ubiquitous use throughout history, in the earliest factories for clocking on and off, to metal tradesmen as an aid to knowing when enough heat had been applied to certain metals. Hourglasses were also used on ships to determine travelling speed as well as a time measuring device when a bell was struck for each period.

These days hourglasses have largely been superseded by electronic gadgets, but to a collector or fine art connoisseur, hourglasses retain an affinity with the classics.

Philip Andelman traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to video document the creation of Australian designer Marc Newson's interpretation of this iconic time machine inside the Glaskeller factory.

Absorbing Animated Evolution of the Moon

So far as we know for certain, Earth's only natural satellite, is the moon and its a cold, dry orb whose surface is studded with craters and strewn with rocks and dust.

Year in year out, the moon never seems to change. Craters and other formations appear to be permanent now, but the moon didn't always look like this.

Kind of like an imaginary planetary firework display, NASA's Goddard Multimedia team, has created an absorbing video animation of the last 4.5 billion years geological history of the moon, courtesy of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Video animation shows 2011 ninth warmest year on record

since modern meteorological records began in 1880, nine of the last 10 years have been the warmest wherein 2010 was the warmest.

"As greenhouse gas emissions from energy production, industry and vehicles have increased, temperatures have climbed, most notably since the late 1970s." NASA

Since 1880 the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was approximately 225 parts per million (ppm), but since 1960 the average amount rose to be 315 ppm. Today however it's more than 390 ppm and continues to increase to rise at an accelerating pace.

(See Video after the jump)

Amazing continuous motion map of our Solar system

Here's an opportunity to explore the planetary orbital motions of our solar system in a live dynamic way. The interactive motion map can display either the Copernican or the Tychonian systems.

Up until approximately 100 years after Nicolaus Copernicus published his 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' in 1543, every learned person in Europe knew one thing for absolutely certain: the sun and the planets travelled around the Earth. All astronomy texts said so. Tycho Brahe believed that the Sun and Moon and the stars revolve around the Earth, and the other five planets revolve around the Sun.

Dynamic Diagrams with free data source provided by NASA created an Orrery that illustrates the positions of the planets and moons in our solar system and allows a user to view their alignment at any given date in the past or present.

The default load of this interactive motion map displays the Copernican system and you can set any date, but you need to reload the page to watch the continuous animated motion of the planets and moons. This also applies each time you apply a change to the map.

Car robot Singularity Drive System

is a new take on an old idea, featured in a 1938 edition of Mechanics And Handicraft, which   never caught on, but recently reworked by Curtis Boirum, a grad student at Bradley University.

Curtis engineered a mobile robot that uses a hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled, or HOG, drive wheel, that is both a steering and a driving mechanism based on a spinning sphere.

This unique system consists of a black rubber hemisphere that rotates like a spinning top, with servos that can tilt it left and right and forwards and backwards.

In the video below watch Curtis's remotely controlled robot car delivered by his simple drive system, exhibiting an unbelievable amount of speed and agility.



Curtis is working at scaling up his reinvention to create a cheap, powerful, and agile singularity drive system that can be adapted for use by researchers and hobbyists. Perhaps he may get around to building a conventional car-sized version too !

A little history of Parkour

The entertaining historical documentary footage film clip, below, is from a Paramount newsreel shot in 1942, of two men practicing their art of jumping and stunt climbing, as it was simply referred to as then.

The first minute of the video is Italian-American amateur stuntman John Ciampa, and the remaining newsreel is performed by Arnim Dahl. the film was  likely meant as promotional aid for both men who eventually got work as stunt doubles in the 1950's and 60's movie industry.

Arnim Dahl mostly worked as the stuntman for leading actors, like, Albert Lieven, Curd Jürgens and Kirk Douglas but was also involved in a number of publicity activities, such as when he performed a stunt from the roof railing of the Empire State Building in New York.



Among the startling acts he performed throughout his life (1922 - 1998) were his more than 40 times in hospital, with more than 100 fractures, amounting to more than 4 years of his life in a hospital. Nevertheless a survivor of an extreme sport, that became known as parkour which in name was birthed and made famous by David Belle.

The music track on this video is from the 1977 film soundtrack of Gizmo and its either "Pieces of Dreams" by Joe DiSabato or "The Stunt Runner" written & sung by Nicholas Hollander ?

