The telephone was an invention that revolutionized human communication. No more did you have to physically courier a letter from one place to another, or send a telegram, or have a runner carry the message for you. Instead, you could have a direct conversation with another person a great distance away. All well and good […]
For the average rider, inner tubes have been one of the most enduring and unchanging parts of bicycle design over the decades. They’re made of rubber, they have a Schrader or Presta valve, and they generally do an okay job at cushioning the ride. However, if you’re an above-average rider, or just obsessive about your […]
Considering how integral it is to our modern way of life, you could be excused for thinking that the Global Positioning System (GPS) is a product of the smartphone era. But the first satellites actually came online back in 1978, although the system didn’t reach full operational status until April of 1995. While none of […]
When it comes to electronic gadgets, I’m a sucker for a good deal. If it’s got a circuit board on the inside and a low enough price tag on the outside, you can be pretty sure I’ll be taking it home with me. So a few years ago, when I saw USB external hard drives […]
A crew lives on a station in a hostile environment. Leaving that environment requires oxygen tanks and specialized gear to deal with pressure differentials. A space station? Nah. A base built on the ocean floor. The US Navy was interested in such a base in the 1960s, and bases like this are a staple of […]
If you were anywhere near a computer in the mid-to-late 1990s, you almost certainly encountered a Zip drive. That distinctive purple peripheral, with its satisfying clunk as you slotted in a cartridge, was as much a fixture of the era as beige tower cases and CRT monitors. Iomega, the company behind it, went from an […]
With the launch of Artemis II from Cape Canaveral potentially just weeks away, NASA has been releasing a steady stream of information about the mission through their official site and social media channels to get the public excited about the agency’s long-awaited return to the Moon. While the slickly produced videos and artist renderings might […]
In the early days of the Internet, having a high-speed IP connection in your home or even a small business was, if not impossible, certainly a rarity. Connecting to a computer in those days required you to use your phone. Early modems used acoustic couplers, but by the time most people started trying to connect, […]
That fireball was LZ37. Nobody wanted to see repeats post-war.Image: “The great exploit of lieutenant Warnefort 1916 England” by Gordon Crosby, public domain. After all the crashing and burning of Imperial Germany’s Zeppelins in the later part of WWI – once the Brits managed to build interceptors that could hit their lofty altitude, and figured […]
In the 1970s, the USSR had an undersea cable connecting a major naval base at Petropavlovsk to the Pacific Fleet headquarters at Vladivostok. The cable traversed the Sea of Okhotsk, which, at the time, the USSR claimed. It was off limits to foreign vessels, heavily patrolled, and laced with detection devices. How much more secure […]