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What the Internet's Nikola Tesla Obsession Means for the Future of Museums
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Once Upon a Place: Telling Stories With Maps
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.
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Nota Bene: If You 'Discover' Something in an Archive, It's Not a Discovery
Says one curator, "I wish there were more articles headlined 'Thorough, Accurate Cataloging Pays Off!' "
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On Bradbury: 'Whenever a Light Blinked Out, Life Threw Another Switch; Rooms Were Illumined Afresh'
At his best, Bradbury wrote stories that speak to what it means to be human.
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Watching the Rare Transit of Venus From 1639 to Today
Every science museum worth its planetarium lens has developed a way for the public to engage in the astronomical event.
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History Repeats Itself, First as Tragedy, Second as Animated Gif
It's time for a second golden age of the stereoscope.
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Lessons for 20th-Century Living: You Need to Know How to Place a Phone Call
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.
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Do Our Values Shape Our Inventions, or Do Our Inventions Shape Us?
Imagining a futuristic world can help us tease out the relationship between culture and technology.
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Art and the Romanticization of Work Past
Nostalgic paintings of people in fields and factories put a shine on history's hard times.
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Why the Landline Telephone Was the Perfect Tool
Rogue philosopher Ivan Illich's ideas and what they mean for the Internet age
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Personal Tech for the 17th Century
A group of undergraduates is unlocking the secrets of Roger Williams's idiosyncratic shorthand script.
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The Long Farewell: Typewriters as Objects of Nostalgia
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?
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Ballet Shoes and Ballerinas as Technology: A History En Pointe
Pointe shoes made the ballerinas of the New York City Ballet into technological artifacts, modern and indistinguishable "like IBM machines"
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How Photography Entered the Courtroom
Early conflicts about the meaning of photography have muddled photographs' status in courtrooms ever since
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The Technology of Socks in a Time of War
A historian traces the history of humble footwear in the trenches