Out of the Inkwell: The Tantalizing Fly

is a marvelously entertaining little historical cartoon animation (1919) directed and produced by Max Fleischer for Bray Studios.

Out of the Inkwell was a major animated series of the silent era produced by Max Fleischer from 1918 to 1929, who invented the Rotoscope. Film was projected through an opening in an easel, covered by by a glass pane on which he drew the  sequences. Advancing the film one frame at a time the projected image was traced onto paper.

The popularity of the Out of the Inkwell series was driven by the integration and interaction of live action sequences of Max Fleischer in the process of creating his ink pen drawings with his animation sequences.

Ant Spiral Hurricane Spectacular

Yikes, wait a minute, isn't that an ant tornado ?

Ants are social animals since having evolved more than 130 million years ago from wasp-like ancestors and diversified after the rise of flowering plants, have had quite a while to develop their life, skills and habits.

I'm left to ponder if the molasses of ant swarm intelligence in this video are also engineering their burrow into a spiral groove below the surface ?

Ebru: Turkish paper marbling painting

Taking the idea of water color painting literally, an unknown artist creates a surprisingly interesting painting by applying paint directly on water, accompanied by some trippy flute music of Ney Taksimi by Ahmet Sahin.

This technique is referred to as Ebru and was used extensively in the binding of books and within calligraphic panels in Turkey since the fifteenth century.

If you wish to try this technique yourself you will need to discover the appropriate additives or surfactant chemicals in order to help float the ink. Learn more about this technique, here.

Super thin, really tough Gorilla Glass

Back in 1962, New York based glass manufacturer Corning, developed an amazing innovation in glass technology, an almost unbreakable glass, which at the time struggled to find a market.

Now however the tables have turned with the advent of a burgeoning demand for very thin break resistant glass used in an increasing list of mobile phones, e readers, TV and computer displays.

"Gorilla is two to three times stronger than chemically strengthened versions of ordinary soda-lime glass, even when just half as thick, company scientists say. Its strength also means Gorilla can be thinner than a dime, saving on weight and shipping costs." read more

The glass formerly called Chemcor but now renamed as Gorilla can be manufactured in wafer thin flexible rolls. The video here demonstrates the durability and strength of Gorilla Glass compared with 2 other types of of very thin glass sheets.

Laurel and Hardy meet Santana

Here is an entertaining video of Laurel and Hardy dancing to the 1970's Latin rock song Oye Como Va by Santana.

Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular comedy teams of the early to mid Classical Hollywood era of American cinema. Read more.

Rocketboom's Molly Meme Takes us on a spin of the Darwins

The image you see here is of Darwin island the smallest island in the Galapagos Archipelago. From there, Molly Meme takes us through a cool series of visual snapshots into the many things, mountains, sharks, frogs, islands and software all likely attributed with the famous Charles Darwin, the great realizer of Evolution.

Also shown us in the video are "South America map, Mt. Darwin, cordillera darwin4, cordillera darwin glacier, cordillera darwin panorama, marinelli glacier, Darwin Sound, mac os 10.6 box, apple tv, iphone, Thomas Henry Huxely pic, Orca, Darwin OS screen1, Darwin OS screen2, Darwin X-Men, Darwin comic art1, Darwin comic images, helicopter over island, galapagos islands map, tesla hat, tierra del fuego sat image, South America sat image."






More Rocketboom episodes available here;

Historical Tweets: Marie Antoinette: Let Them Tweet Cake!

If you tweet on twitter as I do than you may enjoy this entertaining web toy site through which you can search for a moment or place or event or person in history and reinvent the twitter timeline.

"Books have been ruining history. So many unnecessary words.  Now, with Historical Tweets, history’s most amazing men and women can be fully understood, a mere 140 characters at a time."

Be sure to hit the random button at the top of the page for more historical tweets.

How can you see a color that you can't see?

Robert Krampf or thehappyscientist demonstrates in this video how we can use our cell phone to see colors normally invisible to our sight and shares some other nifty tricks with his remote control.

You may be surprised to learn that the first person to conceive of the remote control occurred in 1893 by Nikola Tesla in U.S. Patent 613809. During world war one German scientists exploited this patent and were the first to invent remote controlled motorboats. The first popular consumer use, however, emerged with remote controlled garage doors in the late 1940’s.

