Suzanne Fischer

The promise and peril of crowdfunding.Wikimedia Commons.Nikola Tesla, a flamboyantly weird, underdog scientist, is a made-to-order Internet hero. With his flashy electrical machinery (artificial lightning!), mystical views, eccentric personal style, and productive career, Tesla has become a symbol of the power of nerds. He's the inventor as showman, the unjustly sidelined scientist being finally given a fair shake by his fans on the web. Tesla mythmaking has been… More »

A new tool from the University of Virginia demonstrates that digital history is about more than big data: It's about uncertainty, nuance, and connection. More »

Says one curator, "I wish there were more articles headlined 'Thorough, Accurate Cataloging Pays Off!' " More »

At his best, Bradbury wrote stories that speak to what it means to be human. More »

Every science museum worth its planetarium lens has developed a way for the public to engage in the astronomical event. More »

It's time for a second golden age of the stereoscope. More »

It may be hard to believe now, but in the 1920s people had to learn how to dial, much like we once learned how to text. More »

Imagining a futuristic world can help us tease out the relationship between culture and technology. More »

Nostalgic paintings of people in fields and factories put a shine on history's hard times. More »

Rogue philosopher Ivan Illich's ideas and what they mean for the Internet age More »

A group of undergraduates is unlocking the secrets of Roger Williams's idiosyncratic shorthand script. More »

Culturally, we are obsessed with firsts, being able to pinpoint the date that a thing came into being. But what about lasts? Are there ever really lasts? More »

Pointe shoes made the ballerinas of the New York City Ballet into technological artifacts, modern and indistinguishable "like IBM machines" More »

Early conflicts about the meaning of photography have muddled photographs' status in courtrooms ever since More »

A historian traces the history of humble footwear in the trenches More »