This Saturday, May 9th, is National Train Day (in the US). There are exhibits and festivities at train stations across the country. Check out the National Train Day site to see if anything interesting is happening in your city. National Train Day
The weekly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly off to the side). Each Tuesday, we look at retro-tech, “lost” technology, and the make-do, improvised “street tech” of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. “Lost Knowledge” is also the theme […]
IEEE Spectrum has a great package of articles covering 25 Microchips that shook the world. All of your faves are there: the 555, the 6502, the 8088, the TI TMC0281 (which ET used to phone home), the PIC 16C84, the WD1402A (aka the first UART chip), the Z80, and the Sh-Boom coprocessor. The wha? Here’s […]
There’s a growing roster of found-object artists working in what I call mechanical animism, an aesthetic world where the margins between the born and the made have become leaky and distinctions between humans, animals, and machines are fluid and ambiguous. One of the true masters of this genre is Belgian artist Stéphane Halleux. We’ve fawned […]
In this tutorial, bladesmith Ben Potter shows how he inlays a Celto-Norse design in non-ferrous metals into a steel blade. You can see one of the tutorials of him making one of his incredible blades and hilt here. Celto-Norse Wire Inlay Tutorial [Sent by MAKE subscriber David DelaGardelle. Thanks, David!] More: HOW TO – Make […]
Image from the Library of Congress Check out the great photos from the 1930s-40s in Color set at the Library of Congress on Flickr. These vivid color photos from the Great Depression and World War II capture an era generally seen only in black-and-white. Photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and […]
MAKE subscriber FrankG sent us this nice, sort of mesmerizing, video tutorial on turning an old truck leaf spring into a basic, but effective machete. Kind of a long and involved process, but I can only imagine how gratifying it would be to forge/machine your own tools and then use them on a regular basis. […]