But radio Engineer Eugene Polley of the Zenith Radio Corporation is credited with creating the first wireless TV remote that could mute the sound and he worked in collaboration with Dr. Robert Adler who is attributed with the invention of the first commercial production in 1956 of the TV Remote Control who designed The Space Command based on ultrasonics.

Panorama: Biennale of Sydney 2010 opening party

Last evening the 17th Biennale of Sydney launched one of the most ambitious programs in its 37-Year history which is presented free to the public from 12 May until 1 August 2010 at seven venues across the heart of the city.

Here, Peter Murphy has captured a panorama of the opening party that took place in the Turbine Hall on Cockatoo Island.

Peter's panorama features a few of famous Chinese artist Cao Gu0-Quiang's large installation of “exploding” cars hanging from the interior of the roof, first seen at the Gugenheim in this little video.

The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Biennale  exhibition presents more than 440 works by 166 artists and collaborators from 36 countries, making it the largest exhibition ever staged by the Biennale of Sydney in its 37-year history. Read more.

Jane Goodall reflects on her life's work

Since Primatologist,  Jane Goodall in 1960 observed a chimpanzee trimming a blade of grass and poking it into a passage in a termite mound to extract his meal, humans could no longer claim to be the only tool-making species. Her findings led scientists to redefine how they looked at the relationship of humans, chimps and other animals.

"Now, looking back, I am struck at how much they resemble us: their gestures, elaborate cooperation, the relationships of families. There is not a sharp line dividing us from the animal kingdom. It is blurry and getting blurrier." 

Goodall worked largely in isolation until 1986 when at a conservation conference in Chicago, she realized that the fate of the chimps was tied to larger problems: habitat destruction, human population growth, poverty, demand for natural resources, intensive farming, illegal poaching for meat, pets and medical research.



Its likely that Goodall witnessed chimpanzee's, as this video shows, fishing for termites by taking and modifying twigs to fish for termites within their hard nests.

Source


The Jane Goodall Institute

Bimbo's Initiation + Nightlife by Amon Tobin

is an interesting adaption or marriage of convenience between a 1930's cartoon animation with the music track, Nightlife, by multidimensional musician, Amon Tobin. The animation and the music track so magically coalesce you might be forgiven for thinking that the tune was purposefully made  for this cartoon animation !

I frequently listen to diverse genres of music sourced from podcasts, web radio, youtube and other video portals. One has, only to check out my Blog Roll, down the left hand column of this page where you will see a few of them listed among my blogging friends.  The Pasithea show No.120, with Amon Tobin on solipsistic NATION inspired me and by chance or as luck would have it, found this unreal cartoon animation and am totally surprised by it's uncanny coincidence of mutual convenience.



The original cartoon animation (here) of Bimbo's Initiation,  was produced in 1931 by Max & Dave Fleischer and Tom Sutpen says of the animation;  "There's more joy and horror in these seven minutes than in all the latter-day cartoon emanations of the last quarter-century."

Man as Industrial Palace: Retro Physiological Animation

In this video, Henning Lederer has animated a historical poster by Fritz Kahn entitled Man as Industrial Palace (1926), who is considered by many to be the founder of conceptual medical illustration.

"Kahn produced a series of books during the 1920s on the inner workings of the human body using metaphors of modern industrial life. His modernist visualization was fitting since he was writing during a time of great industrial and technological change, especially in Germany." (Source)

Although we now know more about the human physiology than Fritz Kahn did, Henning Lederer in this preview clip has merely kept the illustration relevant to the 1920's interpretation. The sound design by David Indge similarly depicts the action in the animation with vintage industrial sound samples.

Cool old piloted Flying Segway

The vehicle in this video was nicknamed "The Flying Pulpit". It is a small, light-weight Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) system. It is powered by a modified Williams F107 turbofan aircraft engine. It can be be operated by and carry one person and is controlled by leaning in the direction of desired travel and adjusting the power. It can move in any direction, hover, accelerate rapidly, and rotate. It can fly for up to 45 minutes and travel at speeds up to 60 miles per hour (100 km/h).

Its difficult to ascertain if this revolutionary flying platform ever succeeded into industrial production, details of its existence are sketchy and the US defense department documents it as an historical object !

Thus this video appears to have been handi-cam captured from a video monitor in a video exhibition at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.

I'm left pondering why this cool flying Segway is being neglected ?