Category Archives: history
Giant Armillary Sphere
Armillary Sphere, signed by Antonio Santucci, constructed 1588 to 1593; Florence. Wood and metal; 2420 mm in diameter This enormous armillary sphere, more than 3 metres in height, was begun on 4 March 1588 and completed on 6 May 1593. … more…
Al-Jazari’s Automata
Ibn Ismail ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari (1136-1206) inventor and technological visionary author of The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, also known simply as Automata. I’m not about to pretend to wax knowledgable about a person I was only vaguely … more…
Tesla’s Tower
Damn Interesting ยป Tesla’s Tower of Power “In this system that I have invented, it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth,” he explained, “otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a … more…
links for 2006-12-08: Benjamin, twins, Tetris, Beckett, Duchamp, chewable contraceptives
Arcades – The Arcades Project Project or The Rhetoric of Hypertext by Heather Marcelle Crickenberger stupefyingly ugly mark-up (another one) but worth delving further into… (tags: walter_benjamin arcades flaneur hypertext) IRISH ‘TWINS’ By PHILIP RECCHIA – New York Post Online … more…
links for 2006-12-05: Grammar of Ornament, Quaternions, Bearden, Bayes, Pollock, Tesla
Owen Jones and the Grammar of Ornament The images are from the 1868 edition of the Grammar of Ornament, by Owen Jones (tags: design ornament library) Quaternion – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia first major speed bump encountered in Against the … more…
Ackroyd: Disappearances can be deceptive
Peter Ackroyd, on the pretext of reviewing Iain Sinclair’s anthology London: City of Disappearances, stories of vanishings in London — strikingly, he barely mentions the book, and offers no opinion at all as to its quality — expatiates nevertheless on … more…
Another Egyptian tomb discovery, could be Nefertiti, or not
The Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP), led by Nicholas Reeves, announced at the end of last month that, only months after the discovery of the first new tomb (KV63) since Howard Carter’s finding the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amun (KV62) in 1922, … more…
Hellfighters movie, and Buddy Bolden
Further to last night’s humungous post on the Harlem Hellfighters, today I’ve stumbled across testimony to the existence, somewhere out there in the world, of Our Hellfighters, aka Our Hellfighters Return (1918), a silent documentary short. No sign of any … more…