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Imagine you are NASA in the 1970s. You have successfully landed on the moon multiple times, you are landing robots on Mars, Skylab is America’s first space station and you are building the space shuttle (and still believe it is going to save a ton of money). It is a time of extreme optimism. Nothing [...]
Blast from the past – Assembling and driving the Model T Ford
by Marshall Brain | January 27, 2010
I saw one of these demonstrations where they put together a whole Model T Ford in about 5 minutes. In this video they take a little longer, but there is a nice commentary to go with it: What you get from that video is the simplicity of the design. This video shows how it was [...]
Blast from the past – The pneumatic tube system at Stanford
by Marshall Brain | January 12, 2010
Pneumatic tube systems have been around for approximately 200 years. If you have seen one of these systems at all, it’s probably been at the drive-though window at a bank. You put your money, checks, receipts, etc. in a plastic carrier (aka a capsule) and load it into the tube. Air pressure moves it through [...]
Blast from the past – How a real combat submarine works
by Marshall Brain | January 5, 2010
Have you ever wondered how a diesel submarine works? Things like the engine, the torpedo tubes, the periscope, the sonar, the ballast tanks, etc.? Here is your chance to find out in a surprisingly clear way: The Fleet Type Submarine For example, in the engine section they clearly explain the principles behind the Diesel cycle, [...]
Blast from the past – GM’s jet-powered Firebird cars
by Marshall Brain | December 17, 2009
There’s something appealing about unbridled optimism, especially when it translates into a car that can go 240 MPH. Also note that the key fob to automatically open the doors and start the car was invented in 1959: It appears in the video that the Firebird 3 has the ability to drive itself. This page has [...]
If you’ve ever seen a WWII movie with bombers in it, there has been the shot of the bombardier looking through his bombsight to aim the plane’s bombs at the target. This video shows the bombariers stations in a B-17: In the movies it looks simple enough to hit the target, but in reality these [...]
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