Retro Thing

Klockwerks - Unique Retro-Sculpture Timepieces By Roger Wood

Artist/clockmaker Roger Wood isn't afraid to experiment. That much is obvious from a quick glance at his marvelous clock designs. He lives and works out of an old munitions factory in central Toronto, surrounded by an incredible collection of clock parts and mechanical odds-and-ends. Honestly, his studio looks like something out of a movie (I've included some photos after the jump). Each fully functional timepiece incorporates a unique assortment of retro brik-a-brak and surreal design. Prices range from a few hundred dollars through a few thousand.

The Art Gallery of Ontario eloquently summed up his work: “These are no ordinary clocks. Toronto artist Roger Wood imbues each piece with an alluring whimsical quality that will fill a room with charm and intrigue. No two clocks are alike and each one features Mr. Wood’s own unique signature: a feather.”

The Atari 800: Real Plug and Play Cartridge-Based Computing

By 1979, Atari was well known for its arcade and home videogame consoles. The Atari 800 computer was an attempt to extend their success into the home computer market. It was also the first mass-market microcomputer to incorporate a custom chipset. The ANTIC chip handled video configuration, GTIA took care of displaying the video data, and the whimsically named POKEY scanned the keyboard, generated sound, and handled serial communication. Atari created their own pared-down version of BASIC, issued as a plug-in 8K ROM cartridge.

The 800’s biggest drawback was its strange serial-based peripheral system. This made add-ons extremely expensive, unnecessarily increasing the cost of must-have peripherals such as a cassette or 90K floppy drive. Its best features were the two plug-in cartridge slots under the top panel – simply plug in a program and go.

The Atari 800 page at old computers.com
Atari 800 emulators for Windows

Alisport Silent 2 - Almost Affordable Motorgliding

I like ridiculous flying machines. Bonus marks go to any designs that feature spinning propellers right behind the pilot's head. Alisport Srl was founded near Milan, Italy to manufacture sailplanes. They've since expanded to produce a line of short-takeoff aircraft and propellers.

The Silent series of sailplanes is available in three configurations: engineless, gasoline powered self-launch, or electric self-launch. Their top model is the Silent 2 Targa, with a 13.3 meter wingspan.  Power for self-launching comes from a 28 bhp single cylinder 2-stroke engine behind the cockpit. It retracts once airborne to minimize drag. The aircraft has a glide ratio of up to 40:1, making it a fairly potent performer.

And -- if you're of the tree-hugger persuasion -- you can add solar panels to the electric model that will charge the battery between launches.

Alisport sailplanes and self-launchers

The Vendo 39: A Classic Coca-Cola Vending Machine

Modern Coca-Cola machines terrify me. They seem at least ten feet tall with dozens of blindingly illuminated buttons. I fully expect the things to call my name if I get within arm's length.

If you ask me, things were slightly more respectable in the good old days. The machine in the picture is a Vendo 39, marketed from 1949 to 1957. Over 80,000 of them were sold, and they once peppered the North American landscape. Of course, that was back in the days when soda pop came in skinny little 8 oz. bottles (Coke still offers them, by the way).

Back In Time Warehouse sells restored versions of this and a variety of other machines. It accepts 39 bottles of a single flavor (20 are pre-cooled at a time). There are no prices listed on the BITw site, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them cost a few thousand dollars.

The Vendo 39 at Back In Time Warehouse (includes some cool interior photos)

The Internet Wayback Machine

The trouble with the Web is that it changes all the time. Just because you found a cool site yesterday doesn't mean it'll be around a year from now. The Internet Wayback Machine is an attempt to solve that problem. It's a front-end to a giant database filled with copies of Internet sites from years past (over 55 billion pages at last count).

I've tried it out on a couple of my old sites, and it works reasonably well. Not every page is cataloged and graphics are often missing, but the essence is there. You can have a lot of fun trawling big sites: Here's a peek at CNN on 9.11.2001, the Apple Computer site as it was on 10.26.1996, and a glimpse of a young Netscape on 20.10.1996; Navigator 3.0 has just been released!

The heart of the Wayback Machine is the giant Internet Archive, started by Brewster Kahle in 1996. It often takes up to a year for a newly crawled site to appear in the archive, partly because it's growing at the astounding rate of more than 25 Terabytes per month. In addition to the Wayback Machine, the archive includes video, audio, and scanned texts. Something tells me they're not using stacks of floppies!

