What would you do if you had a time machine? Go watch the ancient Egyptian pyramids being built? Hang out with Jesus and turn some water into wine? Kill Hitler, maybe? These are all, no doubt, noble endeavors. But I’ve often said—and I stand by this—that if I had a time machine, I’d go visit the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
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On a muggy spring day in Manhattan during the throes of the Great Depression, about 200 New York University students shuffled into a room on the 62nd floor of the RCA Building. They were there for a lesson on the principles of photoelectricity, taught by their professor, Dr. C. C. Clark. But strangely, the professor wasn’t there in the room with them. At least not in the flesh.
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This week was a big one for capsule aficionados. Time capsules are as much a Fourth of July tradition as hot dogs, boating, and getting your fingers blown off with homemade fireworks
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Remember 1995? Yeah, me neither. But to refresh our memories, we’ve got an "In and Out" list from the December 20, 1995 edition of USA Today. This strange artifact (found in the University of California-San Francisco tobacco document archives) gives a peek at how mainstream America was thinking about shifting trends in media, technology and, I guess, Mexican food in the mid-1990s.
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Douglas Engelbart, an internet pioneer and developer of the early computer mouse, passed away early this morning at the age of 88.
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Americans love things that sparkle, things that glow, and especially things that blow up. So it makes sense that on America’s birthday, we take great pride in our various spectacles of light and noise. Today, there are countless YouTube videos and how-to websites showing how to create your own firecrackers and noisemakers. But back in the 1920s, it was the medium of magazines (remember those?) that spearheaded the DIY fireworks movement. And their advice was utterly insane.
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Back in the 1920s, it seemed everything was becoming coin-operated. All over the U.S., you could find coin-operated weighing machines at railroad stations; coin-operated vending machines were chock full of candy, cigarettes and other tasty treats; and the automatic coin-operated shoe shine machine was even threatening to put its flesh-and-blood counterpart out of a job. A 1926 issue of Radio News magazine called dropping coins in a slot the great American past-time. But unlike the candy vending machine or even weighing machines, there’s one Jazz Age coin contraption that you’d be hard pressed to find today: the coin-operated radio.
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Through modern eyes, most American cuisine in the 1950s may not seem like the most appetizing stuff. There was an abundance of strange meats, way too much jello, and hot dogs in just about everything (and vice versa). Sometimes the combination of the three made for a fascinatingly grotesque display. But while some of the food in 1950s cookbooks may look a little weird to those of us in the year 2013, as an inverse of the old joke goes, at least there were large portions.
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Despite the fact that it’s currently banned in Los Angeles, UberX is defiantly still up and running. I used it for the first time this weekend. This so-called ride-sharing service from San Francisco-based Uber Technologies is supposedly the future of cabs. Much like similar services Lyft and Sidecar, UberX seeks to "disrupt" the taxi industry by using average people with a car (and without a taxi license) to shuttle others around. But it’s pretty clear that they shouldn’t be allowed to.
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This week’s round-up of time capsule news includes some freshly buried capsules stuffed with cellphones, hair products and booze; some recently unearthed capsules that are so waterlogged they probably should’ve just stayed in the ground; and the hunt for quite a few capsules that have gone missing.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
