Prelinger Archive
How to Transmit News Photos by Wire—in 1937
A newspaper reveals how images were scanned and sent electronically via telephone lines in the 1930s.
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Prelinger Archive
A newspaper reveals how images were scanned and sent electronically via telephone lines in the 1930s.
Prelinger Archive
Back when synchronized sound in movies was still new and exciting, this short film set out to illustrate the process of sound-on-film recording.
IBM's SAGE air defense system looks like it belongs in a Cold War-era James Bond film, but this is a real IBM ad from the 1960s.
Internet Archive
For millennials who don't remember typewriters, this rundown of the analog processes and early IBM computers the San Jose Mercury News used in 1970 will be mind-boggling.
Public Domain
Before drones, before stealth planes, before satellites, there were birds with an unshakeable desire to fly home.
SMU Central
This is a photo of Santa on a roof with an old-timey microphone. I don't get it, either. You tell me what he's doing.
Google Patents
A patent from 1965 for a machine that would rotate a woman to help propel a child out of her with less effort
Google Patents
After a rash of high-rise hotel fires, a man in California patented a breathing device for trapped civilians in need of fresh air and awaiting rescue from emergency responders
Vintage Ads Livejournal
Do you suffer from potato nose or duckbill nose? What you want, like the rest of us, of course, is the Greco-Roman Normal Form.
Associated Press
The Royal Air Force developed devices to protect even the littlest Brits from the possibility of chemical warfare during World War II
Wikimedia Commons
Commissioned by the United States Census Bureau to make counting people easier, the device would lead to the creation of IBM
U.S. Patent Office
These mechanical variations on the roller skate were designed to enable "the production of high speed."
Publishing Perspectives
The old machine that could be a symbol of the new market for books
Popular Science
The Iron Dobbin, first envisioned in Popular Science, captured the interest of the Italian military
Smithsonian
This dress, worn by Ruth Hensinger, was made from a nylon parachute that saved her husband's life during World War II
gramaphon.ch
While the Mikiphone's metal case looks small enough to travel with, it takes quite a bit of assembly to get into working order
U.S. Air Force
The Marine Corps spent $2 million testing an idea cooked up by a Pennsylvania dentist: tiny bats to scatter bombs across Japan
Creative Commons
David Allen's time management trickery has nothing on John Muir's 19th-century gadget-aided study practices
RSNA
Recently unearthed, the first X-ray machine, built in 1896, required a radiation dose 1,500 times higher than a modern machine
Bill Ames
The Internet's early settlers sat round the campfire at SXSWi to recall the early days of the digital frontier
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James Fallows on Jerry Brown's second chance. Plus: the mystery of the second skeleton, how gay couples are getting marriage right, the end of the retail salesperson, and more.