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine

The CandyWarehouse: Tongue-Numbing Sugary Goodness

As a child, I conducted a weekly food toxicity experiment. I'd grab my allowance, leap onto my banana bike, and race to the local store. Once there, I spent a good fifteen minutes selecting a horrific handful of colored sugar. It was the equivalent of rocket fuel for a 10 year-old.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and CandyWarehouse is attempting to fuel a few memories. Their site is packed full of enough sugar to send even the strongest kid into sugar shock. I surfed their "Nostalgia" section and found a container of Bazooka gum, a 5 lb jar of Double Lollies, Taffy, Slo Pokes, Zotz Sour Fizz Strings, and countless other confections.

Worth a look around. Just be sure to eat all of your dinner first!

CandyWarehouse old fashioned & nostalgic sweets

Bargain-Priced Black & White Super 8 Film in London

The Widescreen Centre in London is selling off their stock of classic Russian Quartzchrome B&W movie film for £3 a roll. This stuff has been stored since the early 1990s, and people have used it with mixed success -- some rolls expose fine, others are showing their age. Still, if you've ever considered developing Super 8 at home, the price can't be beat.

More details at OnSuper8.org

Colorful Retro Refrigeration

I used to live on the fourth floor of a hundred year-old apartment building. I loved the old iron fire escapes that snaked up from the alleyway, all the way to my back door. The building still had mounts for the old pulleys that delivered ice for the iceboxes. When I was there, the iceboxes were long-gone, replaced by a chuntering old 1960s freon-filled monster. I don't miss the noise, but I certainly miss the style.

UK-based Italian white goods manufacturer SMEG offers a line of vintage-looking refrigerators in a variety of colors and patterns [thanks for the correction, Luca - I was mislead by the not-quite-Italian Union Jack]. I'd like mine in silver, but if you're slightly more brazen you could choose one decorated with the Union Jack or several garish shades of green and orange. No price is listed, but they can pack over 270 liters of chilled goodies.

SMEG's colorful retro refrigerators (Born Rich)

Movie Making With Fuji Single-8: Better than Kodak?

Kodak's Super 8 movie cartridge was introduced in 1965. It became a phenomenon throughout the world, but many people think there was a better format released at almost the same moment. It was Single-8, developed by Japanese camera giant Fuji. The Single-8 format used a slightly taller cartridge and film with exactly the same dimensions as Super 8; you can project either format on a Super 8 projector.

Single-8 has several advantages over its Kodak cousin - it can be run backwards, and image registration is more stable because the design uses a metal plate built into the camera to stabilize the film behind the film gate. Alas, Fuji's format never gained widespread acceptance outside Japan. Still, Fuji's line of Fujica cameras is respectable (I've mentioned the tiny AX100 before) and film can still be purchased, if you know where to look.

If you're interested in Single-8, I suggest dropping by the Retro Enterprises site. They're based in Tokyo and stock an amazing array of Single-8 cameras and accessories. They offer 5-packs of film including processing by Fuji, priced at 13,470 Yen (about $118). And they ship worldwide.

Retro Enterprises Single-8 cameras and film
Single-8 Film offers film and processing in the USA

Battery-Powered Hundred Dollar Synthesizers?

Back in the early 1980s, American photography magazines ran amazingly dense ads for discount camera shops at the back of each issue. And, if you looked carefully through the hundreds of items on each page, there were often some rather odd things in stock. Things like the Casio CZ-101 synthesizer, discounted to an incredibly low $109.

The CZ-101 was Casio's debut into the world of "professional" synthesis. The 101 was a miniature polyphonic programmable synthesizer with MIDI. It even offered a couple of clips for a guitar strap, letting keyboard players step to the front of the stage for their solos. The only problem was that the keys were too small for full-sized humans to play with great speed. To that end, Casio released a full-sized version named the CZ-1000.

This pint-sized synth actually packed a lot of power into a hundred bucks worth of plastic. It offered 8 oscillators, but you'd only get 4-voice polyphony if you doubled them up to create a respectable sound. The synthesis engine was completely digital, using something termed Phase Distortion synthesis -- it was somewhat cryptic, but some nifty sounds were possible.

Zillions of these little critters were made and they show up all the time on eBay. Don't pay too much, and have fun!

