Because everything goes interactive on the internets.
Wow. Here are some incredible photos.
Posts Tagged: ‘Internet Wonders’
August 8, 2011
Interactive London Riot Map
August 6, 2011
1941 British Video on Puzzles
Actually came across this by googling “ancient Egyptian metal locks.” Not quite what I wanted, but it’s a great little video.
July 31, 2011
Ice Skating Newsreel – 1930s?
We’ve mentioned the incredible resource that is British Pathé before – they have tens of thousands of old videos archived online. Here’s a fun one:
ICE STARS
They don’t give a date. Help – are those cars in the background from the 1930s?
March 10, 2011
Internet Wonders: British Pathe
Just stumbled across this website while researching ancient locks. Pretty sure a lot of you are going to really like this:
“Welcome to British Pathé
The world’s finest news and entertainment video film archive
You can view and buy films and still photographs from the entire archive of 90,000 videos covering newsreel, sports footage, social history documentaries, entertainment and music stories from 1896 to 1976.”
Much more info on their “about” page here.
November 2, 2010
That Old Drive-In Theater
For reasons only the mind-faeries know I just thought of the old drive-in theater that I grew up a short walk through a yard and a field from in Western New York. And lo and behold—I found it on the internet. In several places. There’s even an aeriel photo of the site (at the first link) from 1978. And my house is even in there—who knows, I may have even been standing in the yard at the time! (Click pix to enlarge.)
When I was just a young teenager some of the neighborhood kids and myself put a hundred yards or so of wire into one of the pole speakers and put it in the brush behind the theater so we could sit back there on summer nights and watch—and listen to—the movies for free. Ah, youth. And they even had concerts there for a while—and I found an old WNY band that played there in 1978.
Got any drive-in theater memories of your own? Tell us about them in the comments!
April 27, 2010
Internet Wonders: Old & Interesting
This is such a great idea for a Web site:
This site is about . . .
. . . how people furnished and equipped their homes in previous centuries, and how they handled household tasks. Plans are to keep adding more articles, with the homepage updated every Wednesday—at least. Please email if you want to suggest a topic connected with the history of everyday home life, housekeeping, domestic objects, or any related bits of social history.
Simple and fascinating. There are many, many photographs of actual antique items, along with comprehensive descriptions of their histories. Just a few of the items covered:
- Bread peels
- Butter-making & churns
- Early electric irons
- Featherbeds, duvets, eiderdowns
- Ironing & smoothing
- Ironing boards
- Laundry blue
- Mangles
- Washboards
Mangles?
Hot metal pressing irons are so common that we may forget how widespread wooden mangling boards once were. People who have heard of mangle boards may know they were traditional courtship gifts carved by young men in Scandinavia or the Netherlands. They were found further afield too, and were a standard way of smoothing linen from Russia to France, from Iceland to Bosnia. We know they were in use before 1600 and in some places were still familiar in the 20th century.
How do they work? Like the 100-year-old Norwegian tools in the photograph, the board was always one half of a pair. A roller was an essential companion to the board. While the board could be beautifully decorated on one side – sometimes with carved initials and dates – the roller had to be smooth and plain for effective “ironing”.
Go on over, take a look around, amuse yourself. You might even come across Uncle John walking the aisles of Tablecloths of the Middle Ages.
March 25, 2010
Periodic Table Print Project
This is just too cool:
Ninety-seven printmakers of all experience levels, have joined together to produce 118 prints in any medium; woodcut, linocut, monotype, etching, lithograph, silkscreen, or any combination. The end result is a periodic table of elements intended to promote both science and the arts.
Example:
Tin
by Natalia MorozAbout the Element
For Tin, a silvery-white metal, the chemical element of atomic number 50. (Symbol: Sn), I pictured The Steadfast Tin Soldier from the classic fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson.About the Print
I also added more tins on the background. It’s a four color linocut, gray, red and blue printed using the jigsaw method, overprinted with black. Printed with Daniel Smith oil based inks on white Rising Stonehenge paper.
And here’s a Flickr group with alternate versions and work-in-progress shots.
* Got any links to other cool art projects out there in the intertubes? Please let us know in the comments.
P.S. Seven more days to go until we pick a winner in Uncle John’s 2010 Census Contest. Have you filled yours out yet?
February 26, 2010
A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries
We spend a lot of time on the internet here at the BRI, and one of the things we love about it is that amid all the clutter and crap there is some truly wonderful stuff out there. In “Internet Wonders” we’ll be sharing those finds with you, hopefully pointing you to gems you haven’t seen before. Like this one: “Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries,” from the underappreciated Curious Expeditions:
“For us here at Curious Expeditions, there has always been something about libraries. Row after row, shelf after shelf, there is nothing more magical than a beautiful old library.”
We couldn’t agree more. Here’s just one of the dozens of incredible photos they’ve collected over there, this one of the library at the Abbey of St. Gallen in Switzerland, dating all the way back to the 8th century:
Go on over, take a look around. We’re pretty sure you’ll enjoy it.
And here’s some more info on the Abbey of St. Gallen, from Wikipedia:
The Abbey Library of Saint Gall was founded by Saint Othmar, the founder of the Abbey of St. Gall. The library collection is the oldest in Switzerland, and is one of earliest and most important monastic libraries in the world. It holds 2,100 manuscripts dating back to the 8th through the 15th centuries.
And at this site you can actually view the abbey library’s ancient manuscripts online. (How cool is that?)
