The Library of Congress has Alexander Graham Bell’s family papers in their collections. Among the thousands of pieces in the archive are Bell’s journals, containing sketches and details from the earliest telephone prototypes. The diagram above indicates that using the telephone should be a far more epic experience. The Atlantic has a selection of some of the weirder sketches in the notebooks.
GrinOn has developed a method for dispensing beer from the bottom, allowing the cup to be filled nine times faster. The post includes a video of them pouring fifty-six beers in sixty seconds.
The key is the use of a cup that features a hole at the bottom and small, circular magnet that rests over it. When placed on the system, the magnet is lifted up by the pressure-driven beer. The cup fills up until the weight of the liquid pushes the magnet back down over the hole. The cup can then be lifted off and the beer consumed as normal.
How to construct a 4-bit computer, see how computing works at a base level.
Steve Sasson created the world’s first digital camera in 1976, while working at Kodak. He discusses the development of the camera in this video.
It was a camera that didn’t use any film to capture still images – a camera that would capture images using a CCD imager and digitize the captured scene and store the digital info on a standard cassette. It took 23 seconds to record the digitized image to the cassette. The image was viewed by removing the cassette from the camera and placing it in a custom playback device.
Given Moore’s Law, they estimated that it would take 15 to 20 years before such a camera reached the general consumer. The patent file contains a description and drawings of the apparatus.
A Hype Cycle is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and business application of specific technologies. The cycle consists of five phases, including the trigger, inflated expectations, disillusionment, enlightenment and the plateau.
Dual Perspectives is an ongoing series of articles examining the future of technology and the web.
Steve Chamberlin created his own custom 8-bit CPU, which he dubbed Big Mess of Wires. It brings me back to my assembly language class and the late night bug hunts, there’s something very visceral about talking directly to the machine.
Lost in Space, the story of the Judica-Cordiglia brothers, radio transmissions from space and lost Russian cosmonauts.
Eightface is a weblog by Dave Kellam. It's largely just a collection of links to things I find interesting, with some attempts at pithy commentary interspersed.