Casio CZ-101 Phase Distortion Synthesizer (Vintage Synth Explorer)

Convergence IV: Snailmail Notification On Your Mobile Phone

I'm going to add my bit to the Convergence Series that Bohus started a few days ago. Australia Post now offers their 'Mail2Day' email or SMS notification to let you know when a letter or package arrives in your P.O. box. This is a great idea for those of us who have to make a trip to the post office to collect mail -- a great melding of real-world practicality and technology.

The mobile phone has always puzzled me. Mine has more horsepower than most classic computers, but it still struggles to efficiently integrate itself into my life -- I'd never use the awful built-in calendar, it can't play mp3s, and it takes dismal photos. Perhaps we'll soon have a zillion truly useful phone widgets that solve real-world problems? I'd like a universal train/bus schedule, mobile Google maps, and a good searchable online phone book for mine, please.

Australia Post Offers SMS/email Notification (via DigitalReviews.net)

A Bewildering Collection of Off-Kilter Street Signs

Ektopia has linked to yet another set of bewildering signage. I can only imagine how difficult it is to create simple and legible warning signs, but some of these should never have escaped from the drawing board:

"See, I have a fairly strange love of odd and off-kilter street signs, which are just begging to be mocked. Some of the signs in the site are downright bizarre - they certainly make you wonder what was going on in the minds of those people designing these signs."

Swank Signs (via Ektopia)

Convergence III: Turntable + Organ

The Panasonic Do-Re-Mi is a little bit piano shaped, which makes sense when you're playing this little buzzy sounding monophonic (did I even need to say that?) keyboard, but pull off the cheerful red lid - presto, turntable-oh!  You can play keyboard only, or keyboard together with turntable (I'm thinking of playing some old "music minus one" records with this thing at a show in a few weeks), and there's also support for a microphone.

What does it sound like?  Better than it should, but of course it's still a toy.  One thing that makes this kid's keyboard special is that it extends beyond an octave and has sharps and flats.  So many keyboard instruments for children - especially early ones - only had a single octave with only the white keys represented.  Obviously Panasonic was serious with this one.

Marx U.S. Presidents in Living Plastic

 

I hope that you'll forgive the United States - centricism of this post...

1960's toy manufacturer Marx made lots of classic toys, but this series of collectible presidents seems to often be forgotten.  They were available painted and unpainted, in sets as well as separately at toy and hobby shops.  Here in Chicago, they were a promotional giveaway at a grocery store.  They went so far as to offer the styrofoam rotunda that I have them glued to here (apparently quite rare), and a booklet detailing the exploits and adventures of each president.

These are not finely detailed miniatures, but rather of a plastic green army man quality.  The paint job is equally unartistic, but I don't object to this.  Rather I am impressed by the concept of a toy that isn't obliquely a learning toy, nor tied into a heavy marketing campaign. 

It strikes me as a brave move to not only create all of these model versions of important historic figures (and to continue to update the collection as time went by), but it also seems brave to suggest that U.S. history might actually be interesting to kids.  Are there even toys like this anymore that aren't from some snooty "educational plaything" boutique?

We Have Yet Another New Hobby.....And It Involves Explosives!!!

[Giles Perkins says...] Rockets! We had our first rocket launch today in a wintery UK and boy what a buzz! OK, it was only a 12 inch cardboard tube, a plastic nose cone, a parachute and an intimidating stick of explosive, but blimey did that thing go (well one did, we couldn't find the other as it drifted off over a housing estate after a very dramatic launch).

Estes Rockets and Quest Aerospace both offer ready to fly and kit built rockets with numerous designs and altitude ranges, most of which are powered by cartridge explosive type engines. Launching is super fun, connect up the electronic starter pack, stand way back, arm it and press the launch button!

A boom and a whizz later and your star bound missle will blast off up to an amazing 1000 feet. (Remember to check for low flying aircraft before launch!). If you're fan of flight and also enjoy blowing things up, rockets are definitely the way to go. We particularly like this Canadian Arrow from Estes, it's a 1:24 scale version of the Ansari X Prize Team machine from London, Ontario which is a V2-type rocket standing at over two feet tall. [Giles runs onSuper8.org. No doubt he's already figured out how to strap a movie camera to an explosive-filled cardboard tube.]

Estes Rockets
Quest Aerospace