2012-04-09
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The first appearance of the “computer-generated illustration produced at the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico” of pulsar CP1919 (now known as PSR B1919+21), credited to Jerry Ostriker, in Scientific American’s January 1971 issue.
The image is best known as the album art for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, as appropriated by Peter Saville, but this post (by Adam Capriola) is the most thorough attempt I’ve ever seen to go into its history.
2012-04-06
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2012-04-05
2012-03-23
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2012-03-21
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Eadward Muybridge’s sequence of photos of a horse running, converted into an animated GIF. Via twohundredfiftysixcolors, “a 16mm film that traces the arc of increased complexity and pointed use of the animated gif”.
2012-03-19
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A&S: What were the advantages of the hard suit versus the soft suit? Why two totally different kinds?
Elkins: There are some advantages of the hard suit, although I did not remain a proponent of it. The hard suit had value for being able to go to much higher pressures. The higher you go, the less likely you are to have the bends when exiting a higher-pressure space vehicle. So if you were wearing one, you could scramble to do an emergency [spacewalk] because you didn’t have to pre-breathe for four hours. It’s a very mobile little spaceship, if you will. Vic Vykukal, a NASA Ames engineer, also did pioneering work on the hard suit. Although it demonstrated excellent mobility, it was heavier because of the hard structural components, and the joints did not exhibit the long-life capability of the toroidal joint.
The soft suit came from a line of pressure suits used by the Air Force and Navy. BF Goodrich’s soft suits for the Mercury project were evolved from a Navy pressure suit. David Clark made soft suits for Gemini. Then ILC came into the Apollo program. They all came from that same soft emergency pressure suit lineage. It was a question of cultures and politics within the R&D labs. There was the West Coast technology such as Litton, and NASA’s Ames Research lab; but then the older timers from the East who knew soft suits. Ultimately, soft suits won out.
”2012-03-15
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Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, from Börner’s Atlas of Science
As commented on at the original poster, deconcrete:
Drawing the first cartographic representation of an uncharted land was very much linked in colonial times to claiming rights of sovereignty over the place. The stunning and meticulous Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) of India from the 18th century developed by Col. Lambton and Sir George Everest among others proofed a very efficient tool of control. In Mapping an Empire: the geographical construction of British India 1765-1843, Matthew H. Edney relates how imperial Britain employed modern scientific survey techniques not only to create and define the spatial image of its Indian empire but also to legitimate its colonialist activities as triumphs of liberal, rational science bringing ‘civilization’ to irrational, mystical, and despotic Indians. The reshaping of cartographic technologies in Europe into their modern form, including the adoption of the technique of triangulation (known at the time as ‘trigonometrical survey’) at the beginning of the nineteenth century, played a key role in the use of the GTS as an instrument of British cartographic control over India.
2012-03-11
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The area to the north of London Wall was almost completely levelled during the Blitz and was essentially a blank canvas for reconstruction… work that is still going on and if you know where to look there are still some bomb sites waiting for someone to come along and fill the gap.
For inspiration the planners looked to Stockholm where, in 1946, a plan had been tabled to create a similar business area consisting of a line of five Modernist ‘slabs’ in the Hötorget (Haymarket) area – each a curtain-walled office block and all of them aligned alongside an arterial road. By the time construction began in 1952 the plans dictated that each should be 18 stories high (with all surrounding buildings limited to two) and all be of a very similar design… each was worked on by a different architect but the limitations imposed by the city meant that they looked pretty much the same.
Key to the scheme was the addition in 1953 of a series of raised pedestrian walkways, complete with shops and connecting bridges… which for anyone who’s been along London Wall will sound spookily familiar to the desolate raised pedestrian areas in the vicinity. London’s planners wanted their own Hötorget and similar restrictions were placed on the architects – as with Stockholm five blocks were built (Moor House (1961), St Alphage House (1962) and Lee House (1962) to the North of London Wall, 40 Basinghall Street (1964) and Royex House (1962) to the South) and each looked almost identical apart from slight variations such as the colour of the strips along the bottom of the windows, although the windows themselves were all identically sized.
”2012-03-10
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From a 2010 Gawker article about a book of the Smithsonian’s spacesuit collection. Left to right:
- A4-H – Universal Hamilton Standard, 1964
- Spd-143-1a Ax1-L Apollo Prototype, ILC Industries, 1963
- GT-7 – Gemini Protective Helmet. 1965
- Mercury – Training, Schirra, 1960
If you’re interested in the history of the spacesuit up to and past the moon missions (and to some extent even if you’re not), I can’t recommend last year’s Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo highly enough. A fascinating, multi-layered read.
