In this brief video, MAKE contributing editor Bill Gurstelle demonstrates a simple arc light (a precursor to the incandescent bulb) using a length of carbon rod, a knife switch, some ceramic insulators, Nichrome wire, and an 18-volt power tool battery. How to Make an Arc Light
I’m very much digging these classic visual effects created by animation pioneer John Whitney using parts from an anti-aircraft gunsight. YouTuber crystalsculpture2 gives more info – John Whitney’s demo reel of work created with his analog computer/film camera magic machine he built from a WWII anti-aircraft gun sight. Also Whitney and the techniques he developed […]
XenonJohn recreates a portable audio player from an alternate timeline – This is an admittedly mad project to see what might have happened if Sony had invented the Walkman earlier than they did – and made it so it took 8 track tape cartridges (which came before cassette tapes were invented). In other words, can […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Flickr member 5Volt points out an especially historic schematic from NASA’s publicly available Apollo Lunar Module documentation. Its function was to light the appropriate indicator lamps once the module made contact with the surface of the moon – The lights are two (top of drawing) on two different panels, namely […]
MAKE subscriber Chris Brent sent us word of this release of the source code for the Apollo 11 command module and lunar lander software, which can be run on yaAGC (an open source emulator of the Apollo Guidance Computer). From the Google Code Blog: On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin […]
Rex Research is a great site, chock-full of info about wacky inventions that never made it, including a bunch of free-energy quackery and pseudoscience that’s still a lot of fun if you take it with a grain of salt. One of my favorite pages so far is this collection of weird-ass boats that folks have […]
I’m really digging the collection of user-submitted articles on primitive technology over at PrimitiveWays. So far, one of my favorites is this article, by one Dino Labiste, about how to treat the natural pith in a deer antler to make an adhesive bed for a stub-tang blade.
